Climate-change mitigation articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • 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.

  • Commentary |

    Multi-actor integrated assessment models based on well-being concepts beyond GDP could support policymakers by highlighting the interrelation of climate change mitigation and other important societal problems.

    • Klaus Hasselmann
    • , Roger Cremades
    •  & Nick Winder

  • Commentary |

    Delivery of palatable 2 °C mitigation scenarios depends on speculative negative emissions or changing the past. Scientists must make their assumptions transparent and defensible, however politically uncomfortable the conclusions.

    • Kevin Anderson

  • Commentary |

    Natural landscapes are shaped by frequent moderate-sized events, except for the rare catastrophe. Human modifications to the Earth's surface are, compared with natural processes, increasingly catastrophic.

    • Richard Guthrie

  • News & Views |

    Elevated levels of CO2 can stimulate photosynthesis in plants and increase their uptake of atmospheric carbon. A five-year study in Minnesota grasslands shows that increased plant uptake of CO2 is restricted by the availability of vital nutrients and water.

    • Whendee L. Silver

  • Editorial |

    Guidance for mitigation action should come from the insights that global mean temperatures respond to cumulative carbon emissions and that there are risks beyond warming alone. Momentum for the negotiations requires a sense of opportunity.

  • News & Views |

    Particles of smoke from natural and human-made fires absorb sunlight and contribute to global warming. Laboratory experiments suggest that smoke is often more absorbing than current numerical models of global climate assume.

    • Nicolas Bellouin

  • Editorial |

    Solar energy is undoubtedly renewable. We must make sure it is also as sustainable as possible.

  • Commentary |

    Biochar has been heralded as a solution to a number of agricultural and environmental ills. To get the most benefit from its application, environmental and social circumstances should both be considered.

    • S. Abiven
    • , M. W. I. Schmidt
    •  & J. Lehmann

  • Editorial |

    Climate change could compromise food security over the coming century. Scientists working towards mitigation and adaptation have to win over those who work on the land.

  • Commentary |

    Livestock production accounts for a significant fraction of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Progress in mitigating the adverse environmental impacts of this industry can be improved by shifting research emphases and fostering communication between researchers and ranchers.

    • Joseph M. Craine

  • Article |

    The causal connection between human activities and the evolution of climate warming over the past century is not fully understood. A state-of-the-art statistical analysis of time series of temperature and radiative forcing reveals that reductions in ozone-depleting substances and methane have contributed to the slow-down in warming since the late 1990s.

    • Francisco Estrada
    • , Pierre Perron
    •  & Benjamín Martínez-López

  • Commentary |

    China's carbon dioxide emissions are rising fast. Yet, per capita, gross domestic product and energy use are only a fraction of their United States equivalents. With a growing urban middle class, the trend will continue, but there is progress on the path to a low-carbon economy.

    • Ye Qi
    • , Tong Wu
    •  & David A. King

  • Commentary |

    In areas of the developing world that have benefited only marginally from the intensification of agriculture, foreign investments can enhance productivity. This could represent a step towards greater food security, but only if we ensure that malnourished people in the host countries benefit.

    • Paolo D'Odorico
    •  & Maria Cristina Rulli

  • Letter |

    Afforestation, the conversion of croplands or marginal lands into forests, is considered one of the key climate-change mitigation strategies available to governments. Model simulations suggest that the temperature benefits of realistic afforestation efforts are marginal.

    • Vivek K. Arora
    •  & Alvaro Montenegro

  • News & Views |

    Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is important and achievable. However, cutting emissions to meet the UK's legal targets for 2050 will bring technical and political challenges, and may affect food production.

    • Chris Pollock

  • Letter |

    The areal extent of mangrove forests has declined by 30–50% over the past half century. An analysis of mangrove forests across the Indo-Pacific suggests that mangrove deforestation generates losses of 0.02–0.12 Pg C yr−1, equivalent to up to 10% of carbon emissions from global deforestation.

    • Daniel C. Donato
    • , J. Boone Kauffman
    •  & Markku Kanninen

  • Letter |

    Following a hypothesized complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions, global climate models simulate approximately constant global mean temperatures for centuries. Long-term simulations with the Canadian Earth System Model suggest that, on these timescales, regional changes in temperature and precipitation are nevertheless significant, and that Southern Ocean warming at intermediate depths could affect the stability of Antarctic ice.

    • Nathan P. Gillett
    • , Vivek K. Arora
    •  & William J. Merryfield

  • Editorial |

    Mitigation of climate change is increasingly being portrayed as technologically feasible, if only political support was adequate. But there are good reasons to be unsure.

  • Commentary |

    Short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Curbing their emissions and quantifying the forcing by all short-lived components could both mitigate climate change in the short term and help to refine projections of global warming.

    • Joyce E. Penner
    • , Michael J. Prather
    •  & David S. Stevenson

  • Letter |

    Modelling studies suggest that management of solar radiation could produce stabilized global temperatures and reduced global precipitation. An analysis of a large-ensemble simulation of 54 temperature-stabilization scenarios suggests that it may not be possible to achieve climate stabilization through management of solar radiation simultaneously in all regions.

    • Katharine L. Ricke
    • , M. Granger Morgan
    •  & Myles R. Allen

  • Letter |

    Sequestration of carbon dioxide has been proposed for the mitigation of ongoing global warming. Projections with an Earth system model over 100,000 years suggest that leakage from carbon-storage reservoirs of no more than 1% per thousand years, or continuous resequestration, would be required to maintain conditions similar to a low-emissions scenario.

    • Gary Shaffer

  • News & Views |

    Increasing temperatures stimulate the decomposition of soil organic matter in the short term. But a shift in microbial carbon allocation could mitigate this response over longer periods of time.

    • Göran I. Ågren

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