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Behaviour change is essential for effective solutions to climate threats. Thus, policy-relevant behavioural science studies are needed for a shift towards human-centred climate actions.
Climate change is a confounding factor that can affect agriculture and food security in many different ways. Climate-resilient food systems are needed to ensure food security and to support mitigation efforts.
Nearly two years into the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science, research, including some featured in this month’s issue, shows that there is still a wealth of scientific secrets to uncover in the ocean depths.
There has been a series of announcements related to climate legislation from the United States of America in recent months. This shift to climate action in the United States sparks hope that its actions could encourage other countries to step up.
Each year weather records are being broken around the globe; this boreal summer has seen heat records fall across Europe, America and Central Asia. These discernible effects of climate change cannot be ignored, as combined with global issues they endanger society and well-being.
Ecosystems, and the services they provide, can support climate mitigation and adaptation, yet also suffer from climate change impacts. Now, discussions surround how to best support the eco–climate nexus, overcoming the challenges ahead and creating multiple benefits.
It is now possible to model the climate system at the kilometre scale, but more work and resources are needed to harvest the full potential of these models to resolve long-standing model biases and enable new applications of climate models.
The recent IPCC report highlights the importance of demand-side solutions in mitigation strategies. Understanding the motivation and capacity of these solutions is essential, and could help to promote collective and practical actions for this critical decade.
Phenology — the timing of important life events — is shifting in response to climate change. For trees, these shifts in spring awakening and autumn senescence have implications for productivity and carbon capture, as well as for the survival of the trees themselves, and the quality of the services they provide.
Our individual carbon footprints depend on behaviour, wealth and lifestyle. Understanding the demographics of emissions is needed for climate justice, and could help policymakers develop effective strategies for emissions reductions.
Many of the impacts of climate change will be felt first through the presence — or absence — of water and access to water resources. Water must be integrated into climate policy and adaptation planning to mitigate these impacts.
Climate change action is moving forward, with the outcomes from COP26 setting the agenda for governments to commit to. Actors in the private sector are also setting out commitments, and climate action looks to be gaining momentum across society and around the globe.
