News & Comment

Better integration of climate action and sustainable development can help enhance the ambition of the next nationally determined contributions, as well as implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments should use this year as an opportunity to emphasize the links between climate and sustainable development.

Non-state actors play an essential role in the fabric of global climate governance. Here we propose four tailored strategies that non-state actors can mobilize to advance climate action among states and harness the potential of the global stocktake.

The global stocktake seeks to enhance climate ambition through assessment and review of collective efforts every five years. A recent breakthrough in finance for addressing loss and damage is an opportunity to strengthen the finance agenda and rebuild much needed trust in the multilateral system.

Inconsistent climate projections for much of the Global South from six generations of IPCC assessments have compounded the many challenges it faces in adapting to climate change. Here, we propose using emerging technologies and strengthening international collaborations to address these challenges.

There are contrasting views on how to produce the accurate predictions that are needed to guide climate change adaptation. Here, we argue for harnessing artificial intelligence, building on domain-specific knowledge and generating ensembles of moderately high-resolution (10–50 km) climate simulations as anchors for detailed hazard models.

Climate change research and assessments, including the most recent IPCC report, paint an increasingly dire picture of the future. However, the assumption that the future will be worse than the present may be wrong for many aspects of human well-being.

The IPCC has been successful at building its scientific authority, but it will require institutional reform for staying relevant to new and changing political contexts. Exploring a range of alternative future pathways for the IPCC can help guide crucial decisions about redefining its purpose.

Climate change has been identified as a driver of instability and conflict around the world. However, how climate change and the transition to a net-zero world might alter the character of military operations is often overlooked.

A gap persists between the emissions reductions pledged by countries under the Paris Agreement and those resulting from their domestic policies. We argue that this gap in fact contains two parts: one in the policies that countries adopt, and the other in the outcomes that those policies achieve.

The narrative that certain areas will inevitably become uninhabitable owing to sea-level rise is powerful, yet may silence important debate about alternative climate adaptation futures. In particular, populations with low emissions and funding capacity should have their narratives centralized in adaptation.

Companies rarely disclose underlying calculations for their science-based emission reduction targets and the targets themselves lack important details. Increased transparency is necessary to assess justice implications, evaluate the sufficiency of aggregate emission reductions and hold companies accountable for actions on their targets.

Climate change impacts on insect pollinators has largely focused on changes in abundance and range, yet pollination capacity also relies on ability to acquire, process and respond to information. We argue for the urgent need to focus on these largely overlooked processes by describing how insect sensory ecology and behaviour are affected by temperature and highlighting key knowledge gaps that should be addressed.

The industrial emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and stratospheric ozone-depleting substance, have increased since 2010. However, untapped abatement potential for industrial emissions currently exists through low-cost technologies.

Adjusting green public support programmes to green premiums can reduce public spending, yet this is challenged by uncertainty. Underfunding green technologies can delay the green transition, and overfunding them can increase transition costs. Both risks of under- and overfunding can be reduced using responsive adjustments.

Large language models offer an opportunity to advance climate and sustainability research. We believe that a focus on regulation and validation of generative artificial intelligence models would provide more benefits to society than a halt in development.

Loss and damage funds are intended to support low-income regions experiencing impacts of human-caused climate change. Currently, event attribution should only play a limited role in determining loss and damage spending, but this role could grow as the field advances.

Adaptation is a key societal response to reduce the impacts of climate change, yet it is poorly represented in current modelling frameworks. We identify key research gaps and suggest entry points for adaptation in quantitative assessments of climate change to enhance policy guidance.

Research using lakes and ponds as model systems contributes both to addressing the freshwater biodiversity crisis and developing general theories and frameworks for understanding how biological systems respond to climate change and other anthropogenic stressors.

Indigenous and Western knowledge ethically combined is uniquely suited to address ongoing climate challenges. To build an environment where Western and Indigenous knowledge systems thrive, funding institutions must value co-production of knowledge and be available to Indigenous experts.

Climate anxiety, reflecting concerns about the negative impacts of climate change, is growing. Planning and action on individual specific climate risks could be a way to reduce personal climate anxiety.