News & Comment

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.

The transition to net-zero emissions will be contested and could lead to political polarization and social unrest. To contribute to a transition that is accepted as legitimate while remaining effective, research on public support must evolve rapidly along several dimensions.

Despite the trajectory towards climate catastrophe, governments are failing to take disability-inclusive climate action. We discuss how the scientific community could advance and hasten the development of disability-inclusive climate resilience, and which areas should be prioritized.