Storylines are introduced in climate science to provide unity of discourse, integrate the physical and socioeconomic components of phenomena, and make climate evolution more tangible. The use of this concept by multiple scholar communities and the novelty of some of its applications renders the concept ambiguous nonetheless, because the term hides behind a wide range of purposes, understandings, and methodologies. This semi‐systematic literature review identifies three approaches that use storylines as a keystone concept: scenarios—familiar for their use in IPCC reports—discourse‐analytical approaches, and physical climate storylines. After screening peer‐reviewed articles that mention climate and storylines, 270 articles are selected, with 158, 55, and 57 in each category. The results indicate that each scholarly community works with a finite and different set of methods and diverging understandings. Moreover, these approaches have received criticism in their assembly of storylines: either for lacking explicitness or for the homogeneity of expertise involved. This article proposes that cross‐pollination among the approaches can improve the usefulness and usability of climate‐related storylines. Among good practices are the involvement of a broader range of scientific disciplines and expertise, use of mixed‐methods, assessment of storylines against a wider set of quality criteria, and targeted stakeholder participation in key stages of the process.

The Next Generation of Earth Modeling Systems (nextGEMS) project aimed to produce multidecadal climate simulations, for the first time, with resolved kilometer-scale (km-scale) processes in the ocean, land, and atmosphere. In only 3 years, nextGEMS achieved this milestone with the two km-scale Earth system models, ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic model (ICON) and Integrated Forecasting System coupled to the Finite-volumE Sea ice-Ocean Model (IFS-FESOM). nextGEMS was based on three cornerstones: (1) developing km-scale Earth system models with small errors in the energy and water balance, (2) performing km-scale climate simulations with a throughput greater than 1 simulated year per day, and (3) facilitating new workflows for an efficient analysis of the large simulations with common data structures and output variables. These cornerstones shaped the timeline of nextGEMS, divided into four cycles. Each cycle marked the release of a new configuration of ICON and IFS-FESOM, which were evaluated at hackathons. The hackathon participants included experts from climate science, software engineering, and high-performance computing as well as users from the energy and agricultural sectors. The continuous efforts over the four cycles allowed us to produce 30-year simulations with ICON and IFS-FESOM, spanning the period 2020–2049 under the SSP3-7.0 scenario. The throughput was about 500 simulated days per day on the Levante supercomputer of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). The simulations employed a horizontal grid of about 5 km resolution in the ocean and 10 km resolution in the atmosphere and land. Aside from this technical achievement, the simulations allowed us to gain new insights into the realism of ICON and IFS-FESOM. Beyond its time frame, nextGEMS builds the foundation of the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin developed in the Destination Earth initiative and paves the way for future European research on climate change.