Volume 11 Issue 7, July 2021

Success in STEM disciplines and careers is impacted by feelings of belonging, representation and safety. To celebrate Pride Month during June 2021, Nature Climate Change asked scientists and faculty members about their experience in research and academia, and their thoughts on making lasting, inclusive change.

Increasing Republicans’ belief in climate change is challenging yet needed for broader support of policy. Targeted advertisements featuring Republican voices may be a solution to increase their understanding of climate change.

The role of peatlands in future climate change is uncertain because peat-derived greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to predict. Now research shows that reduced methane emissions from drying peatlands are likely to be outweighed by increasing CO₂ emissions.

Uncertainty in estimates of the economic impacts of climate change makes it difficult to evaluate the benefits of mitigation. This Perspective reviews methods for determining economic damages from biophysical impacts, highlights critical gaps and suggests priorities moving forward.

Climate change communication is more likely to persuade when the message and the messenger resonate with the audience’s values and identities. A campaign field experiment testing online messages tailored to US Republicans increased their climate change beliefs, risk perceptions and issue importance.

Finance flows consistent with low-emission pathways and resilient development are central to the Paris Agreement, yet confusion remains about Article 2.1(c). Clarity is needed, particularly of its relationship with climate finance, to differentiate responsibility and enable suitable monitoring.

High-tide flooding (HTF) is more likely with sea-level rise. Projections along the United States coastline, considering likely sea-level rise and tidal amplitude cycles, suggest increased HTF event clustering in time and rapid increases in annual HTF frequency as early as the mid-2030s.

High-mountain Asia streamflow is strongly impacted by snow and glacier melt. A regional model, combined with observations and climate projections, shows snowmelt decreased during 1979–2019 and was more dominant than glacier melt, and projections suggest declines that vary by river basin.

Global humidity increases with warming, but the United States Southwest has shown summer decreases since 1950, with the largest declines on hot days attributed to decreased soil moisture, not atmospheric moisture transport. Projections are uncertain due to model spread in precipitation trends.

Tropical rainfall exhibits cyclic north–south migration tracking the warmer hemisphere, and climate warming will delay this seasonally over land. Climate models and gridded precipitation data suggest a delay of about 4 days since 1979 is now detectable over Northern Hemisphere land and the Sahel.

It is commonly assumed that the climate response to CO₂ removals is equal in magnitude and opposite in sign to the response to CO₂ emissions. The response, however, is asymmetric, meaning that offsetting CO₂ emissions with equal removals could lead to a different climate than avoiding the emissions.

The climate impact of water-table drawdown in peatlands is unclear as carbon dioxide emissions increase and methane emissions decrease due to drying. This study shows decreasing water-table depth results in net greenhouse gas emissions from global peatlands, despite reducing methane emissions.

Understanding the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration is critical to determining soil carbon dynamics under climate change. Spatial heterogeneity in controls highlights the importance of interactions between vegetation, soil and climate in driving the response of respiration to warming.

The authors assess the productivity of conservation agriculture systems for eight major crops under current and future climate using a global-scale probabilistic machine-learning approach, revealing substantial differences in yield gain probabilities across crop type, management practice, climate zone and geography.