The responses to climate change due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not uniformly distributed around the globe. Some regions, such as the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME), warm more rapidly than the global mean. A recent article published in Reviews of Geophysics explores how climate change is impacting the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Here, we asked some of the authors about the rapid climate change in the EMME, advances in climate modelling in the region, and what challenges remain.