The literature on adaptation to climate change indicates that limiting global warming to 1.5°C or less would reduce damages relative to higher magnitudes of warming, and require less adaptive effort particularly by lessening the risk of extremes and reducing the potential need for transformative adaptation. Smaller climate change nevertheless poses risks of significant impacts, dislocation and adaptation costs in particularly exposed and vulnerable places. Climate change will also vary across space, and smaller, slower average change will likely still result in larger, rapid change for some systems and places (e.g. the Arctic and oceanic islands). Furthermore, non-linearities and power–law relationships among components of the earth's climate system mean that the potential for passing thresholds where parts of the system exhibit extreme behavior cannot be confidently excluded from a 1.5° scenario. The potential for overshoot in a climate that eventually equilibrates at 1.5°C or less above pre-industrial also means that anticipatory adaptation planning efforts should not be relaxed. Yet, taken together, the literature suggests that reactive adaptation has a better chance of keeping pace with the lower range of warming in many places and production systems (although not necessarily all), and could reduce though not eliminate the risk of large damages and adaptation costs in exposed and vulnerable places. Anticipatory adaptation investments, however, can be justified even for low levels of climate change and appear less sensitive to the projected magnitude of change in climate, and driven more by uncertainty in future emission and climate trajectories.

有关适应气候变化的文献表明，将全球变暖限制在1.5°C或更低将相对于更高的变暖幅度减少损害，并且需要较少的适应性工作，尤其是通过降低极端风险并减少潜在的适应性变化。然而，较小的气候变化在特别暴露和脆弱的地方造成重大影响，迁移和适应成本的风险。气候变化也将随空间变化，并且较小，较慢的平均变化可能仍会导致某些系统和地方（例如北极和海洋岛屿）的较大，快速变化。此外，地球各组成部分之间的非线性和幂律关系 气候系统意味着无法可靠地从1.5°情景中排除系统某些部分表现出极端行为的通过阈值的可能性。在最终温度比工业化前高出1.5°C或更低的气候中，潜在的超调现象也意味着不应放松预期的适应性计划工作。然而，综合而言，文献表明，在许多地方和生产系统中（尽管不一定全部），被动适应有更好的机会跟上较低范围的变暖的步伐，并且可以减少但不能消除大面积损害和适应的风险。在裸露且脆弱的地方的成本。但是，即使在气候变化水平较低的情况下，预期的适应投资也是合理的，并且对预期的气候变化幅度不太敏感，