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Contrails formed by aircraft can evolve into cirrus clouds indistinguishable from those formed naturally. These 'spreading contrails' may be causing more climate warming today than all the carbon dioxide emitted by aircraft since the start of aviation.
Adaptation is still mitigation's poor cousin, in political and economic terms. However, efforts to better define adaptation — and the areas that would benefit most from climate aid — may help in achieving parity, finds Sonja van Renssen.
Recovery of the ozone hole and increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations have opposite effects on the jet stream. New model experiments indicate that they will cancel each other out over coming decades, leaving storm tracks at a stand still.
Nitrogen availability is frequently a key factor limiting plant growth, even when other conditions are favourable. Research demonstrates that via a short circuit in the terrestrial nitrogen cycle, Antarctic hair grass acquires soil nitrogen more efficiently than competing mosses, which may explain its success in a warming maritime Antarctic.
How will our choices shape the future? That's a question researchers are keen to answer, and with a new approach to how the climate community develops scenarios, they are coming that bit closer to answering it.
Aviation is known to affect climate by changing cloudiness, but the magnitude of this effect remains uncertain. A modelling study indicates that changes in cloudiness associated with spreading of the line-shaped contrails that form behind aircraft may cause almost an order of magnitude more warming than the contrails alone.
Climate scientists are under pressure to make their data — and their methods — more openly available, both to fellow scientists and the public. Now, open-access climate science is becoming easier than ever.
Vehicle-emission standards for non-carbon-dioxide pollutants have recognized benefits for air quality. An interdisciplinary analysis now shows that adopting tight on-road emission standards for these pollutants would also mitigate short-term climate change and provide large benefits for human health and food security in a number of developing countries.
Explaining climate risks and uncertainties to non-specialists is fraught with difficulties. An array of principles and guidelines has been developed to aid this process, but there is little evidence for their efficacy. An empirical approach is thus needed to identify the communications approaches that will effectively convey the practical implications of large, complex, uncertain physical, biological and social processes. An ambitious interdisciplinary initiative will be required to deliver effective climate science communication, including institutional support to sustain it.
The biological world is responding rapidly to a changing climate, but attempts to attribute individual impacts to rising greenhouse gases are ill-advised.
Engaging the public with climate change has proved difficult, in part because they see the problem as remote. New evidence suggests that direct experience of one anticipated impact — flooding — increases people's concern and willingness to save energy.
Direct experience of climate impacts is thought to increase concern about climate change. New survey data provide empirical evidence that those who have experienced flooding tend to feel more concern and perceive less uncertainty about climate change, and have greater willingness to change behaviour to save energy.
The impact of climate change on food production remains uncertain, particularly in the tropics. Research that exploits the results of historical crop trials indicates that Africa's maize crop could be at risk of significant yield losses.
An analysis of over 20,000 historical African maize trials suggests the crop will better cope with climate change under rain-fed management. For a 1 °C temperature rise, optimal rain-fed conditions would mean 65% of maize-growing areas in Africa would be likely to experience yield losses, compared with 100% under drought conditions.
