Research articles

The global ocean is a major heat reservoir of the climate system. This study investigates ocean warming for 2005–2013 in the context of global sea-level rise and Earth’s energy budget, and finds that the deep ocean (below 2,000 m) has contributed negligibly to both.

The ocean stores over 90% of the heat due to anthropogenic warming. This study uses satellite observations and climate models to investigate the warming of the upper ocean (0–700 m) and finds that warming is biased low, most likely because of poor Southern Hemisphere sampling. Applying adjustments results in a large increase in upper-ocean heat content estimates.

There is concern that ocean acidification will negatively affect the sensory abilities and behaviour of marine fishes. This study shows that negative impacts of elevated CO₂ on fish behaviour are not diminished by transgenerational acclimation.

The characteristics of the global mean temperature response to bioenergy production systems is explored under different assumptions and emissions scenarios in the context of the 2 °C target.

A systematic analysis shows that China’s climate policy on carbon intensity reduction may not help all Chinese regions to become more efficient and could actually lock the whole nation into a long-term emission-intensive economic structure.

This study shows that the biological impact and footprint of a leakage from a controlled sub-seabed release of carbon dioxide is confined to a few tens of metres, and identifies monitoring strategies for full-scale carbon storage operations.

A project to develop an approach to adaptation to sea-level rise with a local community is described. The result is a theoretically informed, empirically tested and locally supported adaptation pathway.

An analysis of a high-resolution global temperature data set shows that temperate and polar regions are becoming more tropical in their temperature variation profiles, potentially affecting organisms and impacting human agriculture and health.

In the United States, a key goal of states’ climate change policies is to reduce CO₂ emissions from electric power plants. This study shows that specific policy packages significantly shape CO₂ emissions from individual power plants.

The glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula are experiencing faster melt because of increased temperatures; however, changes in precipitation may offset some of the future melt. This study looks at the relationship between glaciers and climate and finds a representative glacier is more sensitive to temperature change, rather than precipitation change. This indicates that precipitation increases are unlikely to counter the increased melt from warming.

Climate change is increasing ocean temperatures and acidification. This study tests the adaptive evolution of a globally important phytoplankton, Emiliania huxleyi, and finds they are able to evolve to cope with the changing marine environment.

Accounting for natural decadal variability allows better prediction of short-term trends. This study looks at the ability of individual models, which are in phase with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, to simulate the current global warming slowdown. The authors highlight that the current trend could have been predicted in the 1990s with this technique and the need for consistent hindcast skills to allow reliable decadal predictions.

Whether rising temperatures will reduce global soil carbon stocks and enhance climate warming remains uncertain, in part because of a poor understanding of the mechanisms of soil microbial response to warming. Research now shows that microbial growth efficiency is insensitive to temperature change and that the response of microbial respiration to warming is driven by accelerated microbial turnover and enzyme kinetics.

The role of natural decadal variability in the global warming slowdown has been hinted at, but not quantified. This study looks at decadal average surface temperature anomalies for the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The results show that decadal variability is a large contributor to temperature trends, but its influence has decreased, from 47% in the 1980s to 27% in the 2000s, as anthropogenic warming has increased.

With food demand set to double, agriculture will account for a larger proportion of total future greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet global food production and land-use scenarios have received relatively little attention in relation to climate change mitigation. This study shows that to avoid dangerous climate change, we must address food demand, as sustainable intensification of agriculture does not, in itself, suffice.

The global radiative effects of historical cropland expansion are typically estimated as the trade-off between reduced land carbon storage (causing warming) and increased surface albedo (causing cooling). Now research shows that the net atmospheric chemistry effect (−0.11 ± 0.17 W m⁻²) is of comparable magnitude and should also be taken into account.

The near-term costs of greenhouse-gas emissions reduction may be offset by the air-quality co-benefits of mitigation policies. Now research estimates the monetary value of the human health benefits from air-quality improvements due to US carbon abatement policies, and finds that the benefits can offset 26–1,050% of the cost of mitigation policies.

Biologically relevant metrics of global change are needed for risk assessment, to assess species exposure, and for adaptation planning. This paper presents a new measure of global change velocity that incorporates both climate and land-use change, and explores the implications of the observed velocities for conservation planning in the US.

The slowdown in global warming has been identified predominately through changes in the Pacific Ocean. This study investigates the teleconnections and seasonal changes associated with the slowdown. The present forcing from the tropical Pacific is found to produce many of the changes in atmospheric circulation, for example, changes in the upper troposphere wave patterns increase the chances of cold European winters.

Africa is sometimes called ‘the burning continent’ owing to the prevalent use of fire for landscape management. This study shows that precipitation changes associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation help explain fire trends in Africa over the period 2001–2012. However, a shift in land use from savannah to cropland also reduced fire prevalence in the northern half of the continent.