Land degradation in drylands impacts livelihoods and productivity and is affected by biocrusts that stabilize the soil. Long-term experiments show that biocrust recovery from disturbance is faster than expected, but stopped under warming, with warming alone causing loss of biocrust groups and soil stability.

The impact of glacier retreat on fungal-driven decomposition in rivers is investigated using a standardized test across six countries. Less glacier cover is linked to increased decomposition, which is in turn associated with a greater abundance of fungi and a fungal cellulose-degrading gene, cbhI.

Plant pathogens threaten food security and ecosystem health. Projections of potential fungal plant pathogens under different warming and land-use scenarios indicate that warming temperatures under climate change will lead to increases in the relative abundance of such pathogens in most soils worldwide.

The authors model the impact of future temperature changes on infection risk for 12 major crops from 80 fungal and oomycete plant pathogens. They find increased risk, as well as crop yield, at higher latitudes and predict major shifts in pathogen assemblages in the United States, Europe and China.

Carbon tax rebate programmes have received increasing interest with the potential to raise public support for carbon pricing. However, results of online surveys based on existing real-world policies demonstrate such programmes have had limited political impacts to date.

The authors incorporate intraspecific variation into a dynamic range model to predict the consequences of twenty-first century warming on six European alpine plants. As well as overall range loss, their model predicts a decrease in the frequency of warm-adapted haplotypes in five out of six species.

Land degradation in drylands impacts livelihoods and productivity and is affected by biocrusts that stabilize the soil. Long-term experiments show that biocrust recovery from disturbance is faster than expected, but stopped under warming, with warming alone causing loss of biocrust groups and soil stability.

Antarctic sea ice extent is thought to be stable or increasing, in contrast to Arctic declines. Estimates of seasonal Antarctic sea ice from reconstructions show that increases are confined to the satellite era, post-1979, with substantial decreases in the early and mid-twentieth century.

The authors develop a high-resolution model of coral larval dispersal for the southern Great Barrier Reef. They show that 2 °C of warming decreases larval dispersal distance and connectivity of reefs, hampering post-disturbance recovery and the potential spread of warm-adapted genes.

The authors conduct a meta-analysis to reveal mismatches in above- and belowground plant phenological responses to warming that differ by plant type (herbaceous versus woody). The work highlights a need for further research and consideration of under-represented belowground phenological changes.

Climate change action is moving forward, with the outcomes from COP26 setting the agenda for governments to commit to. Actors in the private sector are also setting out commitments, and climate action looks to be gaining momentum across society and around the globe.