Scientists exploring the histories of planets and life are uniquely positioned to communicate a perspective that is fundamental to our survival: humanity is wholly embedded in Earth and its biosphere. There is no escaping our planet and its history. Only policies that build on this perspective will contribute to a flourishing future for humanity. We offer a few brief glimpses of this cosmic perspective and call on our colleagues to acknowledge the powerful stories emanating from their work.

Fast, self-propelling positive synergies between improvements in social and biophysical systems' conditions are necessary to ensure a safe and just world for possibly 10 billion people by 2050. A regenerative view of human–environmental interactions in science, policy, education, and across many individual and organisational practices can contribute to achieving such a future – a global net-positive tipping point for people and the planet.

The Arctic is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet. Here, we use climate model projections to quantify for the first time how this faster warming in the Arctic impacts the timing of crossing the 1.5 °C and 2 °C thresholds defined in the Paris Agreement. We show that under plausible emissions scenarios that fail to meet the Paris 1.5 °C target, a hypothetical world without faster warming in the Arctic would breach that 1.5 °C target around 5 years later.

Adapting to climate change requires an understanding of how extreme weather events are changing. We propose a new approach to examine how the consequences of a particular weather pattern have been made worse by climate change, using an example of a severe windstorm that occurred in 1903. When this storm is translated into a warmer world, it produces higher wind speeds and increased rainfall, suggesting that this storm would be more damaging if it occurred today rather than 120 years ago.

While a 6-year oscillation has been reported for some time in the motions of the fluid outer core of the Earth, in the magnetic field and in the Earth rotation, novel results indicate that the climate system also oscillates at this 6-year frequency. This strongly suggests the existence of coupling mechanisms affecting the Earth system as a whole, from the deep Earth interior to the surface fluid envelopes.