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Ocean pH is expected to drop by 0.3 units by 2100, but it remains unclear how plankton might respond. Now research shows that pH and carbonate chemistry at the exterior surface of marine organisms deviates increasingly from those of bulk sea water as organism metabolic activity and size increases. Understanding of such deviations is important for predicting ecological response.

Predictions of a 40–140% increase in wheat yield by 2050, reported in the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, are based on a simplistic approach that ignores key factors affecting yields and hence are seriously misleading.

Feedbacks can modulate the way plants respond to warming, but difficulties in detecting long-acting feedbacks complicate understanding of the climatic effects on community structure and function beyond initial responses. Now a mesocosm experiment shows that although warming initially increased aboveground net primary productivity in grassland ecosystems, the response diminished progressively over time.

Satellite data suggest that contemporary climate warming has already resulted in increased productivity and shrub biomass over much of the Arctic, but plot-level evidence for vegetation transformation remains sparse. Now research provides plot-scale evidence linking changes in vascular plant abundance to local summer warming in widely dispersed tundra locations across the globe.

Comparison of global-scale measurements of subsurface ocean temperature taken during the epic voyage of HMS Challenger (1872–1876) with data collected by the Argo Programme over the past eight years shows that oceans have been warming at least since the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century.

This study provides a quantitative approach that predicts the response of coral calcification to the combined effects of ocean acidification and global warming. The analysis suggests that warm-water aragonitic corals are more resilient to climate change than previously thought, whereas marine organisms that precipitate calcitic skeletons are particularly vulnerable.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could solve our waste and energy problems at the same time, by turning one into the other? Attempts have been made to do just that, by making fuel from waste through pyrolysis.

In collaboration with experts in agroforestry, agricultural economics and policy, development economist Utkur Djanibekov estimated the viability of small-scale Clean Development Mechanism afforestation in Uzbekistan.