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Land surface models do not usually account for soil movement effects on soil organic carbon (SOC). Research utilizing a SOC cycling scheme modified to include soil redistribution now shows potential for reducing uncertainty in SOC flux estimates.
Regional climate models for the Persian (Arabian) Gulf indicate that extremes of wet-bulb temperature—a measure of temperature and humidity—may exceed a critical threshold for human tolerance with implications for the future human habitability of the region.
Remotely sensed vegetation and water-balance measurements from 190 river basins across Australia show that sub-humid and semi-arid basins are ‘greening’—as expected under CO2 fertilization—increasing water consumption and reducing streamflow.
Wildfires play an important role in boreal forest carbon cycling but short records make projections difficult. Research utilizing palaeoenvironmental data now points to increasing Alaskan boreal forest fire activity in response to warming.
Ice shelves lose ice through both melting caused by warm marine waters and instability. For the Filchner–Ronne ice shelf, West Antarctica, ice loss is dominated by melt due to warm water intrusion, rather than marine ice-sheet instability.
Estimates of global forest area vary widely; this discrepancy is now shown to originate primarily from ambiguity in the definition of ‘forest’. Monitoring and reporting should focus on measures more directly relevant to ecosystem function.
Experiments show that providing people with information about the prevalence of natural disasters can counterintuitively increase the appeal of disaster-prone regions, suggesting that isolated information is not enough to encourage risk-averse activity.
This study finds significant positive associations between the diversity of soil fungi and surface air temperature in the maritime Antarctic, one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth.
This study quantifies a direct link between global greenhouse gas emissions and rainfall changes over tropical land, and identifies regions most at risk of large changes, such as southern and east Africa.
Emphasizing the co-benefits of climate policy can motivate action across ideological, age and gender divides regardless of existing levels of concern about climate change, as global survey data shows.
Landfill disposal of solid waste is one of the largest sources of methane emissions. Analysis of gas collection systems at more than 850 US landfill sites suggests that emissions have been underestimated by as much as 140 million tonnes per year.
The economic impact of carbon dioxide and methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost due to global warming could be enormous unless action is taken to minimize the scale of the release.
Contributions to historical climate change vary substantially among nations. A new method of quantifying historical inequalities using carbon and climate debts can inform discussions about responsibility for cutting emissions in the future.
Improved mechanistic understanding of greenhouse gas-induced change in Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation reveals a tendency of models to overestimate future mid-winter rainfall along the North American west coast.
The combination of rising CO2 and temperature is expected to increase primary production in the Arctic Ocean. This study uses observations and experimental data from the European sector to show that primary productivity may double in the spring.
Ocean warming will cause widespread changes in species richness and assemblage composition over coming decades, with important implications for both conservation management and international ocean governance.
Corporations need to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions to help avoid dangerous climate change. A new method for setting emissions targets, which can also be used to assess corporate climate performance and increase accountability, is proposed.
Emissions analysis shows that projects abating two greenhouse gases in Russia under the Joint Implementation mechanism increased waste gas generation, suggesting that plant operators may have generated more waste gas while increasing credit revenues.
A newly developed modelling approach reveals how future global climate change might severely dampen economic growth in poorer countries, while increasing the variability of growth in both poorer and richer countries.
Climatic extremes can dramatically impact biodiversity. Now, research using comprehensive data on British butterflies reveals how drought and changes in habitat (area and fragmentation) interact to affect population stability.