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  • Article |

    The strength of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (pIOD) is set by sea surface temperature gradient across the equatorial Indian Ocean. Modelling shows warming will increase strong pIODs but decrease moderate pIODs, as faster surface warming in the west sets up conducive conditions for the strong events.

    • Wenju Cai
    • , Kai Yang
    • , Lixin Wu
    • , Gang Huang
    • , Agus Santoso
    • , Benjamin Ng
    • , Guojian Wang
    •  & Toshio Yamagata

  • Perspective |

    The SSP–RCP scenario framework has been an important component of physical, social and integrated climate change research for the past decade. This Perspective reviews the successes of the framework and the challenges it faces, and provides suggestions for improvement moving forward.

    • Brian C. O’Neill
    • , Timothy R. Carter
    • , Kristie Ebi
    • , Paula A. Harrison
    • , Eric Kemp-Benedict
    • , Kasper Kok
    • , Elmar Kriegler
    • , Benjamin L. Preston
    • , Keywan Riahi
    • , Jana Sillmann
    • , Bas J. van Ruijven
    • , Detlef van Vuuren
    • , David Carlisle
    • , Cecilia Conde
    • , Jan Fuglestvedt
    • , Carole Green
    • , Tomoko Hasegawa
    • , Julia Leininger
    • , Seth Monteith
    •  & Ramon Pichs-Madruga

  • Editorial |

    The past year has seen climate change manifest in wildfires, storms and flooding, in some cases simultaneous with outbreaks of the COVID-19 pandemic that restricted human activity and impacted global emissions. Despite these trials, other developments hint at the potential for positive steps in climate mitigation.

  • Article |

    An increase in ocean transport from the North Atlantic into the Nordic Seas and Arctic Ocean is warming the region. Observations from 1993 to 2016 show a significant increase in heat transport after 2001, with the heat being transported over the Greenland–Scotland Ridge.

    • Takamasa Tsubouchi
    • , Kjetil Våge
    • , Bogi Hansen
    • , Karin Margretha H. Larsen
    • , Svein Østerhus
    • , Clare Johnson
    • , Steingrímur Jónsson
    •  & Héðinn Valdimarsson

  • News & Views |

    Body sizes have been declining in response to climate change, but an expected relationship between size and the hot temperatures organisms can tolerate has eluded detection. Now, research shows how body size and the duration of exposure to hot temperatures interact to determine the onset and consequences of thermal stress.

    • Lauren B. Buckley

  • Article |

    Analysis of ectotherm thermal death curves in the context of both challenge intensity and duration shows that smaller animals exhibit higher tolerance to acute stress, but lower tolerance to chronic stress. The size-dependent impact provides one explanation for warming-related reductions in animal size.

    • Ignacio Peralta-Maraver
    •  & Enrico L. Rezende

  • Review Article |

    The shift to data-driven urban climate governance alters accountability. This Review examines critically the drivers of the shift—standardization, transparency and capacity building—and how best to achieve equitable climate mitigation outcomes within this context.

    • Sara Hughes
    • , Sarah Giest
    •  & Laura Tozer

  • Article |

    Global trade and transport depend on the resilience of the ports sector. Multi-hazard operational risks are estimated for 2,013 ports under historical climate and future warming; of the marine and atmospheric hazards considered, coastal flooding, wave overtopping and heat stress increase risk most.

    • C. Izaguirre
    • , I. J. Losada
    • , P. Camus
    • , J. L. Vigh
    •  & V. Stenek

  • Comment |

    Despite a strong media presence and pledges from high-profile investors, the divestment movement has largely failed to mobilize financial markets in the war on carbon. Divestment 2.0 will require major tweaking to more effectively redirect the flow of capital and catalyse greater corporate climate action.

    • Felix Mormann

  • Article |

    Hydrological modelling is combined with soil moisture estimates to quantify climate change impacts on inland Ramsar wetlands. Net global changes are estimated to be modest, but individual sites with area reductions over 10% are projected to increase 19–243% by 2100, depending on emissions scenario.

    • Yi Xi
    • , Shushi Peng
    • , Philippe Ciais
    •  & Youhua Chen

  • Matters Arising |

    • J. A. G. Cooper
    • , G. Masselink
    • , G. Coco
    • , A. D. Short
    • , B. Castelle
    • , K. Rogers
    • , E. Anthony
    • , A. N. Green
    • , J. T. Kelley
    • , O. H. Pilkey
    •  & D. W. T. Jackson

  • Editorial |

    The climate crisis highlights just how connected the world is. But understanding the changes cascading throughout the natural world calls for even greater connectivity: between countries, scientists and scientific disciplines.

  • Perspective |

    The Arctic is warming and undergoing rapid ice loss. This Perspective considers how changes in sea ice will impact the biogeochemistry and associated ecosystems of the region while calling for more observations to improve our understanding of this complex system.

