Articles in 2023

The global loss and damage fund is essential to provide support for climate-impacted groups and help their local initiatives for adaptation. Now, research focusing on the Vanuatu population highlights the necessity to put human rights as a central consideration for loss and damage fund agendas.

Climate models have evolved from research tools to underpin decision-making across the globe. To provide optimal value for society in the future, the models need to be made operational.

Concrete analysis of job impacts is needed to inform efforts for a just transition. Now, a study finds that decarbonizing US electricity generation will create jobs, but with uneven distribution among states, industrial sectors and skill needs.

Climate change is a major human rights challenge. This research shows how climate change is impeding the human rights of Ni-Vanuatu, outlines what can be done in response, and discusses how the future loss and damage fund should consider human rights restoration and compensation packages.

Non-tornadic thunderstorm winds are associated with particularly strong damages. Here, the author assesses changes in these winds in the central USA and shows that they have intensified stronger than other extreme winds over the past decades, while the affected area increased 4.8-fold.

The low-carbon transition would bring both challenges and opportunities for the labour market, which have important implications for a just transition. In the US power system, the lowest-skilled workers in fossil fuel-dependent states will face more uncertain employment and job training will be necessary.

The remaining carbon budget for 1.5 °C has been a highly discussed tool to communicate the urgency of efforts needed to meet the Paris Agreement. Now, research reassesses IPCC estimates, suggesting that ongoing near-flat emissions and methodological choices can make big relative differences to the tiny remaining 1.5 °C budget.

Global warming and overfishing are impacting fish species distribution, total catch and aquaculture viability, limiting our ability to harvest vital micronutrients that support human health.

Climate education is seen as a key driver for behavioural change, yet it is usually not continued universally to higher-education level. With the increasing demand from both students and employers, we propose methods that incorporate climate education from multiple disciplines into current curriculums.

Nature-based solutions are essential to avoid climate crisis, yet how best to estimate their long-run effects is unclear. Here the authors propose a new dynamic accounting method that captures the impermanence of these carbon impacts, allowing investors to make robust comparisons across projects.

The remaining carbon budget (RCB) is a critical estimate of the carbon that can be emitted while staying within a particular temperature threshold. This study provides an updated assessment of the RCB using recent data and robustness checks to increase confidence in the estimate.

The authors use fisheries databases and predictive models to understand past and future changes in the availability of iron, calcium omega-3 and protein from seafood. They show disproportional loss of nutrients in tropical low-income countries, which will be exacerbated by higher levels of global warming.

The collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a worrying climate tipping point, with the potential to raise global sea level by up to 5.3 metres. Now, an assessment of future climate scenarios suggests that accelerated melting of ice shelves in West Antarctica is locked in, even for the most ambitious emissions reduction scenarios.

The authors use a regional ocean model to project ocean-driven ice-shelf melt in the Amundsen Sea. Already committed rapid ocean warming drives increased melt, regardless of emission scenario, suggesting extensive ice loss from West Antarctica.

Wildfire can lead to shifts in forest composition to more deciduous tree cover, which can have a biophysical cooling effect on climate. This study finds no net increase in deciduous cover or biophysical cooling over boreal North America in recent decades, despite widespread landscape scale change.

Assessing progress and gaps in climate adaptation is a key policy concern, and also raises scientific challenges around which metrics should be used and who should assess progress. A structured expert judgement using local case studies shows that, for coastal areas, today’s global adaptation is halfway to achieving the full adaptation potential.