Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2013

The latest carbon dioxide emissions continue to track the high end of emission scenarios, making it even less likely global warming will stay below 2 °C. A shift to a 2 °C pathway requires immediate significant and sustained global mitigation, with a probable reliance on net negative emissions in the longer term.

Brazil has been a voice for, and a green influence on, developing countries in the past, but will that continue?

Climate and water expert Pavel Kabat — director and CEO of the International Institute for Applied System Analysis in Austria — calls for a long-term system approach to water research, new partnerships with the developing world and a change in donor practices, to tackle water-climate issues. He talks to Nature Climate Change.

A reformed carbon market is the only agreed priority among European policymakers for 2030, but the transport sector will need to change as well, explains Sonja van Renssen

Streamflow from northern Eurasia into the Arctic Ocean has been increasing since the 1930s. Research shows that increased poleward moisture transport is responsible for additional water in the region.

Most industrialized countries import more carbon emissions, through the products they buy abroad, than they export by selling domestic products overseas, with implications for global emissions and the design of carbon trade policies. A new method unravels the determinants of these emission transfers to understand how international trade affects global emissions and the associated policy implications.

Assessment and managment of the impacts of climate change on Earth surface systems such as glaciers, rivers and mountains are somewhat neglected in national and international climate policy initiatives. It is argued in this Perspective that this is a critical omission because Earth surface systems provide water and soil resources, sustain ecosystem services, and influence biogeochemical cycles.

The multitude of forest die-off events within the last decade strongly suggests that forest mortality is an emerging global phenomenon, constituting a major uncertainty in projections of climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems, climate-ecosystem interactions, and carbon-cycle feedbacks. This Review considers the societal and ecological consequences of dying forests.

Regional climates can be modified by urban development affecting the radiation and hydrological balances. This study looks at the expanding megapolitan area in the Sun Corridor, Arizona, USA, and models local climate change in line with urban development.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of climate variability. This study identifies a critical process that remains constant through ENSO regime shifts and that begins many months before the peak of the event. The findings should help understand how ENSO will respond to a warming world.

Increasing Eurasian Arctic river discharges and climate model projections show an increased wetting trend in northern high latitudes in coming years. Now a study finds that the increase in river discharge has accelerated in the past decade and that enhancement of poleward atmospheric moisture transport decisively contributes to this increase.

Historical records show increased aridity over many land areas since 1950. This study looks at observations and model projections from 1923 to 2010, to test the ability of models to predict future drought conditions. Models are able to capture the greenhouse-gas forcing and El Niño–Southern Oscillation mode for historical periods, which inspires confidence in their projections of drought.

Understanding the response of evapotranspiration to global warming should help to predict surface climate, including heatwaves and droughts. This study shows that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and decreasing loadings of anthropogenic (and volcanic) aerosols have led to enhanced evapotranspiration in mid and high latitudes over recent decades.

Grasslands have always experienced drought, but future drought conditions are likely to be more severe and frequent as climates change. This study shows that many of the world’s grasslands probably have drought-tolerant grasses that can maintain ecosystem functions, and the resilience of grasslands globally requires the maintenance of grass diversity.

Predictions of climate warming raise concerns about food security. However, the extent to which adaptation can offset heat-related yield losses remains unclear. Now research that used spatial adaptation of US maize crops as a surrogate for future adaptation finds that the yield reduction resulting from warming of 2 °C above pre-industrial levels can be approximately halved using existing management practices.

There is increasing concern about the potential role of climate change in facilitating the spread of bacterial waterborne infectious diseases to new areas. Now research supports these concerns by finding an association between long-term environmental changes observed in the Baltic area and the recent emergence of Vibrio infections in the region.

In 2011 the waters along the west coast of Australia—a global hotspot of biodiversity—experienced an unprecedented (in recorded times) warming event with warming anomalies of 2–4 °C that persisted for more than ten weeks. Now research shows that biodiversity patterns of temperate seaweeds, invertebrates and fishes were significantly different following the warming event.

Climate-driven sea-level rise will result in coastline retreat due to landward movement of the coastal profile. However, coastlines adjacent to tidal inlets will also be influenced by changes in the rate of basin infill and variations in rainfall. A model demonstrates that typical practice, which fails to incorporate these processes, is liable to represent only 25–50% of total coastline change.