    • Delphine Lannuzel
    • , Letizia Tedesco
    • , Maria van Leeuwe
    • , Karley Campbell
    • , Hauke Flores
    • , Bruno Delille
    • , Lisa Miller
    • , Jacqueline Stefels
    • , Philipp Assmy
    • , Jeff Bowman
    • , Kristina Brown
    • , Giulia Castellani
    • , Melissa Chierici
    • , Odile Crabeck
    • , Ellen Damm
    • , Brent Else
    • , Agneta Fransson
    • , François Fripiat
    • , Nicolas-Xavier Geilfus
    • , Caroline Jacques
    • , Elizabeth Jones
    • , Hermanni Kaartokallio
    • , Marie Kotovitch
    • , Klaus Meiners
    • , Sébastien Moreau
    • , Daiki Nomura
    • , Ilka Peeken
    • , Janne-Markus Rintala
    • , Nadja Steiner
    • , Jean-Louis Tison
    • , Martin Vancoppenolle
    • , Fanny Van der Linden
    • , Marcello Vichi
    •  & Pat Wongpan

  • Comment |

    As the world’s economies seek to use new renewable energy developments to address climate change and reinvigorate economies post-COVID-19, avoiding a fixation on targets in decision-making will ensure positive social and environmental outcomes.

    • Scott Spillias
    • , Peter Kareiva
    • , Mary Ruckelshaus
    •  & Eve McDonald-Madden

  • Article |

    The east–west gradient in equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature has strengthened, but models suggest the opposite in past and future climates. Model ensembles show that the observed trend can arise from internal variability but their gradient weakens in the long term, causing more climate warming.

    • Masahiro Watanabe
    • , Jean-Louis Dufresne
    • , Yu Kosaka
    • , Thorsten Mauritsen
    •  & Hiroaki Tatebe

  • Article |

    Spring phenology is influenced by chilling, forcing and photoperiod cues; the phenological response to warming from anthropogenic climate change may be slowed by chilling or photoperiod. Plant species respond to all cues in experiments but under environmental conditions, forcing predominates.

    • A. K. Ettinger
    • , C. J. Chamberlain
    • , I. Morales-Castilla
    • , D. M. Buonaiuto
    • , D. F. B. Flynn
    • , T. Savas
    • , J. A. Samaha
    •  & E. M. Wolkovich

  • Article |

    The biological pump sequesters carbon to the deep ocean. Ocean acidification, through impacts on plankton and food-web structure, is shown to alter the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of organic material export, with heterotrophic processes playing a key role.

    • Jan Taucher
    • , Tim Boxhammer
    • , Lennart T. Bach
    • , Allanah J. Paul
    • , Markus Schartau
    • , Paul Stange
    •  & Ulf Riebesell

  • News & Views |

    Increasing fire frequency and severity may shift boreal forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources and amplify climate warming. Analysis indicates that fuel characteristics are important drivers of wildfire carbon emissions across a broad range of North America’s boreal forest.

    • Rachel A. Loehman

  • Article |

    Carbon emissions from fires are generally modelled and predicted from fire weather and climate. Fuel availability drives carbon emissions more strongly than fire weather in boreal forests, highlighting the importance of ecological dynamics for fire–climate feedbacks.

    • X. J. Walker
    • , B. M. Rogers
    • , S. Veraverbeke
    • , J. F. Johnstone
    • , J. L. Baltzer
    • , K. Barrett
    • , L. Bourgeau-Chavez
    • , N. J. Day
    • , W. J. de Groot
    • , C. M. Dieleman
    • , S. Goetz
    • , E. Hoy
    • , L. K. Jenkins
    • , E. S. Kane
    • , M.-A. Parisien
    • , S. Potter
    • , E. A. G. Schuur
    • , M. Turetsky
    • , E. Whitman
    •  & M. C. Mack

  • News & Views |

    Agricultural systems are vulnerable to climate change, and global reservoirs of plant genetic diversity are proving to be a valuable means of crop adaptation. A study now shows that production of sweet potato is at risk from extreme heat events, but a few tolerant cultivars can still thrive and potentially provide climate resilience.

    • Samuel Pironon
    •  & Marybel Soto Gomez

  • News & Views |

    Dust and black carbon deposition in high-mountain Asia darkens snow and ice, increases sunlight absorption and causes melt — a reinforcing feedback. Now research shows the increasing importance of dust over black carbon at higher altitude, and the sensitivity of aerosol transport and delivery to Arctic sea-ice melt.

    • Biagio Di Mauro

  • Article |

    Mass field testing of heat tolerance in 1,973 cultivars of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) from 50 countries identifies tolerant cultivars and reveals tolerance-predictive traits for breeding consideration. The work highlights the role of intraspecific diversity for future crop resilience.

    • Bettina Heider
    • , Quentin Struelens
    • , Émile Faye
    • , Carlos Flores
    • , José E. Palacios
    • , Raul Eyzaguirre
    • , Stef de Haan
    •  & Olivier Dangles

  • Article |

    Dust deposition in high-mountain Asia lowers snow albedo and hastens melt. Satellite data and models show that dust arrives via transport in elevated aerosol layers and outweighs black carbon impacts at high altitudes, suggesting a growing importance of dust on snowmelt as snowlines rise with warming.

