Browse Articles

The feasibility of certain climate actions needs to be carefully examined to address concerns over their practicality. Researchers across different climate change research fields are increasingly working on this topic.

The authors use long-term satellite tracking to project climate-induced shifts in whale shark distributions and understand their potential future risk of ship-strike. Under high-emission scenarios, the movement of sharks to current range-edge habitat is linked to 15,000-fold increased co-occurrence with ships.

Climate change and economic inequality are critical issues, and we still lack understanding of the interaction between them. Multi-model analysis shows how climate policies compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement, including revenue-redistribution schemes, can reduce inequality—particularly in the short and medium terms.

The dominant paradigm holding that science is always objective needs to be challenged. When scientists’ opinions about climate change and their own fears are seen as irrelevant, it suggests that science is separate from society; however, this perspective ultimately weakens climate science.

Changes in nutrient availability can alter carbon storage and carbon dioxide emissions from tundra soils. Now, work shows that these responses can shift dramatically over long timescales of nutrient addition, by restructuring the interplay between plants and soil microorganisms.

By expanding on one of the longest-running ecosystem manipulation experiments in the world, we found that the substantial Arctic soil carbon losses observed in the first 20 years of experimentation were temporary. We present evidence suggesting that the Arctic soil carbon balance depends on complex plant–microbial interactions that can take decades to manifest.

Arctic warming is thought to lead to large losses in soil carbon stocks. Here a 35-year-long fertilization experiment in Alaska shows that increased shrub productivity and changes in plant–microbial feedbacks may eventually reverse trends of carbon loss and restore the soil carbon sink.

The IPCC holds the gold standard for climate change scientific knowledge and authority at the science–policy interface. Here we reflect on our experience of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and discuss how diversity in authorship and inclusion of different disciplinary backgrounds can be improved.

A feasibility analysis reveals that carbon capture and storage capacity might be able to expand fast enough to meet the requirements of 2 °C climate pathways but will unlikely meet those for 1.5 °C. Moreover, carbon capture and storage is unlikely to capture and store more than 600 Gt of CO₂ over the twenty-first century, which has implications for the global carbon budget.

More understanding of demand-side mitigation is needed for overall emissions reductions. Now, a study evaluates mitigation potential based on a cost–benefit approach, but gaps remain to fully leverage demand-side mitigation to achieve effective climate policies.

The authors reveal distinct trends in surface and subsurface phytoplankton dynamics, highlighting the need for subsurface monitoring. Whereas subsurface phytoplankton respond to recent warming with biomass increases, surface phytoplankton show altered carbon-to-chlorophyll ratios but minimal biomass change.

Demand-side mitigation solutions are seen as an essential part for climate actions, yet their adoption is still lower than expected. Cost–benefit analysis shows that the main barriers lie in the non-pecuniary costs of behaviour switching, and highlights opportunities for targeted policy intervention.

Carbon capture and storage is a key component of mitigation scenarios, yet its feasibility is debated. An analysis based on historical trends in policy-driven technologies, current plans and their failure rates shows that a number of 2 °C pathways are feasible, but most 1.5 °C pathways are not.

Tropical aboveground carbon is a crucial yet complex component of the terrestrial carbon budget. Here, remote observations reveal annual losses (from fire emissions and forest disturbances) and post-loss recovery of tropical aboveground carbon for 2010–2020, which overall resulted in tropical lands being a moderate carbon sink.