Articles in 2017

Warming waters are causing marine species to shift; however, how species found in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean will adapt is unclear. This study projects significant habitat reductions for individual benthic taxa and benthic communities over the next century.

Natural climate variability can enhance or suppress anthropogenic warming. Model results now show natural variability will decrease in magnitude under warmer conditions, altering the mechanisms causing it and its influence on warming rates.

Public participation in climate change research is reaching new-found heights due to an explosion in the number and diversity of citizen-science projects. These offer distinct opportunities for scientists to encourage education and outreach whilst maximising scientific gain.

Solar geoengineering is no substitute for cutting emissions, but could nevertheless help reduce the atmospheric carbon burden. In the extreme, if solar geoengineering were used to hold radiative forcing constant under RCP8.5, the carbon burden may be reduced by ∼100 GTC, equivalent to 12–26% of twenty-first-century emissions at a cost of under US$0.5 per tCO₂.

Changing climates are outpacing some components of our food systems. Risk assessments need to account for these rates of change. Assessing risk transmission mechanisms across sectors and international boundaries and coordinating policies across governments are key steps in addressing this challenge.

To enable society to better manage the risks and opportunities arising from changes in climate, engagement between the users and the providers of climate information needs to be much more effective and should better link climate information with decision-making.

The southern pine beetle is projected to be able to expand into vast areas of the northeastern US and southeastern Canada by 2050 posing risks to forest structure, biodiversity and associated ecosystem services.

Warming of surface ocean waters is well known, but how the subsurface waters are changing is less clear. This study shows that subtropical mode water in the North Atlantic and North Pacific is warming at twice the rate of the surface waters.

A warmer climate is generally expected to favour smaller organisms and steeper body-mass–abundance scaling through food webs. Results from across a stream temperature gradient now show that this effect can be offset by increasing nutrient supply.

Policymakers are beginning to understand the scale of carbon dioxide removal that is required to keep global warming “well below 2 °C”. This understanding must now be translated into policies that give business the incentive to research, develop and deploy the required technologies.

The mass balance of glaciers will influence regional water resources in the Himalayas. Changes in atmospheric dynamics, the Karakoram vortex contraction, and interaction with the monsoon influence the glacial melt of the region.