Research articles

Using 22 years of demographic data from wild meekats in the Kalahari, the authors project group persistence in the context of weather extremes and outbreaks of end-stage tuberculosis. They find that synergistic climate–disease effects on key demographic rates may exacerbate future disease impacts.

Exposure to extreme weather events could increase environmental concerns and support for Green parties. With high-resolution data across European countries, the authors demonstrate the existence of such effect, then further discuss the heterogeneity and possible mechanisms.

The co-occurrence of drought across different regions will have far-reaching effects on global agriculture and food supply. Model projections show an increased likelihood of these compound droughts under a high-emissions scenario, with a ninefold increase of farm land and population exposure.

Changes to tropical cyclones will increase the risk to US coastlines. Under a high-emissions scenario, the joint hazards of extreme rainfall and storm tides increase, with the largest contribution being from increasing cyclone intensity and decreasing translation speed, rather than sea-level rise.

The authors use central European observations of leaf unfolding date (LUD) for six tree species. They demonstrate antagonistic and heterogenous effects of winter chilling and spring thermal accumulation on leaf phenology, with the latter having greater explanation (61% versus 39%) for LUD advancement.

Understanding the impact of future marine heatwaves on coastal ecosystems, which account for most of global fishery catches, is limited due to low-resolution models. Use of high-resolution models shows increases in intensity, and the number of days, of marine heatwaves, endangering resident species.

The authors link the effects of pCO₂ on marine invertebrates to the localized pCO₂ conditions of their coastal habitats. They show that responses depend on the deviation from the locally experienced upper pCO₂ level, highlighting the importance of small-scale variability and adaptation.

Sea surface temperature variability of the equatorial Pacific Ocean dictates the strength of El Niño–Southern Oscillation events. CMIP6 models under four IPCC emission scenarios show increased variability in the 21st century from the 20th century.

Global climate change mitigation policies aim to reduce emissions, but can have unintended local consequences. Mitigation in the land sector could impact local water resources, along with food and energy in the Zambezi Watercourse and similar river basins.

Climate change is increasing flood risk, yet models based on historical data alone cannot capture the impact. Granular mapping of national flood risk shows that losses caused by flooding in the United States will increase substantially by 2050 and disproportionately burden less advantaged communities.

Carbon tax rebate programmes have received increasing interest with the potential to raise public support for carbon pricing. However, results of online surveys based on existing real-world policies demonstrate such programmes have had limited political impacts to date.

The authors incorporate intraspecific variation into a dynamic range model to predict the consequences of twenty-first century warming on six European alpine plants. As well as overall range loss, their model predicts a decrease in the frequency of warm-adapted haplotypes in five out of six species.

Land degradation in drylands impacts livelihoods and productivity and is affected by biocrusts that stabilize the soil. Long-term experiments show that biocrust recovery from disturbance is faster than expected, but stopped under warming, with warming alone causing loss of biocrust groups and soil stability.

Antarctic sea ice extent is thought to be stable or increasing, in contrast to Arctic declines. Estimates of seasonal Antarctic sea ice from reconstructions show that increases are confined to the satellite era, post-1979, with substantial decreases in the early and mid-twentieth century.