Research articles

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  • Grazing has been shown to have diverse effects on soil carbon, with local variation. This study assesses carbon changes related to grazing globally and finds that, although grazing has reduced soil carbon stocks, managing intensity could increase carbon uptake in both soils and vegetation.

    • Shuai Ren
    • César Terrer
    • Dan Liu
    Article
  • It is important to detect human influence on the climate, but natural variability can hide signals of change. Here the authors show the anthropogenic signal has emerged for sea surface temperature seasonality, primarily driven by greenhouse gas increases, and with geographical differences in change.

    • Jia-Rui Shi
    • Benjamin D. Santer
    • Susan E. Wijffels
    Article
  • How groundwater recharge changes with global warming is not well constrained. Here, the authors use an empirical relationship to show that groundwater recharge is more sensitive to aridity changes than expected, implying a strong response of water resources to climate change.

    • Wouter R. Berghuijs
    • Raoul A. Collenteur
    • Scott T. Allen
    Article
  • The authors conduct a systematic literature review on renewable energy expansion and biodiversity. Comparing renewable energy siting maps with the ranges of two threatened species under future climates, they highlight the potential conflict and need for consideration of climate-change-driven range shifts.

    • Uzma Ashraf
    • Toni Lyn Morelli
    • Rebecca R. Hernandez
    Brief Communication
  • The authors develop a biophysical model to understand the impacts of tree loss and climate change on the activity patterns and population trends of a diurnal ectotherm (lizard). They show that deforestation can reverse the positive effects of climate change and even accelerate population declines.

    • Omer B. Zlotnick
    • Keith N. Musselman
    • Ofir Levy
    Article
  • Increasing exposure to climate hazards under climate change will disproportionately impact poor communities. This study shows that disruptions to infrastructure service threaten progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in coastal Bangladesh, but impacts can be mediated through adaptation.

    • Daniel Adshead
    • Amelie Paszkowski
    • Jim W. Hall
    ArticleOpen Access
  • The authors use stomach contents from six fish species sampled for 12 years to show that warming shifts foraging behaviour to favour consumption of less energetically rewarding prey. Using food web models, they show that this flexible foraging could lead to reduced community biodiversity.

    • Benoit Gauzens
    • Benjamin Rosenbaum
    • Ulrich Brose
    ArticleOpen Access
  • International trade of used vehicles lacks regulation on emissions standards. This study shows that vehicles exported from Great Britain generate substantially higher carbon and pollution emissions than scrapped or on-road vehicles.

    • Saul Justin Newman
    • Kayla Schulte
    • Douglas R. Leasure
    Brief CommunicationOpen Access
  • City fiscal and budgetary decisions play an essential role in the success of urban climate action. Using US cities as a case study, this Article reveals the interrelationship between urban climate finance, action and justice, as well as promising pathways to transform municipal finance practices.

    • Claudia V. Diezmartínez
    • Anne G. Short Gianotti
    Article
  • Building additional water infrastructure such as wells is a key strategy to mitigate the impacts of severe droughts, particularly in drylands. This study shows, however, that this infrastructure can lead to loss of resilience under climate change due to erosion of traditional practices.

    • Luigi Piemontese
    • Stefano Terzi
    • Elena Bresci
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Whether methane emissions from the Boreal–Arctic region are increasing under climate change is unclear, but critical for determining climate feedbacks. This study uses observations and machine learning to show an increase in wetland methane emissions over the past two decades, with inter-annual variation.

    • Kunxiaojia Yuan
    • Fa Li
    • Qing Zhu
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Global support and cooperation are necessary for successful climate action. Large-scale representative survey results show that most of the population around the world is willing to support climate action, while a perception gap exists regarding other citizens’ intention to act.

    • Peter Andre
    • Teodora Boneva
    • Armin Falk
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Carbon sequestration in mangroves has been proposed as a mitigation strategy for climate change, yet the benefits of carbon burial may be offset by methane emissions. This study shows that methane offsets are small in saline and tropical mangroves, leading to greater net carbon sequestration.

    • Luiz C. Cotovicz Jr
    • Gwenaël Abril
    • Isaac R. Santos
    Article
  • Understanding temperature change since the pre-industrial period is essential for climate action. This study uses an ocean proxy to better quantify when anthropogenic warming began and estimates that global temperatures have already increased by 1.7 °C.

    • Malcolm T. McCulloch
    • Amos Winter
    • Julie A. Trotter
    ArticleOpen Access
  • The desire to justify carbon-emitting behaviours could influence people’s climate change beliefs due to motivated cognition. Based on a pre-registered survey experiment in the United States, the study, however, finds no evidence supporting the claim in explaining climate denial and environmentally harmful behaviour.

    • Lasse S. Stoetzer
    • Florian Zimmermann
    Registered Report
  • The authors estimate the global vulnerability of wheat crops to wheat blast under current and future climates. They show that warmer, more humid climates can increase wheat blast infection, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, subsequently reducing global wheat production.

    • Diego N. L. Pequeno
    • Thiago B. Ferreira
    • Senthold Asseng
    ArticleOpen Access
  • The authors investigate the impacts of excluding ecosystem data from Russian stations in the Arctic. While the current network of Arctic stations is already biased, the exclusion of Russian stations lowers representativeness and creates further biases that can rival end-of-century climate change shifts.

    • Efrén López-Blanco
    • Elmer Topp-Jørgensen
    • Niels M. Schmidt
    Brief CommunicationOpen Access