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As climate change impacts marine ecosystems, fish must migrate or adapt and eventually speciate to preserve their diversity. Research now shows that warming has coincided with reduced fish body size throughout evolutionary history, hindering both preservation strategies.
Phylogenetic data over the past ~150 million years show smaller fish occurred in warmer waters, moved shorter distances at low speed and had low speciation rates. Fish moved faster and evolved quicker under periods of rapid change, with implications for movement and survival under climate change.
Climate change may result in larger releases of CH4 than CO2 from wetlands as CH4 emissions seem to be more sensitive to temperature. Globally, CO2 and CH4 emissions show a similar temperature dependence but this is modulated by wetland water table depth, which affects CH4 (but not CO2) emissions.
Climate change is having a profound impact on modern agriculture and plant health. Now research suggests that while crop yields may increase at high latitudes in light of climate change, these gains could be severely impacted by parallel shifts in disease risk.
Litigation is growing in importance as a way to achieve mitigation and equity in the face of ongoing climate change. Research now shows that currently cases are not using the latest state-of-the-art attribution science, and doing so could improve causation determination.
Crop production and food security remain one of the primary concerns in a changing world. Research and comments in this issue highlight the various threats to our produce and the carry-over effects of food shocks.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is currently strong, but transition to its weak mode could see significant changes in the climate system. This work presents an observation-based early-warning system for such transitions and shows that the AMOC may be approaching a transition.
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.
Extreme weather events such as heatwaves and droughts are likely to occur more often under climate change. Such events can have an indirect effect on countries through global agricultural markets and food prices; this impact is stronger for higher-income than lower-income countries.
The authors show increased negative extremes in gross primary productivity in northern midlatitude ecosystems, particularly over grasslands and croplands, attributed to impacts of warm droughts. This highlights the vulnerability of terrestrial carbon sinks and food security to increasing extreme events.
