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The remoteness and paucity of historic observations of the Southern Ocean limit understanding of the effects of climate change on circulation. Using observations, CMIP6 and eddy-resolving models, this Article shows that acceleration of its zonal flow emerged in recent decades as a result of uneven ocean warming.
Current emissions scenarios include pathways that overshoot the temperature goals set out in the Paris Agreement and rely on future net negative emissions. Limiting overshoot would require near-term investment but would result in longer-term economic benefit.
Mitigation pathways allowing for temperature overshoot often ignore the related climate and macroeconomic impacts. Net-zero pathways with limited overshoot could reduce low-probability high-consequence risks and economic loss.
Climate mitigation policies often provide health co-benefits. Analysis of individual power plants under future climate–energy policy scenarios shows reducing air pollution-related deaths does not automatically align with emission reduction policies and that policy design needs to consider public health.
Climate policy analyses often ignore the possibility of progressive redistribution of carbon tax revenues and assume that mitigation cost will burden the poor in the short term. Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) estimation suggests such redistribution could reduce inequality, alleviate poverty and increase well-being globally.
Since the Paris Agreement, the impacts of 1.5 and 2 °C global warming have been emphasized, but the rate of warming also has regional effects. A new framework of model experiments is needed to increase our understanding of climate stabilization and its impacts.
Trees outside of forests are numerous and can be important carbon sinks, while also providing ecosystem services and benefits to livelihoods. New monitoring tools highlight the crucial contribution they can make to strategies for both mitigation and adaptation.
Climate change has led to increased fire activity in parts of the globe due to observed increases in fire weather extremes. These trends are driven predominantly by decreasing relative humidity and increasing temperature.
The authors project future rates of temporal and spatial displacement of climate and land-use in protected areas (PAs), and show that more than one-quarter of the world’s PAs are highly threatened, with particular risk to PAs across tropical moist and grassland biomes.
Evaluation of mitigation actions often focuses on cost and overlooks the direct effects on well-being. This work shows demand-side measures have large mitigation potential and beneficial effects on well-being outcomes.
Finding effective ways to support rural communities in adapting to climate change is critical for building climate-resilient societies. Now research shows the potential of risk-transfer policies for improving adaptation and securing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.
Mitigation pathways tend to focus on an end temperature target and calculate how to keep within these bounds. This work uses seven integrated assessment models to consider current mitigation efforts and project likely temperature trajectories.
Smallholder farmers will be impacted substantially by climate change and need to adapt. Agent-based modelling shows that interventions, particularly cash transfer paired with risk transfer mechanisms, lead to increased migration and uptake of cash crops, with higher income and lower inequality.
Natural climate solutions, along with reduction in fossil fuel emissions, are critical to mitigating climate change and meeting climate goals. This Perspective outlines a hierarchy for decision-making regarding protecting, managing and then restoring natural systems for climate mitigation.
The social cost of nitrous oxide does not account for stratospheric ozone depletion. Doing so could increase its value by 20%. Links between nitrous oxide and other nitrogen pollution impacts could make mitigation even more compelling.
Transdisciplinary research is increasingly seen as critical for advancing climate change adaptation. Operationalizing transdisciplinary research in the global South, however, confronts ingrained cultural and systemic barriers to participatory research.