Articles in 2019

Climate change and habitat loss threaten species survival in Madagascar. Ruffed lemurs, a representative species in the eastern rainforest, could lose 38–93% of their habitat from climate change and deforestation by 2070; protecting areas from deforestation is necessary to protect Malagasy biodiversity.

GHG emissions in sub-Saharan African countries are comparatively low, but continued economic and population growth could transform the region into a major emitter. Here, it is shown that the transportation sector has driven emissions in the past few decades, but new coal investments are likely to be a major driver in the near future.

Extreme weather events may raise public awareness of climate change. This comparative-case analysis shows that single events had limited impact on climate change discussion, but this was more common in Democratic communities and for weather events with a more certain attribution to climate change.

Hot weather can cause early childbirth, meaning shorter gestation. Daily US birth-rate data from 1969 to 1988 show that deliveries increased on hot days and that those births occurred up to two weeks early. Around 25,000 infants were born early each year, representing over 150,000 gestational days lost annually.

Qualitative comparative analysis of 25 case studies across climate change hotspots in Africa and Asia shows that male migration and women’s poor working conditions combine with either institutional failure or poverty to constrain women’s agency, which limits their adaptive capacity.

Wind speeds have reduced globally over land since the 1980s. In situ data show that this reversed around 2010, with natural ocean–atmosphere variability thought to drive the wind speed changes, as well as a 17% increase in potential wind energy for 2010–2017 and a boosted wind power capacity factor.

Estimates of N₂O emissions are important given its role as a GHG. Atmospheric inversions indicate emissions increased over the past decade at a rate 2.5 times that estimated using the IPCC default method, and the emissions response to N-input is larger than linear when N-input is high.

In the US, 99.8% of the 459 endangered animals are susceptible to at least one climate change sensitivity factor. Yet analysis of official documents (1973–2018) shows this risk does not translate into action: only 64% of species are considered threatened by climate change, and management planned for 18%.

The reflectivity of the Arctic Ocean decreases as sea ice decreases, creating a feedback of more heat absorption, warming and further melt. An ensemble of models is used to gain understanding of this in the current climate to constrain the intermodel spread in predictions of sea-ice albedo changes.

Small shallow estuaries face enhanced flood risk under climate change because of sea-level-rise-induced tidal amplification. In contrast, large deep estuaries are threatened by sediment starvation and therefore a loss of intertidal area. Both cases can potentially be mitigated by estuary widening.

The resilience of a marine food web to climate change is investigated through a combination of multiple and nested species interactions. The Kongsfjorden food web adapts and maintains core ecological processes during change, with increasing dominance of Atlantic species boosting resilience.

Climate change is expected to impact river flows. Here, it is shown that plant physiological responses to increased CO₂, rather than atmospheric changes, are the primary drivers of mean, peak and low flows throughout the tropics.

This study shows that expressing uncertainty about best- and worst-case effects of climate change on sea-level rise increases trust in climate scientists and message acceptance but not when the full extent of inevitable uncertainty due to unpredictable storm surges is also acknowledged.

The subnivium—the space between snowpack and the ground—is an insulating refuge from winter cold. This study predicts that climate warming decreases the subnivium’s seasonal duration yet increases snow-free days with frozen ground, making winter functionally colder for subnivium-dependent life.

Predicting mortality in forests is challenging because its underlying causes are spatially varied and not well known. Reduced resilience detected from remotely sensed time series of vegetation dynamics can serve as an effective early warning signal to indicate the potential for forest mortality.

Intraspecies response to climate change is expected to align with genetic affinity. Using the American pika as a case study suggests that divisions of species distributions best explain intraspecific heterogeneity in climate relationships.

Whether citizens are able to reject false information about climate change may depend on their confidence in their existing knowledge. This study shows that German citizens are less confident in their climate change knowledge than they should be based on their actual knowledge.

Solar geoengineering could limit temperature increase, but its use is controversial. This study shows that climate experts are more opposed to geoengineering if they expect severe global climate change damages, but are more supportive if they expect severe damages in their home country.

Diatoms have silicate skeletons that affect their buoyancy in the ocean. Ocean acidification reduces silicification, with varying effects between species, and could alter the marine carbon and silica cycles through changes in community composition and sinking rates.

The components of the ocean carbon cycle will respond differently to climate change, with anthropogenic impacts first seen on processes sensitive to chemical changes—the calcium carbonate pump and oceanic uptake of CO₂—with the soft-tissue pump (sensitive to the ocean’s physical state) emerging later.