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Observations of feeding interactions show that warming simplifies the structure of food webs in stream ecosystems. Simulations show that consumer diversity and changes in abundance drive this simplification and can reduce ecosystem stability.
Observations of the tropical Pacific exhibit an increasing zonal sea surface temperature gradient, while climate models predict the opposite. This study shows that an increased gradient is consistent with greenhouse gas warming, and that climate model discrepancies arise from cold tongue biases.
Greenland Ice Sheet melt is contributing to sea-level rise; however, uncertainties exist about its future contributions. A regional climate model shows that clouds are the primary cause of this uncertainty, with melt varying significantly depending on the cloud water phase and atmospheric circulation.
Climate change is causing temperature records to be broken around the world with increased frequency. Under a business-as-usual scenario new records will be set every year for 58% of the world, whilst under heavy mitigation (RCP2.6) this would occur for 14% of the world.
Climate change is projected to directly impact fishing communities through changes to habitat for marine species. A socio-ecological approach is developed to assess fishing community exposure to climate change risk and applied to New England and Mid-Atlantic (USA) fishing communities.
There is a growing need to find cost-effective options for greenhouse gas abatement. In this study, spatially disaggregated marginal abatement cost curves are developed to facilitate economic appraisal of tropical reforestation.
Natural abundance radiocarbon is used to evaluate temperature sensitivities across Arctic soil carbon pools from Utqiaġvik, Alaska. Temperature sensitivity was consistent across pools irrespective of native decomposition rate.
Public concern about climate change is difficult to motivate. This study finds an increase in climate change concern among parents after their middle school-aged children participated in a climate change school curriculum.
Fifty years of monthly observation of rainforest canopy trees in the Central Amazon reveals that drought, heat, storms and extreme rain can all increase tree mortality. Pioneers, softwoods and evergreen functional groups were particularly vulnerable.
The frequency of extreme weather events is increasing due to climate change. Here, the authors exploit regional variation in the UK summer heatwave of 2018 and find that exposure to extreme temperatures influenced concern about energy security.
The life-cycle GHG emissions from plastics are expected to increase. Here, it is shown that an aggressive strategy of decarbonizing energy infrastructure, improving recycling, adopting bio-based plastics and reducing demand is required to keep emissions below 2015 levels.
Melting glaciers are increasing Himalayan glacial lakes and potentially the risk of outburst floods. An advanced automated algorithm identifies glacial lake outburst floods from Landsat images since the late 1980s to improve understanding of these events and trends in their frequency.
Uncertainties are often cited as a reason for mitigation inaction. Here, millions of scenarios are evaluated to assess the relative importance of human–earth system uncertainties and policy variables. The growth rate of global abatement is found to be the primary driver of long-term warming.
The aragonite saturation horizon depth is an indicator of ocean acidification. Model projections show that a new shallow horizon emerges in the Southern Ocean before 2100, reducing suitable habitat for calcifying species in the near future.
High-resolution coupled climate model simulations suggest only 0.4% of the land surface will see exacerbated hydrological risks under solar geoengineering that halves warming, indicating that geoengineering-related risks may be overstated.
China dominates the global growth in aquaculture food production, primarily through massive conversion of paddy fields to crab ponds. This land conversion is greatly increasing methane emissions but these can be significantly reduced by water aeration.
This paper uses a range of shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios to estimate the future terrestrial vertebrate habitat loss and extinction risk that could result from projected global land-use change.
Marine heatwaves are increasing in frequency, but they vary in their manifestation. All events impact ecosystem structure and functioning, with increased risk of negative impacts linked to greater biodiversity, number of species near their thermal limit and additional human impacts.
Between 2005 and 2015, several developed economies experienced decreases in CO2 emissions. In this study, emissions in 18 countries are broken down and the potential effects of energy and climate policies on emission declines are explored.
Crop models suggest that early sowing and slower-developing cultivars could maintain Australian wheat yields despite less-favourable climatic conditions. Field trials now confirm the potential of this adaptation for wheat production across Australia.