Climate-change mitigation articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Editorial |

    Climate change together with the recent onset of El Niño this year has led to widespread heatwaves. As these events become increasingly commonplace, cities around the world urgently need to build resilience to heat.

  • News & Views |

    Improving air quality by reducing atmospheric aerosols can bring valuable health benefits, but also generally leads to warming. Now, research suggests that in cleaner air the local cooling effect of planting trees may be stronger in middle and low latitude regions.

    • Liang Chen

  • Editorial |

    Temporarily overshooting climate targets is a distinct possibility given our current emissions trajectory. It is crucial that we understand which of the associated impacts are reversible, and to what extent.

  • News & Views |

    A field-based study of 4.5 years of whole-soil warming reveals that warming stimulates loss of structurally complex organic carbon at the same rate as that for bulk organic carbon in subsoil.

    • Ji Chen
    • , Yiqi Luo
    •  & Robert L. Sinsabaugh

  • Perspective |

    Enhancing natural subsurface hydrogen production through water injection could make a substantial contribution to achieving the low-carbon energy transition that is required to limit global warming.

    • F. Osselin
    • , C. Soulaine
    •  & M. Pichavant

  • Editorial |

    Meeting climate targets will require considerable carbon dioxide removal in addition to emission cuts. To achieve this sustainably, a range of methods are needed to avoid adverse effects and match co-benefits with local needs.

  • Editorial |

    The Global Methane Pledge is a good start, but larger cuts in emissions are achievable with current technology. More ambition is needed to help limit warming to 1.5 °C.

  • News & Views |

    Reforestation of agricultural lands in Europe increases local and downwind summer rainfall, according to a new analysis of rain-gauge measurements from across the continent. Realistic levels of tree planting could therefore mitigate future droughts expected with climate change.

    • Jessica C. A. Baker

  • Editorial |

    Wetlands provide a wealth of societal and climatic benefits. Balanced conservation strategies are needed to ensure their protection in the twenty-first century and beyond.

  • Editorial |

    Mineral extraction will play an important role in climate change mitigation and green technologies. But ensuring that the net effect of mining is beneficial requires careful monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts.

  • Comment |

    Scientists and policymakers must acknowledge that carbon dioxide removal can be small in scale and still be relevant for climate policy, that it will primarily emerge ‘bottom up’, and that different methods have different governance needs.

    • Rob Bellamy
    •  & Oliver Geden

  • News & Views |

    If emissions continue at the present-day rate, about 22 years are left until global mean warming reaches the 1.5 °C Paris Agreement target, suggests a new metric based on the observed level and rate of anthropogenic warming.

    • Katarzyna B. Tokarska

  • Comment |

    The remaining carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C allows 20 more years of current emissions according to one study, but is already exhausted according to another. Both are defensible. We need to move on from a unique carbon budget, and face the nuances.

    • Glen P. Peters

  • Comment |

    Upward estimates for carbon budgets are unlikely to lead to action-focused climate policy. Climate researchers need to understand processes and incentives in policymaking and politics to communicate effectively.

    • Oliver Geden

  • Comment |

    Temperature overshoot scenarios that make the 1.5 °C climate target feasible could turn into sources of political flexibility. Climate scientists must provide clear constraints on overshoot magnitude, duration and timing, to ensure accountability.

    • Oliver Geden
    •  & Andreas Löschel

  • Article |

    If CO2 emissions after 2015 do not exceed 200 GtC, climate warming after 2015 will fall below 0.6 °C in 66% of CMIP5 models, according to an analysis based on combining a simple climate–carbon-cycle model with estimated ranges for key climate system properties.

    • Richard J. Millar
    • , Jan S. Fuglestvedt
    •  & Myles R. Allen

  • Article |

    Production of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide occurs episodically in small soil volumes. Soil microcosm experiments reveal that water absorption by plant residue raises moisture levels and accelerates nitrous oxide production by microbial denitrification.

    • A. N. Kravchenko
    • , E. R. Toosi
    •  & G. P. Robertson

  • News & Views |

    Freezing and thawing of soils leads to large pulses of nitrous oxide release. An empirical model shows that cropland winter nitrous oxide emissions are substantial, calling for a revision of the global nitrous oxide budget.

    • Klaus Butterbach-Bahl
    •  & Benjamin Wolf

  • Editorial |

    The clock is ticking for climate change mitigation. Geoengineering is gaining ground as an option, but it needs to be examined at a large scale to determine its effectiveness and associated risks.

  • Commentary |

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a report on keeping global warming below 1.5 °C. How the panel chooses to deal with the option of solar geoengineering will test the integrity of scientific climate policy advice.

    • Andy Parker
    •  & Oliver Geden

  • Letter |

    Cement production is a source of CO2. Analysis of carbonation, a process that sequesters CO2 during the lifetime of cement, suggests that between 1930 and 2013, it has offset 43% of CO2 emissions from cement production globally.

    • Fengming Xi
    • , Steven J. Davis
    •  & Zhu Liu

  • Commentary |

    To keep global warming below 2 °C, countries need long-term strategies for low-emission development. Without these, immediate emissions reductions may lock-in high-emitting infrastructure, hamper collaboration and make climate goals unachievable.

    • Jeffrey D. Sachs
    • , Guido Schmidt-Traub
    •  & Jim Williams

  • Commentary |

    Slowing GDP growth, a structural shift away from heavy industry, and more proactive policies on air pollution and clean energy have caused China's coal use to peak. It seems that economic growth has decoupled from growth in coal consumption.

    • Ye Qi
    • , Nicholas Stern
    •  & Fergus Green

  • Commentary |

    The Paris Agreement introduced three mitigation targets. In the future, the main focus should not be on temperature targets such as 2 or 1.5 °C, but on the target with the greatest potential to effectively guide policy: net zero emissions.

    • Oliver Geden

  • Commentary |

    The need to mitigate climate change opens up a key role for cities. Bristol's year as a Green Capital led to great strides forward, but it also revealed that a creative and determined partnership across cultural divides will be necessary.

    • Richard D. Pancost

  • Editorial |

    As the world's leaders are negotiating climate change mitigation in Paris, a strong El Niño brings the warmest year on record. After a decade and a half of slow warming and slow policy progress, 2015 may bring an acceleration of both.

  • Commentary |

    Some climate change impacts rise fast with little warming, and then taper off. To avoid diminishing incentives to reduce emissions and inadvertently slipping into a lower-welfare world, mitigation policy needs to be ambitious early on.

    • Katharine L. Ricke
    • , Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
    •  & Ken Caldeira

  • Perspective |

    Many governments agreed to limit global mean temperature change to below 2 °C, yet this level has not been assessed scientifically. A synthesis of the literature suggests that temperature is the best available target quantity, but a safe level is uncertain.

    • Reto Knutti
    • , Joeri Rogelj
    •  & Erich M. Fischer

  • Editorial |

    The International Year of Soils draws attention to our vital dependence on the fertile crumb beneath our feet. Soil is renewable, but it takes careful stewardship to keep it healthy and plentiful.

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