Research articles

A consumption-based carbon accounting method that takes into account how national policy changes affect emissions redraws the global emissions map.

Our knowledge of long-term changes in vegetation activity is incomplete, hindering understanding of Earth system dynamics. A comprehensive global assessment of vegetation phenology now shows that vegetation activity changed severely on 54% of the global land surface between 1981 and 2012.

Stomatal conductance is a land-surface attribute that links the water and carbon cycles. Analysis of a global database covering a wide range of plant functional types and biomes now provides a framework for predicting the behaviour of stomatal conductance that can be applied to model ecosystem productivity, energy balance and ecohydrological processes in a changing climate.

The probability of a hiatus in global warming is calculated, with a 10-year event having a probability of ∼10%, but a 20-year event less than 1%. The current 15-year event is found to have up to 25% chance of continuing for another 5 years.

Analysis of a 6,750-year coral core from Pacific Panamá identifies the environmental conditions associated with abrupt reef shutdown.

Policies designed to encourage adaptation to climate change may conflict with regulation aimed at protecting environmental quality. This paper analyses the trade-offs between two fundamental ecosystem services that will be impacted by climate change: provisioning services derived from agriculture and regulating services in the form of freshwater quality.

Thermal stresses associated with climate change have contributed to the spread of white-band disease in important reef-building corals in the Caribbean.

Over-reliance on charcoal sourced from native forests rather than plantations doubled CO₂ emissions from Brazil’s steel industry between 2000 and 2007.

Climate models predict an increase in intense rainfall events due to a warmer atmosphere retaining more moisture. This study looks at observations from the central USA and reports that there has been an increase in the frequency of flooding, but little evidence for larger flood peaks.

This study investigates the relative contributions to Arctic warming from natural and anthropogenic forcers—greenhouse gases and aerosols. About 60% of greenhouse-gas warming is found to be offset by other anthropogenic forcings, which is greater than observed on a global scale.

Deployment of bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration would help western North America achieve a carbon-negative power system by 2050.

Despite the ‘pause’ in surface warming, results from the global Argo programme (2006–present) show that the heat content of the oceans is increasing.

A model shows how climate targets could be met by 2030 through a politically feasible mix of carbon pricing, low-carbon technology, and energy policy.

Consensus about the reality of climate change is growing, but the public is still divided between those who believe in its human causes and those who do not. Now research shows that such division can be explained in terms of a socio-political conflict between these opposing groups. Efforts to build support for mitigation policies should include approaches that transform intergroup relations.

Potential interchange between north Atlantic and north Pacific fish communities is modelled for future Arctic conditions under climate change.

Extreme La Niña events occur when cold sea surface temperatures across the central Pacific Ocean create a strong temperature gradient to the Maritime continent in the west. This work projects an increase in frequency of La Niña events due to faster land warming relative to the ocean, and a greater chance of them occurring following extreme El Niño events.

Knowledge of how climate change will affect temperatures on a regional scale is needed for effective planning and preparedness. This study uses five climate models to investigate regional warming. It shows that warming is nonlinear for doublings of atmospheric CO₂ and that nonlinearity increases with higher CO₂ concentrations.

Populations may exhibit different sensitivity to climate change depending on where they occur in their climatic range. Experimental results now show that tree species growing nearest to their warm range limit exhibit reduced net photosynthesis and growth in response to warming, whereas those near their cold range limit show improved functioning.

Integrated assessment models estimate the impact of climate change on current economic output, but not on its rate of growth. This study modifies a standard integrated assessment model to allow climate change to directly affect gross GDP growth rates. Results show that climate change significantly slows down GDP growth in poor regions but not in rich countries, with implications for the level of near-term mitigation.

Controlled embankment breaches could reduce flood risk for the Ganges–Brahmaputra tidal delta plain as sea level rises.