Climate change and more intensive wildfires could lead to greater deciduous tree cover in North America, with resultant biophysical cooling. Writing in this issue, Massey et al. find, however, that despite widespread landscape changes, there is in fact an overall small net decrease in deciduous fractions of forest composition over recent decades, and near-neutral changes in radiative forcing.

See Massey et al.

An energy transition is necessary for successful climate action, but it will also unavoidably change the employment landscape with job gains and losses. Writing in this issue, Xie et al. examine the potential challenges and opportunities for the future decarbonization of the US power system. They identify the distributional impact across different states and population groups.

See Xie et al. and News & Views by Muttitt and Gass

The Arctic is considered a source of atmospheric methane, but its methane budget is uncertain and sinks may be underestimated. In this issue, Voigt et al. demonstrate methane uptake in well-drained Arctic soils. This uptake is driven by soil moisture and carbon availability, and represents a potential increased methane sink with drier soils under climate change.

See Voigt et al. and Research Briefing

Ski tourism is highly vulnerable to climate change, as snow cover becomes less reliable. In this issue, François and co-authors show that climate change will substantially reduce snow supply for snow resorts across 28 European countries. While snowmaking can counter some of the melting, it comes with substantial additional water use and energy demand, potentially further fuelling warming.

See François et al. and News & Views Peeters

Coal-fired power plants are the dominant energy source in China’s electricity production mix, and retrofitting is essential to avoid stranded assets and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In this issue, Fan et al. report the development of a comprehensive and high-resolution framework of coal–biomass co-firing power plants with retrofitted carbon capture and storage (CBECCS) to evaluate their spatiotemporal deployment and mitigation potential in China, through matching of biomass sources, coal-fired plants and geological sites. They also discuss the spatial heterogeneity of the power plants and identify those regions that need to be prioritized.

See Fan et al. and Research Briefing

Genetic adaptation of populations may be key to surviving ongoing climate change, yet there are few examples of it having occurred in the wild. In this issue, Turbek et al. compared the genetic information of southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) museum specimens collected at the turn of the twentieth century with contemporary populations. They show that mixing with nearby populations increased the adaptive potential of the San Diego population, which has also undergone genetic shifts consistent with adaptation to changing climate in the region.

See Turbek et al. and News & Views Gómez-Bahamón

Altering people’s climate perceptions has proven to be difficult, even though it is essential to achieving effective climate action. In this issue, Cerf et al. report field experiments that examined whether prediction markets, in which participants bet on climate outcomes, could provide a way to influence attitudes about climate change, as well as to act as a poll to inform researchers and policymakers.

See Cerf et al. and Policy Brief

Northern peatlands are carbon-dense ecosystems, yet the future of their carbon stocks is uncertain. In this issue, Wilkinson et al. used data from natural, degraded and restored peatlands in boreal and temperate regions to show that wildfire reduced peatland carbon uptake and enhanced emissions from degraded peatlands. Without active peatland restoration, climate change will accelerate peatland emissions and weaken the resilience of this carbon sink.

See Wilkinson et al.

Climate-change-associated ocean deoxygenation is a growing threat to marine ecosystems, including tropical coral reefs. In this issue, Pezner et al. use data from 32 coral reef habitats to demonstrate that hypoxic (low oxygen) conditions are already occurring on tropical coral reefs and that hypoxic event intensity, duration and severity will increase under continued ocean warming.

See Pezner et al.

The food sector is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. However, estimates of this sector’s global warming potential based on granular data, such as individual gas species or food items, are lacking. In this issue, Ivanovich et al. show that global food consumption alone could add nearly 1 °C to warming by the end of this century, which is mostly driven by foods that are high sources of methane.

See Ivanovich et al.

In January 2022, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption in the Pacific Ocean caused a tsunami and a large plume of ash to rise into the atmosphere. In this issue, Jenkins et al. show that this eruption could cause some additional short-term warming over the next few years, but mitigation of human-induced emissions is still key in order to stay below temperature thresholds.

See Jenkins et al.

It has been argued that climate change can cause abrupt transitions in parts of the Earth system, so-called tipping elements. In this issue, we feature two articles, by Liu et al. and Wunderling et al., that use network models to assess how these tipping elements could interact, indicating risks that tipping in one component could lead to further abrupt changes in other regions.

See Liu et al. and Wunderling et al.