Reviews & Analysis

The development and implementation of measures aimed at climate change adaptation face many obstacles. This Perspective takes stock of current research on barriers to adaptation, and argues that more comparative research is now required to increase our in-depth understanding of barriers and to develop strategies to overcome them.

Climate change will impact ocean plankton through changing resources, temperatures and ocean physical processes. This study discusses how climate change could affect the relationship between predators and prey, what it means for population abundunce — whether rapid cell division to form bloom events will occur — and how it could influence the ocean ecosystem.

Future cumulative CO₂ emissions consistent with a given warming limit are a finite common global resource that countries need to share — a carbon quota. Strategies to share a quota consistent with a 2 °C warming limit range from keeping the present distribution to reaching an equal per-capita distribution of cumulative emissions. This Perspective shows that a blend of these endpoints is the most viable solution.

Increasing temperatures are expected to increase decomposition rates in soils, potentially reducing ecosystem carbon storage. Research now indicates that — in a tropical montane forest — soil carbon stocks are unaffected by higher temperatures despite substantially increased rates of CO₂ release from the soil.

City-level policies have often been unable to limit natural disaster losses. Research on New York City now shows progress in devising flexible adaptation policies that accept uncertainty about future climate-related risks and work around it.

How the global change science community is currently portraying the character and role of the social sciences and humanities is problematic, according to this Perspective. Measures needed to bring other visions and voices into the debate about global environmental change are identified.

The winter of 2013–14 witnessed severe flooding across much of the UK putting pressure on policy makers to improve future planning for periods of torrential rainfall. This Perspective puts the flooding in the context of historical records, critically examines a range of potential causes, and sets out research directions needed to achieve a definitive assessment on the possible human contribution to the flooding.

Courageous steps are required to reform the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. To this end, an independent carbon authority has been proposed — this is a move in the right direction, but should be part of a much broader discussion about reforming emissions trading.

The long-held assumption that the storage of starch and related compounds helps plants cope with drought stress is now supported by much needed experimental evidence.

Severe air pollution episodes are caused by certain types of weather. Now, research suggests these meteorological conditions will become more common due to climate change.

Historical records of long-lived marine organisms may provide the key to understanding how marine ecosystems will respond to projected climate change.

Climate-driven demographic changes could cause drastic decline in the global emperor penguin population, driving some colonies to extinction.

No-till agriculture is generally considered good for soils, and probably also beneficial in relation to climate change adaptation. However, this Perspective argues that the potential for climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration that is possible from a change to no-till agriculture has been widely overstated.

Marine systems around the world are increasingly affected by climate change. This Perspective describes emerging US initiatives aimed at enhancing ocean resilience to climate change. Ocean management issues that would benefit from more systematic consideration of climate information are identified, along with opportunities for advancing partnerships between scientists, policy makers and society to address ocean and climate issues.

Sugar cane ethanol replaces fossil fuels, but changes in soil carbon could offset some of the benefit. Now, a study shows minor loss of soil carbon when pastures and croplands are converted to cane, but larger losses when converting native savannahs.

Agriculture-focused integrated assessment models may be overstating the ability of poor countries to adapt to climate change. Empirical research can elucidate limits of adaptation in agricultural systems and help models better represent them.

Global demand for wheat is projected to increase significantly with continuing population growth. Currently, Europe reliably produces about 29% of global wheat supply. However, this might be under threat from climate change if adaptive measures are not taken now.

Arctic warming has reduced cold-season temperature variability in the northern mid- to high-latitudes. Thus, the coldest autumn and winter days have warmed more than the warmest days, contrary to recent speculations.

Atmospheric CO₂ fertilization may go some way to compensating the negative impact of climatic changes on crop yields, but it comes at the expense of a deterioration of the current nutritional value of food.

Cost–benefit analysis and risk assessment approaches inform global climate change mitigation policy-making processes. Now, a development in the former shows that optimal carbon tax levels have previously been underestimated by a factor of two.