In July 2025, IUCN formally launched the MCSG within its Species Survival Commission, co-chaired by Professor Gilbert and Raquel Peixoto (KAUST / ISME). This came out of a meeting that Professor Gilbert led in May of conservation experts and microbiologists to define the premise of conservation in a microbial world. 

This is the first global coalition dedicated to safeguarding microbial biodiversity, which is the ‘invisible 99% of life’, to ensure that microbes are recognized as essential to the planet’s ecological, climate, and health systems.

20 November 2025 / Kiel. So far, the ocean has helped to buffer global warming by absorbing more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped in the Earth system by the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. A new modelling study by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has now examined how the ocean might respond if atmospheric carbon dioxide was drastically reduced in the future. The results show that, after centuries of cooling, the Southern Ocean could trigger renewed warming by releasing the stored heat back into the atmosphere. Whether this would occur as a single major “heat burp”, in many smaller pulses, or continuously over centuries remains unclear. The study has now been published in AGU Advances.

Deadly hotter and longer heatwaves, which worsen in severity the longer it takes to reach net zero carbon emissions, will become the norm predicts new climate research.