Perspectives

Climate change mitigation and adaptation are human-mediated processes but global modelling tools currently take no account of human responses to environmental change. In this Perspective the authors propose the agent functional type approach to advance the representation of these processes.

2014 is a critical year for preparing for the 2015 deadline to settle a new international agreement on measures to tackle climate change. This Perspective offers a number of compromises designed to help overcome the present impasse in global climate negotiations.

Different estimates of the social cost of carbon make its translation to policy difficult. This Perspective evaluates past estimates of this cost and calculates a lower bound. Results show that dominant values for the social cost of carbon are gross underestimates and suggest that climate policy should be more stringent than previously proposed.

Scientists, educators and stakeholders are grappling with how best to approach climate change education for diverse audiences, given the persistent social controversy associated with it. This Perspective examines how socio-cultural learning theories inform climate change education for learners with varied understanding of and attitudes towards climate change.

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.

Recent studies have produced conflicting results about the impacts of climate change on drought. In this Perspective, a commonly used drought index and observational data are examined to identify the cause of these discrepancies. The authors indicate that improvements in the quality and coverage of precipitation data and quantification of natural variability are necessary to provide a better understanding of how drought is changing.

This Perspective considers the extent to which early action to reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane and black carbon, would help to limit global warming. Although decreasing emissions of these pollutants would have short-term benefits, simultaneous CO₂ reductions are urgently required to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate change in the longer term.

Recent reports of a lower climate sensitivity to CO₂ emissions have been used to suggest that the need for mitigation is not as urgent as previously thought. This Perspective investigates how quickly committed peak warming would increase ifmitigation is delayed. Peak warming is found to increase in line with cumulative CO₂ emissions, faster than current observed warming.

Trees can provide a multitude of ecosystem services. The current push to plant trees, motivated by the goal of sequestering carbon, raises the question of how tree diversity affects carbon sequestration and other services offered by afforestation/reforestation projects. This Perspective examines the potential benefits of mixed tree planting over a monoculture approach.

Climate change poses both practical and theoretical problems for coastal managers, who have to make and implement plans that cope with a highly uncertain, and therefore inherently risky, future. This Perspective uses three examples of ecological engineering — marshes, mangroves, and oyster reefs — to illustrate the synergistic effects and benefits of this approach.

Since the 1950s—after centuries of stock decline and deforestation—European forests started to recover, becoming a persistent carbon sink. The effect was projected to continue for decades, however there are early signs that the sink is saturating. This Perspective calls for a timely reaction from policymakers and forest managers to sustain European forests and thus the carbon sink.

China, already the largest generator of hydroelectricity, plans to accelerate dam construction. This has led to warnings that increased emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly methane, from Chinese reservoirs could constitute a 'global warming time-bomb'. A review of evidence on emissions from the Three Gorges Reservoir — the world's largest — indicates that such fears are probably misplaced.

Much climate change education research is now being funded in the USA. This Perspective argues that university-level climate change education may promote interdisciplinary, keep talented young people in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics pipeline, and help all students enhance their scientific, quantitative and climate literacies.

Increased use of IT services can contribute to reducing carbon emissions, given the improvements in efficiency of IT devices and data-centre operations. However, credible metrics to reward the data centres for minimizing carbon emissions are still lacking. This Perspective identifies the characteristics of low-carbon data centres and the factors that govern carbon performance.

The use of land, energy and water can contribute to climate change, which, in turn, affects the systems that provide those resources. Efficient resource management can limit climate impacts and support adaption practices. An approach integrating resource assessments and policy-making is proposed to manage land, energy and water effectively.

Access to timely climate information is critical for empowering proactive decision-making to absorb climate shocks that would otherwise lead to large-scale humanitarian crises. The value of Rainwatch — a prototype geographical information system designed to increase interactions between local climate information users, their providers and supporting groups — is illustrated in the case of the unfavourable West African 2011 monsoon.

Anthropology can offer valuable insights into the science, impacts and policy of climate change thanks to its fieldwork methodology, holistic view of society and engagement in society–environment interactions. Yet the discipline's voice in climate change debates remains marginal. This Perspective sheds light on how anthropological research can contribute to the understanding of climate change.