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In a global-scale study, we investigated the contribution of individual and multiple global change stressors to soil carbon variables, which revealed that an increasing number of global change stressors will reduce the amount of carbon in soils, challenging their capacity to mitigate climate change.

Moving towards net-zero emissions requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, which bring environmental and socioeconomic risks. This study reveals that demand and technological interventions in hard-to-abate sectors help to achieve net-zero targets with less reliance on CDR.

Soil carbon storage is vulnerable to various climatic and anthropogenic global change stressors (for example drought, warming, land-use intensification). Here the authors show that multiple stress factors act simultaneously to reduce soil carbon storage and persistence across global biomes.

The authors quantify how climate change-related disturbances—drought, fires and insect outbreaks—impact the sensitivity of primary productivity to subsequent water stress. They show significant increases in sensitivity following drought and fire, leading to decreased terrestrial carbon uptake.

A comprehensive analysis of observations and model simulations finds that future global mean warming is likely to be larger than previously thought, and that limiting global warming to well below 2°C will be more difficult than previously anticipated.

Internal variability can strongly influence global temperature trends. Here the authors show that if the internal variability in the eastern tropical Pacific is removed from recent trends, the constrained projected warming with future CO₂ emissions is higher than currently expected.

The material-intensive transition to low-carbon energy will impose environmental and social burdens on local and regional communities. Demand-side strategies can help to achieve higher well-being at lower levels of energy or material use, and an interdisciplinary approach in future research is essential.

It has been postulated that there is a threshold temperature above which permafrost will reach a global tipping point, causing accelerated thaw and global collapse. Here it is argued that permafrost-thaw feedbacks are dominated by local- to regional-scale processes, but this also means there is no safety margin.

The authors use a mechanistic microclimate model to model the below-canopy conditions for 300,000 tropical forest locations across 30 years. They show that small temperature increases have already resulted in novel temperature regimes across most sites, and highlight areas that may act as refugia.

Long-term monitoring is required to determine whether climate change is having an impact on shallow geohazard frequency and magnitude; however, these records rarely exist. An innovative approach, using tree damage as evidence, suggests climate change has shifted the seasonality of alpine rockfalls as well as increasing their frequency and volume.

Polluted water contributes to water scarcity. Here the authors project water demands, availability and quality under climate and socio-economic changes and show that 56–66% of the global population will be exposed to clean water scarcity at the end of the century.

Our multi-model analysis of international shipping shows the potential for decreasing global annual emissions in the coming decades, up to a reduction of 86% by 2050. Drop-in biofuels, renewable alcohols and green ammonia stand out as the main substitutes for conventional maritime fuels.

International maritime shipping accounts for an important proportion of global CO₂ emissions, but its role in a world with deep decarbonization has not been thoroughly examined. Through a multi-model comparison, this study reveals the necessity of reducing and stabilizing emissions from this sector in the next few decades.

Carbon removal using carbon capture and storage (CCS) remains controversial. This study finds that cross-border CO₂ transport would hinder public acceptance of CCS, associated with the perceived unfairness.

How climate services support on-farm management is not well understood. Here research shows that multi-decadal projections help farmers better identify future climate risks through reducing complexity and psychological distance, although this may be impeded by lack of confidence in data.