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A more democratic world, and a world that responds effectively to the challenges of climate change, are common aims of the international community. But are they mutually compatible?
Reducing tropical deforestation has huge potential for mitigating climate change and saving the Earth's most biologically diverse biome. Corridors connecting existing protected areas represent an elegant means of attaining both goals.
Increasing use of regionally and globally oriented impacts studies, coordinated across international modelling groups, promises to bring about a new era in climate impacts research. Coordinated cycles of model improvement and projection are needed to make the most of this potential.
Americans are more likely to believe in global warming when it's hot outside. A study now provides insights on why this reasoning process is not easily changed.
Computer models and theory do not offer a consensus on how El Niño will change under global warming. Despite this disagreement, a study indicates a robust increase in the frequency of extreme El Niño episodes.
Mandatory buildings disclosure in the United States opens the door to improved energy performance. Other countries could follow suit, explains Elisabeth Jeffries.
Geoengineering the climate by increasing the Earth's reflectivity has been suggested. In this Perspective, the detectability of various methods is investigated. Although satellite observations can detect large changes in albedo, smaller increases caused by some methods of geoengineering are indistinguishable from natural variability. This raises the question of how such schemes would be managed if their impacts can not be quantified.
The increased use of bioenergy is mired in a controversy over the environmental and social risks of escalating biomass production. Assessments of global biomass potential published over the past 20 years are reviewed, showing how different levels of deployment necessitate assumptions that could have far-reaching consequences for global agriculture, forestry and land use. Critical future challenges that can be addressed by the scientific community are also identified.
Evidence on the relationship between human migration and climatic events is limited. Now research links information from a longitudinal survey in rural Pakistan to satellite-derived measures of climate variability. Results show that heat stress consistently increases the long-term migration of men owing to impacts on income.
The prioritization of protected areas to maximize biodiversity conservation and land-use based climate change mitigation is an important policy and research issue. Now a study identifies corridors that would maintain habitat connectivity while also preserving the areas of highest biomass between protected areas in the tropics.
International trade is responsible for a large portion of carbon emissions transfers, mainly from developing to developed countries. Research now analyses different policies to address these transfers. The most promising option, both environmentally and economically, is for developed nations to offset trade-related emissions by financing clean development projects in developing countries.
Extreme El Niño events cause global disruption of weather patterns and affect ecosystems and agriculture through changes in rainfall. Model projections show that a doubling in the occurrence of such extreme episodes is caused by increased surface warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, which results in the atmospheric conditions required for these event to occur.
At present the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica is thinning and its grounding line has retreated. This work uses three ice-flow models to investigate the stability of the glacier and finds that the grounding line could retreat a further 40 km, which is equivalent to a rise in sea level of 3.5–10 mm over a 20 year period.
Climate engineering could support conventional mitigation policies but is potentially a controversial approach; therefore, understanding the public’s concerns about its adoption before decisions are made is important. Now research that draws on methods used by corporations to evaluate brands shows that the overall public evaluation of climate engineering is negative.
