Volume 1 Issue 7, October 2011

The human population will soon reach seven billion. Scientists must detail demographic change and its interaction with the climate at a scale that enables policymakers to plan effectively.

Humans rely on the social tool of reputation in many of their relationships; now its power should be deployed at the intergovernment level to help provoke action on climate change.

As the emerging field of geoengineering gains momentum, researchers must question the motivations behind their experiments and maintain an open dialogue with the public.

Studies are increasingly linking times of bad weather to violence, civil conflict and even war. Should we be worried about future fights spurred by climate change?

This autumn, the world's human population will pass seven billion. Researchers are trying to identify the geographic hotspots where people and climate change are on a collision course.

As the first of the world's ecosystems faces extermination at our hands, coral reef ecologist Peter Sale — Assistant Director of the Institute of Water, Environment and Health at the United Nations University in Ontario, Canada, and author of Our Dying Planet (published this autumn) — talks to Nature Climate Change.

With carbon capture and storage technology still in its infancy, there's a danger that enthusiasm for renewables will edge out CCS before it can prove itself, reports Sonja van Renssen.

The rules guiding the third round of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme are about to be formally approved. Anna Petherick looks at how well they have set up the system until 2020.

Forests take up and store large quantities of carbon. An analysis of inventory data from across the globe suggests that temperate and boreal forests accounted for the majority of the terrestrial carbon sink over the past two decades.

The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is a pressing challenge for China. Now research demonstrates that China's local energy-related emission patterns are important for setting effective greenhouse-gas abatement policies.

The response of malaria distribution to climate change has been debated. Statistical models suggest that by 2050, increasing national wealth will limit the expansion of malaria risk caused by rising temperatures.

Deciding where and how to allocate scarce funding to conserve plants and animals in a changing and uncertain climate is a thorny issue. Numerical modelling identifies the most effective mix of conservation measures based on the level of expenditure available.

Research into climate change mitigation and adaptation has been hindered by a disconnect between climate science and socio-economic studies. The development of a new set of climate forcing pathways could prove to be the first step towards integrated analyses of policies and impacts.

Little information exists to guide conservation planning under climate change uncertainty. Now a study combines ecological predictions with an economic decision framework to investigate strategies to minimize extinction risk in one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems—the South African fynbos. The research finds that the best conservation options vary nonlinearly with available budget.

In some decades, such as 2000–2009, the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series has shown a flat or slightly negative trend. A modelling study provides evidence that heat uptake by the deep ocean may cause these hiatus periods and may be linked to La Niña-like conditions.

The West Antarctic Peninsula has experienced rapid warming in recent decades. One of the effects has been a loss of the ‘fast-ice’ skin, or frozen layer, that forms on the sea surface each winter and reduces seabed scouring. A study now links increased seabed scouring over the past 25 years to higher benthic mortality, with implications for the region’s biodiversity.

Veterinary scientist Alexander Travis collaborated with economists and conservation biologists to assess how a new model promoting sustainable agriculture helps Zambian communities address climate change, protect biodiversity and increase income.