News & Views in 2011

Climate change can be robustly attributed to human activities using different datasets, despite uncertainties in the processing of observational data.

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.

Biofuels could be an important energy source, but they compete with food for cropland. An analysis of current crop production suggests that increasing yields of biofuel crops on existing cropland could avoid agricultural expansion and its associated impacts.

Public policy and investments alone cannot reduce vulnerability to climate change. Research shows that, with adequate institutional mechanisms, private adaptation choices can play an important role in improving society's climate resilience.

Drought has emerged as a major threat to the world's forests. A study shows that tree mortality in Canada's boreal forests has increased by nearly 5% per year — much higher than expected — owing to water stress from regional warming.

The systematic bias in the position and strength of the 'roaring forties' that is found in climate models affects our present ability to predict carbon dioxide uptake by the Southern Ocean.

The distributions of terrestrial organisms are shifting in response to climate change. Research shows that these changes are happening at a much faster rate than previously estimated.

Some commercial fish species of the northeast Atlantic Ocean have relocated in response to warming. The impact of warming on marine assemblages in the region may already be much greater than appreciated, however, with over 70% of common demersal fish species responding through changes in abundance, rather than range.

Improved regional monitoring and reporting of greenhouse-gas emissions depends on accurate estimates of emissions from different land-use regimes. An analysis suggests that measuring emissions per crop yield may be an optimum metric for refining land-management decisions.

Whether the widely accepted 2 °C limit for climate change is practically achievable depends partly on climate sensitivity, but predominantly on complex socio-economic dynamics.

Forests take up and store large quantities of carbon. An analysis of inventory data from across the globe suggests that temperate and boreal forests accounted for the majority of the terrestrial carbon sink over the past two decades.

The response of malaria distribution to climate change has been debated. Statistical models suggest that by 2050, increasing national wealth will limit the expansion of malaria risk caused by rising temperatures.

The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is a pressing challenge for China. Now research demonstrates that China's local energy-related emission patterns are important for setting effective greenhouse-gas abatement policies.

Research into climate change mitigation and adaptation has been hindered by a disconnect between climate science and socio-economic studies. The development of a new set of climate forcing pathways could prove to be the first step towards integrated analyses of policies and impacts.

Deciding where and how to allocate scarce funding to conserve plants and animals in a changing and uncertain climate is a thorny issue. Numerical modelling identifies the most effective mix of conservation measures based on the level of expenditure available.

The contributions of ice melt and ocean thermal expansion to sea-level rise during the last interglacial period are poorly constrained. A new quantification of their roles implies that the Antarctic ice sheet may be more sensitive to climate change than once thought.

Noxious cyanobacteria pose a considerable health threat to freshwater ecosystems. Research now suggests that toxic strains may be outcompeted by their non-toxic counterparts as surface concentrations of carbon dioxide increase.

The voluntary emission reductions pledged under the Copenhagen Accord are almost certainly insufficient to limit global warming to 2 °C. However, using the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund for mitigation efforts could achieve the reductions needed to fill the gap.

Managing climate risks to fresh waters has so far been approached by designing action plans. Now adaptation protocols are integrating knowledge of water-system vulnerabilities into more flexible strategies to keep taps running and ecosystems healthy.