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Slow progress in scaling-up climate finance has emerged as a major bottleneck in international negotiations. Debt relief for climate finance swaps could provide an alternative source for financing mitigation and adaptation action in developing countries.
The environmental challenges that confront society are unprecedented and staggering in their scope, pace and complexity. Unless we reframe and examine them through a social lens, societal responses will be too little, too late, and potentially blind to negative consequences.
US efforts to integrate social and biophysical sciences to address the issue of global change exist within a wider movement to understand global change as a societal challenge and to inform policy. Insights from the social sciences can help transform global change research into action.
As international efforts towards adaptation shift from finding the cash to designing the processes through which it will be spent, Anna Petherick asks what we can learn from participatory budgeting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The increased use of wind turbines for power generation could play an important role in climate change mitigation efforts. This study shows that, assuming greenhouse gas emissions are kept in check and energy-use efficiency increases, crossing the 2 °C warming threshold could be significantly delayed or even avoided altogether depending on how aggressively wind energy is taken up over coming decades.
Intermittency is often cited as the single greatest hurdle to making a transition from a fossil-based power system to one based on renewables. This study shows that a network of solar power plants, located in deserts, could provide significant baseload in four world regions, suggesting that decarbonization of the power system may be possible and affordable, even if no new technologies come online.
Historical aerosol forcing from large volcanic eruptions are reconstructed from sulphate deposition measured in ice cores. This study updates these records by using a more extensive collection of Antarctic ice cores, which provide new records and accurate dating of published records. The results show that prior to the year 1500 the reconstructions were either previously overestimating global aerosol forcing by 20–30% or underestimating it by 20–50%. This has implications for estimates of climate sensitivity.
Atmospheric stagnation can have serious health implications due to increased pollution exposure. This study investigates how global warming will alter atmospheric circulation and the resulting changes in the frequency and persistence of stagnation events. The authors find an overall increase in the size of the population exposed to these events and highlight the need to evaluate air pollution management.
An increase in extreme weather events in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes has been proposed as a result of amplification of atmospheric planetary waves in the region. This study finds months of extreme weather are associated with amplified planetary waves, with different types of extreme events associated to differing degrees.
Widespread forest die-back due to the increasing frequency and intensity of drought in many parts of the planet is focusing attention on the mechanisms of tree drought resistance. This study provides direct experimental evidence that greater non-structural carbohydrate concentrations before drought help maintain hydraulic function and thereby prolong drought tolerance in seedlings of ten tropical tree species.
The criteria used to classify species as being at risk of extinction are based on global population estimates, making global-scale analysis important for conservation. Now, a study projecting population dynamics of all 45 known emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) colonies indicates long-term decline, primarily due to altered Antarctic sea ice conditions.
Crustose coralline algae (CCA) are potential ‘poster children’ of ocean acidification stress, yet their stress responses have been poorly studied in a natural or ecological context. Now, a comparison of historical and modern specimens from a site with a declining pH trend over a 30-year period reveals trade-offs in skeletal traits tied to calcium carbonate use in response to ocean acidification in four CCA species.
Linkages between neighbouring ecosystems are rarely considered when seeking to predict ecological responses to climate change. However, the finding that the impact of climate change on seagrass beds is mediated by the response of neighbouring coral reef habitats highlights the need for a broader-scale view of climate change impacts on ecosystems.
Deforestation affects climate, biodiversity and other ecosystem services. This study quantifies Indonesia’s increasing rate of primary forest loss, which runs counter to the declining rates of loss in Brazil. The results highlight the value of thematically consistent and spatially and temporally explicit information in tracking forest change.
