Climate change has made extreme weather events more frequent and intense around the world. Some examples of climate-related disasters in recent years include severe flooding in Venice, Italy in 2019, severe heat waves and wildfires in Australia in 2020, and widespread flooding in Central Europe in 2021. While our understanding of climate extremes and their impacts continues to improve, events that exceed the capacity of social and environmental systems to cope often surprise us. This is partly because current climate and impact modelling efforts are very limited in their ability to model compound events, making it difficult to plan appropriate adaptation measures. The COST Action Understanding and Modelling Compound Climate and Weather Events (DAMOCLES) has succeeded in changing this situation. The action has raised awareness of the importance of compound events and their impacts across a range of scientific fields. A recent study based on work from the COST Action DAMOCLES was published in iScience. It has also created a new community bringing together experts in climate science, climate impact research, hydrology and statistics. Bart van den Hurk from Deltares Institute, NL, and vice-chair of the event, talks about the successes and challenges of DAMOCLES. (iScience (2023))