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Dealing with the impacts of climate change is better than suffering their full extent — even if it's not the best possible outcome — but to what extent are we doing so?
A small but growing number of companies are addressing climate risks; however, a range of barriers limit wider private-sector adaptation efforts, particularly in developing countries.
A flood insurance market with risk-based prices in the UK will only stimulate climate change adaptation if it is part of a wider strategy that includes land-use planning, building regulations and water management.
Loss and damage is a relative newcomer to the climate change agenda. It has the potential to reinvigorate existing mitigation and adaptation efforts, but this will ultimately require leadership from developed countries and enhanced understanding of several key issues, such as limits to adaptation.
With the promise of natural and shale gas for the power sector, the oil-chained transport sector remains climate policymakers' biggest headache. Within transport, the emergence of different types of fuel is itself a big issue, as Sonja van Renssen explains.
Phytoplankton drive productivity in the global ocean, but are sensitive to changes in temperature. Research now demonstrates how phytoplankton cells respond to an increase in seawater temperature and uses this knowledge to predict the resultant impacts on global marine biogeochemistry.
Pests and diseases reduce agricultural yields and are an important wildcard in the evaluation of future climate impacts. A unique global record of pests and diseases provides evidence for poleward expansions of their distributions.
A study reveals that recent warming in the Indian Ocean and in the Pacific 'warm pool' has caused a cooling near the top of the tropical troposphere above, leading to less water vapour entering the stratosphere.
The effects of climate change on vulnerable communities raise ethical concerns about who should help them cope and how. Research suggests that fair and beneficial solutions are possible, but they always come with risks.
Marine vegetated habitats occupy a small fraction of the ocean surface, but contribute about 50% of the carbon that is buried in marine sediments. In this Review the potential benefits of conservation, restoration and use of these habitats for coastal protection and climate change mitigation are assessed.
A global data set of proxy-based temperature estimates and biome reconstructions is used to assess the ability of eight climate models to simulate the warm environments of the Pliocene. Model results show a substantial cold bias in the Northern Hemisphere. Sensitivity tests identify temporal variability, the temperature difference over the proxy time range, as an important factor in model–data discrepancies, indicating that future comparisons should focus on time slices with the same orbital forcing
Using computer simulations, this study quantifies the potential effect of ocean acidification on marine biogenic sulphur emissions and the resulting feedback mechanisms on future climate. It emphasizes that a reduction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is not only necessary to limit the negative effects of ocean acidification on marine life, but also to avoid amplified climate warming due to changes in biogenic sulphur production.
The effect of temperature on marine phytoplankton growth strategies, metabolism and composition is studied using a range of techniques. This approach indicates that temperature plays a previously unrecognized, critical role in resource allocation and marine phytoplankton elemental ratios, with implications for biogeochemical cycling.
The extent to which crop pests and pathogens have altered their latitudinal ranges in response to climate change remains largely unknown. Now observations of hundreds of pests and pathogens reveal an average poleward shift of 2.7±0.8 km yr−1 since 1960, supporting the hypothesis of climate-driven pest movement.
Risk maps of climate impacts are potentially useful for targeting efforts to minimize ecological losses. However, most such maps only identify exposure to climate hazards. Now research that also identifies the proportion of intact natural vegetation (as a measure of adaptive capacity) provides global estimates of ecoregional vulnerability to climate change.
The severity of the ecological threat posed by ocean acidification remains poorly understood. Now analysis of the sensitivities of five animal groups to a wide range of CO2 concentrations finds a variety of responses within and between taxa, indicating that acidification will drive substantial changes in ocean ecosystems this century.
