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Changes in river discharge due to climate change are highly uncertain, and a recent study used a global streamflow dataset to assess whether such trends are detectable. Streamflow changes occurred more often in basins impacted by human disturbances than in pristine ones, and there was no clear signal from climate change alone.
Economically optimal climate strategies may be politically less feasible because they need strong collective action. Fortunately, achieving climate goals through more realistic differentiated policies may not be much more expensive.
The nationwide cost of cutting emissions can be affected by local policies. This study considers the differences across the US states, with integrated assessment model results showing that varying state policies only increases nationwide costs by about 10%.
Climate services have long sought to bridge the gap between climate science and improved societal decision-making. Now, a study finds that fulfilling that promise will require rethinking the norms, institutions and governance of science itself.
Climate services aim to make climate data and information accessible for climate-sensitive decision-making. However, the grounding of climate services in the norms and institutions of climate science creates tensions that reduce the impact of climate services.
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.