    • Chandan Sarangi
    • , Yun Qian
    • , Karl Rittger
    • , L. Ruby Leung
    • , Duli Chand
    • , Kat J. Bormann
    •  & Thomas H. Painter

  • News & Views |

    Winter conditions have typically been downplayed or oversimplified in past estimations of terrestrial Arctic vegetation shifts in relation to climate change. A study now demonstrates the importance of fine-scale variation in winter temperature in explaining the composition and diversity of Arctic plant communities.

    • Anne D. Bjorkman
    •  & Elise C. Gallois

  • News & Views |

    While large-scale climate-associated changes are becoming increasingly visible, our understanding of changes in the microbial world remains limited. Now a study takes advantage of a tropical microecosystem to disentangle the direct and indirect impacts of increased temperatures on the microbiomes of animals.

    • Obed Hernández-Gómez

  • Article |

    Electric vehicles (EV) are often considered as the best chance for reducing light-duty transport emissions. Analysis of US policies shows that required emission reductions exceed feasible EV deployment, and technology alongside behaviour change is needed.

    • Alexandre Milovanoff
    • , I. Daniel Posen
    •  & Heather L. MacLean

  • Article |

    Seawater properties—temperature, salinity and density—cause stratification of the water column, limiting vertical exchange. Considering down to 2,000 m, ocean stratification is shown to have increased ~5.3% since 1960, with ~71% of the change occurring in the upper 200 m primarily from warming.

    • Guancheng Li
    • , Lijing Cheng
    • , Jiang Zhu
    • , Kevin E. Trenberth
    • , Michael E. Mann
    •  & John P. Abraham

  • Article |

    Winter conditions are the strongest environmental variable relating to fine-scale patterns in tundra vegetation. Vascular plants, lichens and bryophytes nonetheless show complex responses across environmental gradients, highlighting the importance of local heterogeneity.

    • Pekka Niittynen
    • , Risto K. Heikkinen
    • , Juha Aalto
    • , Antoine Guisan
    • , Julia Kemppinen
    •  & Miska Luoto

  • Article |

    Replicated bromeliad microecosystems were used to examine warming-induced community shifts and changes to tadpole gut microbiome. Tadpole growth was more strongly associated with cascading effects of warming on gut dysbiosis than with direct warming effects or indirect effects on food resources.

    • Sasha E. Greenspan
    • , Gustavo H. Migliorini
    • , Mariana L. Lyra
    • , Mariana R. Pontes
    • , Tamilie Carvalho
    • , Luisa P. Ribeiro
    • , Diego Moura-Campos
    • , Célio F. B. Haddad
    • , Luís Felipe Toledo
    • , Gustavo Q. Romero
    •  & C. Guilherme Becker

  • Letter |

    Drought frequency will probably increase under climate change, posing a potential risk to forests. Forest response is variable, but subsequent droughts generally have a negative impact at the tree and ecosystem scales, with systems dominated by conifers particularly vulnerable.

    • William R. L. Anderegg
    • , Anna T. Trugman
    • , Grayson Badgley
    • , Alexandra G. Konings
    •  & John Shaw

  • Feature |

    The impacts of climate change on people and societies are varied and nuanced, making it difficult to encapsulate in an image. Photographs of people can, however, create an emotional connection to what may otherwise be viewed as a natural problem.

    • Alyssa Findlay

  • Review Article |

    Ongoing Arctic changes are impacting phytoplankton. This Review considers recent primary productivity trends and the environmental drivers, as well as how these are changing, that drive phytoplankton diversity in the region.

    • Mathieu Ardyna
    •  & Kevin Robert Arrigo

  • News & Views |

    Raising the cost of carbon is critical for effective climate policy, but is politically challenging because the public are averse to costs. Conventional wisdom suggests this could be addressed by giving the public time to adjust by gradually increasing costs. However, new research shows that the public actually prefers a constant cost curve.

    • Christopher Warshaw

  • Article |

    High warming rates may exceed an organism’s ability to track their thermal habitats. The velocity of climate change in inland standing waters will increase markedly under future warming, making freshwater species particularly vulnerable because their habitat is fragmented in the landscape.

    • R. Iestyn Woolway
    •  & Stephen C. Maberly

  • Comment |

    Co-production is an increasingly popular approach to knowledge generation encouraged by donors and research funders. However, power dynamics between institutions in the Global North and South can, if not adequately managed, impede the effectiveness of co-production and pose risks for long-term sustainability.

    • Katharine Vincent
    • , Suzanne Carter
    • , Anna Steynor
    • , Emma Visman
    •  & Katinka Lund Wågsæther

  • Article |

    Monitoring of snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) cause-specific mortality and behaviour reveals increased risk of predation from coyote (Canis latrans) in shallow snow. This could disrupt the keystone Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis)–hare predator–prey cycle in North American boreal forests.

    • Michael J. L. Peers
    • , Yasmine N. Majchrzak
    • , Allyson K. Menzies
    • , Emily K. Studd
    • , Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau
    • , Rudy Boonstra
    • , Murray Humphries
    • , Thomas S. Jung
    • , Alice J. Kenney
    • , Charles J. Krebs
    • , Dennis L. Murray
    •  & Stan Boutin