Articles

The authors demonstrate the interacting impacts of warming on erosion and soil organic carbon (SOC) cycling. Under warming, they project increased replacement of SOC lost by erosion but lower preservation of deposited SOC, with an overall increase in the global C sink by erosion.

The authors estimate genomic vulnerability for closely related species of rainbowfish. They find that narrow endemic species that have hybridized with a warm-adapted generalist show reduced vulnerability to climate change and that hybridization may facilitate evolutionary rescue for such species.

Melt ponding is an important process for the stability of ice shelves. Here the authors estimate the temperature thresholds at which melt ponding emerges over Antarctic ice shelves and find that cold and dry ice shelves are more vulnerable to melt ponding than expected.

The authors reveal complex drought recovery responses to phenology shifts, in that early spring can shorten or lengthen recovery, while delayed spring following drought events delays it. These effects suggest a need to incorporate phenology aspects into resilience models.

How the spatial structures of large storms will change is not well resolved in most climate models. Here the authors use high-resolution models to show that winter storms become sharper under warming because precipitation in the storm centre increases more strongly than the storm area.

Rapid growth of AI could lead to more inventions and innovations in climate actions, yet evidence of this connection is lacking. The use of large-scale patent data and automated techniques helps elucidate trends in climate-related artificial intelligence inventions for different technology areas.

Snow is an important component of the environment and climate of mountain regions, but providing a long-term historical context for recent changes is challenging. Here, the authors use ring-width data from shrubs to show that recent snow loss in the central Alps is unprecedented over the last 600 years.

Partisan polarization plays a key role in shaping climate action in the United States. By identifying positive and negative elements within party identities, the authors expand conceptualizations of Republican-Democrat to explore how partisanship relates to policy support and behavioural intentions.

The Nile River system is faced with challenges including increasing water demands, political tensions, and future climate and socio-economic uncertainties. Cooperative adaptive management can help increase synergies, balance trade-offs and bring various benefits to riparian countries.

Teleconnections between tipping elements in the Earth system are unclear. Here the authors use a climate network approach to link the Amazon Rainforest Area and the Tibetan Plateau, and show that current snow cover loss on the Tibetan Plateau is an early warning signal for an approaching tipping point.

Urgent and targeted financial investments are essential for reaching the net zero target in Europe, while a comprehensive mapping is still missing. This meta-analysis demonstrates the necessity of rapid increase in investments and displays the potential patterns across various sectors.

Temporarily exceeding temperature targets could increase risk of crossing tipping-element thresholds. This study considers a range of overshoot scenarios in a stylized network model and shows that overshoots increase tipping risks by up to 72% compared with remaining within targets.

Ocean carbon uptake could be affected by changes in circulation. This modelling study shows that meridional overturning circulation slowdown increases deep-ocean storage via the biological pump but decreases carbon uptake via the solubility pump, with a net reduction in oceanic uptake of CO₂.

The authors conduct a national inventory on individual tree carbon stocks in Rwanda using aerial imagery and deep learning. Most mapped trees are located in farmlands; new methods allow partitioning to any landscape categories, effective planning and optimization of carbon sequestration and the economic benefits of trees.

Accurately assessing emissions reductions for various greenhouse gases to stay within temperature targets is important. Here, an adaptive approach, based solely on observations and not on model projections, allows quantification of emissions reductions required to achieve any temperature target.

The authors analyse the impacts of drought on tree growth for various species of various ages to assess the influences of forest demographic shift on future drought responses. The increasing proportion of young trees showing greater growth reduction to drought raises concern on future carbon storage.

Climate change is expected to intensify the hydrological cycle, but how this translates into changes in river floods is not clear. Here, the authors show that changes in river flood discharge differ between flood types, with increases in rainfall-induced floods and decreases in snow-related floods.

Polarization and the resulting political deadlock have become key barriers to more ambitious climate action. Using Twitter data between Conferences of the Parties, this research identifies a trend of increasing polarization driven by growing right-wing activity alongside accusations of political hypocrisy.

The North American Pacific Northwest experienced an unprecedented heatwave in summer 2021. This study shows that atmospheric circulation features and regional soil dryness both amplified the event’s severity; future warming increases the chance of an equivalent or stronger event.

Future changes and regional differences in snowpacks are unclear. Here the American Cordillera mountain range, spanning the Americas, is estimated to lose snow faster in the southern midlatitudes—global warming should be limited to below 2.5 °C to prevent low-to-no-snow conditions across the range.