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University of Colorado energy-use researcher Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, who in June 2011 became director of the Climate, Mind and Behavior Program at the Garrison Institute in New York, believes that society can cut its energy use by up to 30% through behavioural changes alone. She talks to Nature Climate Change.

Developing countries can reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions through voluntary actions, but they need the full support of developed nations, says Sonja van Renssen.

Joseph Holden, director of water@leeds — an international climate and water research centre based at the University of Leeds — and colleague Dabo Guan talk to Nature Climate Change about the project.

Semantic arguments about the definition of 'tipping points' are distracting attention away from the causes and impacts of climate change in the Arctic.

Globally speaking, thunderstorms are small, which makes their behaviour difficult to simulate with climate models. Now research that incorporates detailed storm dynamics indicates the near-elimination of hail in future simulations for Colorado.

The Durban conference on climate change made progress of sorts, but the hardest decisions have been deferred.

For the first time, banks have been ranked by how much they facilitate global warming. Anna Petherick asks how this data should be used.

Certification criteria for sustainable building materials need to be rationalized to avoid confusion in the marketplace.

Geoengineering that mimics volcanic activity to reflect incoming sunlight will not necessarily reduce crop yields.

An analysis shows that when consumption-based emissions are accounted for in a sustainable-development framework, carbon-exporting countries are systematically disadvantaged relative to carbon-importing countries.

A study advocates the efficient production of cellulosic biofuel using waste nitrogen through wastewater treatment with constructed wetlands in China. The analysis suggests that the net life-cycle energy output of constructed wetlands is higher than many other biofuel production systems.

Increasing carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution have caused widespread ocean acidification and concomitant changes in ocean chemistry, with potential ramifications for major marine ecosystems. A study shows that recent trends in ocean acidification are detectable against natural variability with virtual certainty, even on regional scales.

Quality of life improves with economic growth and hence requires increasing greenhouse-gas emissions. Little is known, however, about the role of international trade. Now research shows that most socio-economic benefits are actually accruing to carbon-importing countries. It also finds that high life expectancy is compatible with low carbon emissions, but high incomes are not.

Deflection of sunlight could compensate for the warming induced by increased greenhouse gases. However, the effects of such geoengineering on food security are highly uncertain. Now research using high-carbon-dioxide, geoengineering and control climate simulations suggests that solar-radiation management in a high-carbon-dioxide world generally causes crop yields to increase.

Greenhouse-gas emissions are likely to have an impact on the damage caused by extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones. A study predicts that climate change will increase the frequency of these high-intensity storms in selected ocean basins and double their economic damage. Almost all tropical cyclone damage tends to be concentrated in North America, East Asia and the Caribbean-Central American region.

Previous research has examined temperature-related excess deaths or mortality risks. A study now uses years of life lost to provide a new measure of the impact of temperature on mortality, and finds an increase in the years of life lost for cold and hot temperatures. The loss will greatly increase further if future temperature rise goes beyond 2 °C above pre-industrial levels.

A study of two species of coral reef fish demonstrates that the anticipated increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide directly interferes with neurotransmitter function in their larvae, a hitherto unrecognized problem for marine fishes.

Focusing on mountain plant communities across Europe, a study shows that ongoing climate change causes a gradual decline in cold-adapted species and a corresponding increase in warm-adapted species, which could be an early sign that mountain plant diversity is at risk.