Volume 11 Issue 10, October 2021

Nature Climate Change spoke to Kostas Stasinopoulos, Assistant Curator at Serpentine Galleries, London, about the Back to Earth project and recent book 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, and how its mission of connection, representation and action reflects the needs of the climate crisis response.

Economic models of climate change are the basis for climate policy design. However, incorrect representation of physical dynamics in these models could lead to biased advice.

Increased flood risk from climate change requires adaptation, but future protection may leave communities with residual risk that is overlooked. Research now quantifies residual flood damage globally, highlighting the need to lower costs and time to deploy flood management infrastructure, particularly in vulnerable regions.

Climate change generates multifaceted and difficult-to-measure risks to human and natural systems. Now, research offers a composite indicator of global climate risk that may help track progress in addressing climate change.

While earlier reproduction in a great tit population is expected to help with warmer springs, oak tree health seems to influence their ability to modulate their breeding period.

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic may release microorganisms, chemicals and nuclear waste that have been stored in frozen ground and by cold temperatures. This Review discusses the current state of potential hazards and their risks under warming to identify prospective threats to the Arctic.

Current pledges for emissions cuts are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement temperature goal. The wave of net zero targets being discussed and adopted could make the Paris goal possible if further countries follow suit.

Residual flood damage (RFD), the remaining damage from floods after adaptation measures have been implemented, is estimated across the globe under various adaptation scenarios and climate projections. RFD remains high in some Asian and African regions, suggesting a limit to flood adaptation there.

Climate mitigation will require allocations of emission allowances to nations. This study proposes a utilitarian benchmark to ensure equitable allocations whilst mitigating climate change.

Ocean heat content is increasing, yet projections have not been constrained by observations. Using Argo data and CMIP6 models shows high climate sensitivity models overestimate increases; constrained projections estimate sea-level rise, from 0 to 2,000 m thermal expansion, of 17–26 cm by 2081–2100.

The North Pacific Meridional Mode (NPMM) can trigger El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. Climate simulations suggest that with warming ocean temperatures, the NPMM’s impact on future ENSO strengthens, contributing to increased frequency of future extreme ENSO events and their predictability.

A climate model shows that hydrological cycle change drives ocean salinity increases, enhancing heat transport into the ocean and modulating near-term climate warming. This suggests that model spread in near-term climate sensitivity may be due in part to hydrological cycle and salinity differences.

The coastal northeastern United States is a warming hotspot, and observations identify a slower Atlantic overturning circulation and a positive North Atlantic Oscillation phase as drivers. Analysis suggests that low horizontal resolution probably hampers models’ ability to capture the spatial pattern of enhanced warming.

Tropical cyclone winds intensify with warming but the impacts depend on global population, which is likely to peak by mid-century and then decline. Impact modelling suggests that stronger mitigation, under which warming would peak after the population begins to decline, may spare 1.8 billion people from impacts by 2100.

Forests take up carbon from the atmosphere but also change Earth’s surface energy balance through biophysical effects. Accounting for these shows that tropical forests have the highest mitigation potential; the climate benefit of higher-latitude forests is offset by their warming effects in winter.

Climate change–induced shifts in seasonal events are often studied at population levels, which can neglect the scale at which selection operates. Here, the authors show marked small-scale spatial variation for egg-laying timing of great tits and further link these changes to the health of nearby oaks.

Different frameworks, most notably expert assessments from the IPCC, have been developed to determine risk from climate change over this century. Estimated risk scores quantified from the IPCC assessments show a substantial increase in global composite risk by 2100 for low and high emissions.