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With a politically tumultuous spring and the window on keeping global average temperatures below 2 °C above preindustrial levels closing, environmental advocacy perhaps has a more important role now than ever before.
The 4‰ initiative to sequester carbon in soils has the potential to connect sustainable development goals, enhance food security and mitigate climate change by utilizing waste organic residues.
Decision scientists have identified remedies for various cognitive biases that distort climate-change risk perceptions. Researchers must now use the same empirical methods to identify strategies for reproducing — in the tumult of the real world — results forged in the tranquillity of their labs.
In the emerging post-Paris climate governance regime, the role of scientific expertise is radically changing. The IPCC in particular may find itself in a new role, where projections of future climate function as a kind of regulatory science. This poses great challenges to conventional ideals of scientific neutrality.
Global warming and sea-level rise will potentially impact millions of people in coastal zones. New research shows that such migration will affect all US states, including inland states which are unprepared for such an inflow of residents.
Global surface warming was slower than expected in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Research attributes similar events to ocean or atmosphere fluctuations, but the subtle origins of these events may elude observational detection.
Erosion is typically thought to degrade soil resources. However, the redistribution of soil carbon across the landscape, caused by erosion, can actually lead to a substantial sink for atmospheric CO2.
Climate change is projected to increase annual Nile river flow; importantly, year-to-year variability is also expected to increase markedly. More variable flows could present a challenge for consistent water resource provision in this region.
Sea-level rise will impact heavily populated coastal areas, necessitating adaptation or migration. This study considers how potential migration away from affected areas will have a broader effect on the US population landscape.
It is unclear when the risk reduction benefits of mitigation will be detectable. This study shows for many regions a 50% reduction in the probability of extreme warm periods could be seen in 20 years, indicating near-term benefits of early mitigation.
Estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity differ depending on the method of calculation. This study shows estimates based on the historical energy budget are low as climate feedbacks vary with time and the bias depends on the sensitivity of the system.
Using an energy budget approach to understanding decadal temperature trends, this study highlights that observational uncertainty exceeds energy–flux deviations that affect such trends. Thus the origin of recent warming slowdown is unidentifiable.
Permafrost loss can be projected by considering its distribution against warming air temperatures. Using observations to constrain loss estimates, this study investigates loss under different levels of warming.
Erosion of agricultural land is estimated to have resulted in a cumulative net uptake of 78 ± 22 Pg C on land (6000 bc–2015 ad), offsetting 37 ± 10% of generally recognized C emissions resulting from anthropogenic land cover change.
Nile basin countries are expected to double their population by 2050. Observations and climate model projections now suggest water resources may be additionally stretched by a 50% (±35%) increase in interannual Nile flow variability in the twenty-first century.
Emergent constraints on tropical marine primary production increase confidence in a long-term decrease in primary productivity in response to rising sea surface temperatures. The most extreme projected declines in productivity are, however, unlikely.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration measurements at Barrow, Alaska, together with coupled atmospheric transport and terrestrial ecosystem models show a declining spring net primary productivity response to temperature at high latitudes.
Managed retreat is a potentially important climate change adaptation option. In this article the drivers and outcomes of, and barriers to, 27 recent cases of managed retreat—involving the resettlement of approximately 1.3 million people—are evaluated.
The long-term efficacy of biochar as a means of increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) remains underexplored. Research now shows that 8.5 years after biochar was added to a subtropical soil the formation of microaggregates stabilized and increased SOC.
