Articles in 2011

The rising demand for road vehicles increases Europe's oil dependency and carbon emissions. Switching to alternative cars and fuels can help energy security and climate change policy, if consumers can be persuaded.

It is argued by many that market-based policies along with cash transfers will make it easier for nations to forge deals to cut carbon emissions. However, emission-intensive manufacturing in China and India could be hit especially hard by this approach.

Future changes in the Indian monsoon could affect millions of people, yet even the ways in which it might have changed over recent years remain uncertain. Statistical analysis indicates that during the second half of the twentieth century there were no spatially uniform changes in the frequency or intensity of heavy rainfall events over India, but there was an increase in the spatial variability of these characteristics.

A study based on a long-term manipulation experiment in a grassland ecosystem describes the microbial mechanisms controlling feedbacks to carbon and nutrient cycling under warming. The findings suggest that ecosystem models should more explicitly consider microbial feedbacks to climate change.

An analysis shows that the coral endosymbiont Symbiodinium—a dinoflagellate genus underpinning the ecological and evolutionary success of reef corals—can adapt to local thermal regimes, thereby shaping the fitness of coral hosts. This may explain why many corals show fidelity for single Symbiodinium types over wide thermal ranges.

Perturbed-physics climate modelling experiments simulate past and future climate scenarios using a wide combination of model parameters consistent with past climate. Using such an approach, a study examines variations in the response of climate to solar-radiation management under different climate sensitivities.

Methods for assessing the carbon footprints of products can favour low- over high-yielding agricultural systems when carbon removals are included.

Temporary carbon-sequestration and carbon-storage projects help offset fossil-fuel carbon emissions, but how effective are they?

Adult fish seem relatively resilient to increased carbon dioxide levels, but how early-life-stage fish fare remains less clear. In a study, the estuarine fish Menidia beryllina experienced severely reduced survival and growth rates in its early life stages under levels of ocean acidification expected later this century. This suggests that ocean acidification may affect fish populations, because small changes in early-life survival can generate large fluctuations in adult-fish abundance.

Biofuels are often promoted as a way of mitigating climate change, but their impacts on climate and air quality remain uncertain. Estimates of air-pollutant emissions from the production and use of sugar-cane ethanol in Brazil indicate that this biofuel may have larger impacts on regional climate and human health than previously thought.

Ocean acidification—resulting from anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere—has been shown to affect fish growth rates and reproduction. Now research shows detrimental effects of ocean acidification on the development of Atlantic cod larvae—a mass-spawning fish species of high commercial importance—suggesting that ocean acidification could cause additional larval mortality, affecting populations of already exploited cod stocks.

It is responsible for the fastest-growing and second-largest source of carbon emissions, so can transport clean up its act? Europe is leading the charge on tackling the problem.

Composer and string musician, turned award-winning environmentalist, Aubrey Meyer tells Nature Climate Change why he is campaigning for countries to adopt his 'contraction and convergence' model of global development to avoid dangerous climate change.

Tropical species are considered especially sensitive to climate change, but research now shows that a tropical reef fish can rapidly acclimate over multiple generations. Acute exposure to a 1.5 °C and 3.0 °C temperature rise decreased an individual’s ability to perform aerobic activities such as swimming or foraging by 15% and 30% respectively, but this did not occur when both parents and offspring were reared at the higher temperature.

One of the impacts of ocean warming is a decrease in dissolved oxygen, with implications for valuable pelagic fish species. A study shows that the oxygenated upper ocean layer in the tropical northeast Atlantic thinned at a rate of around one metre per year between 1960 and 2010, and, by tracking individually tagged fish, demonstrates that this contraction in the oxygenated layer limited the movement of blue marlin.