Reviews & Analysis

Meeting the Paris Agreement climate goals requires increasingly ambitious climate policy. A framework for ratcheting up stringency through policy sequencing is proposed and illustrated using the cases of Germany and California, USA.

A new estimate of the costs of CO₂ emissions at the country level identifies the winners and losers under climate change.

Earth’s future climate depends, in part, on rapid soil microbial processes that may add up to long-term impacts. Observations from a geothermal gradient reveal decadal increases in soil-carbon loss due to persistent increases in microbial activity.

The 2014 IPCC Assessment expresses doubt that the global surface temperature increase will remain within the 2 °C target without deploying risky carbon-capturing or solar radiation-deflecting technologies. New behavioural research suggests that, if the IPCC is right, citizens and policymakers will support such risk-taking.

Research suggests the tropics have widened in recent decades. This Review assesses the rates and drivers of observed and projected tropical expansion, surmising that it is too early to detect anthropogenic signals from natural variability.

Large-scale coastal flood risk models are evolving to include more physical processes. New research utilizing these models suggests that we face a tremendous challenge in limiting future flood risk.

On average, El Niño events have weakened and the centre of maximum sea surface temperature anomalies has shifted to the west over the past two decades. New research suggests that the strengthening of cross-equatorial winds in the eastern Pacific can cause these changes.

The coincident reduction of Arctic sea ice with increasing mid-latitude wintertime extremes has motivated much research on Arctic–mid-latitude linkages. A new study reveals that projected Antarctic sea-ice loss could also impact the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes through perturbations to the strength and position of the westerly winds.

Ambitious carbon pricing reform is needed to meet climate targets. This Perspective argues that effective revenue recycling schemes should prioritize behavioural considerations that are aimed at achieving greater political acceptance.

Ocean acidification, a result of increased levels of CO₂, impacts the marine environment and its biology. This Perspective presents the current understanding of the issue and highlights future directions for research.

Protecting and restoring forests to mitigate climate change also promises to help protect tropical biodiversity and ecosystem services. Analysis now shows that optimizing for carbon can come at the expense of protecting biodiversity, but there are ways to effectively pair the two.

Will the Southern Ocean’s relentless waves undo Antarctica’s ecological isolation? The discovery of a wayward piece of kelp and a simple numerical experiment set new expectations for the potential invasion of Earth’s most isolated continent.

Political crises may exacerbate environmental conflicts by shifting conservation priorities. Research now shows that increased carbon emissions from deforestation in Brazil may compromise its goals under the Paris Agreement.

Plant transpiration is the largest continental water flux. Research now shows that climate and water availability projections are highly sensitive to the ways that plant responses to changing atmospheric conditions are represented.

A press–pulse framework is used to understand the interactive ecological effects of gradual climate trends and extreme weather events. Australian case studies include population collapses, loss of relictual communities and novel ecosystems.

Action needs to be taken to limit the impacts of climate change, however, human rights and the right to development need to be preserved. This Perspective weighs the risks of action and inaction on achieving a just transition to a low-carbon world.

The race against time to mitigate climate change has increasingly focused on the development and deployment of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. New research shows that negative-emissions hydrogen production is potentially a cost-effective alternative.

This Perspective draws on two case studies to examine geodiversity and cultural diversity approaches to conservation currently used by US land trusts, and their complementary strengths and weaknesses in fostering climate resilience.

This Perspective provides a comparative analysis of how well six cities and regions with different coastal and social characteristics and adaptation constraints will be able to adapt to sea-level rise, considering technological, economic, financial, and social factors.

Climate memory is anticipated to increase in the future, a process known as reddening. This Perspective examines how a change in the temporal autocorrelation of climate variables may impact the likelihood of critical transitions, using examples from forests, coral reefs, poverty traps and ice sheets.