Volume 13 Issue 1, January 2023

A better understanding of the role of language in societies is required — for example, whether adoption of emergency terminology could impact views and practices. For both researchers and communication strategists, a thorough consideration of the interconnections between language and social contexts is crucial.

Efforts to achieve emissions targets often fall short. Science can help meet the targets by assessing the feasibility of initiatives proposed to reach them, focusing on issues of adoption and implementation and the behavioural plasticity of intended responders.

Considering cryosphere and warming uncertainties together implies drastically increased risk of threshold crossing in the cryosphere, even under lower-emission pathways, and underscores the need to halve emissions by 2030 in line with the 1.5 °C limit of the Paris Agreement.

Partisan politics is characterized by pejorative generalizations across opposition groups, but, similar to the groups being derogated, not all partisans are the same. Understanding the nature of partisan opposition to climate policy may help promote bipartisan projects to mitigate climate change.

Tipping elements are regions that are vulnerable to climate change and capable of sudden drastic changes. Now research establishes long-distance linkages between tipping elements, with the network analysis offering insights into their interactions on a global scale.

High uncertainty exists in the projected climate change impacts on the Nile’s economies and water-dependent sectors. Under these uncertainties, managing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam cooperatively and adaptively can produce economic and water management benefits for Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

A meta-analysis reveals that a steep and immediate uptick in investment in climate-relevant infrastructure is needed to reach net-zero pathways in Europe. The investment needs are further intensified by the ambition to become independent from Russian gas imports and highlight the importance of redirecting finance flows with adequate green financial policies.

With the development of carbon emission allowance markets worldwide, concerns that they could attract excessive speculation have also grown. This Perspective discusses the potential scale and impacts of financial trading, as well as approaches to improve carbon market monitoring and oversight.

Partisan polarization plays a key role in shaping climate action in the United States. By identifying positive and negative elements within party identities, the authors expand conceptualizations of Republican-Democrat to explore how partisanship relates to policy support and behavioural intentions.

Rapid growth of AI could lead to more inventions and innovations in climate actions, yet evidence of this connection is lacking. The use of large-scale patent data and automated techniques helps elucidate trends in climate-related artificial intelligence inventions for different technology areas.

The Nile River system is faced with challenges including increasing water demands, political tensions, and future climate and socio-economic uncertainties. Cooperative adaptive management can help increase synergies, balance trade-offs and bring various benefits to riparian countries.

Urgent and targeted financial investments are essential for reaching the net zero target in Europe, while a comprehensive mapping is still missing. This meta-analysis demonstrates the necessity of rapid increase in investments and displays the potential patterns across various sectors.

Teleconnections between tipping elements in the Earth system are unclear. Here the authors use a climate network approach to link the Amazon Rainforest Area and the Tibetan Plateau, and show that current snow cover loss on the Tibetan Plateau is an early warning signal for an approaching tipping point.

Temporarily exceeding temperature targets could increase risk of crossing tipping-element thresholds. This study considers a range of overshoot scenarios in a stylized network model and shows that overshoots increase tipping risks by up to 72% compared with remaining within targets.

Ocean carbon uptake could be affected by changes in circulation. This modelling study shows that meridional overturning circulation slowdown increases deep-ocean storage via the biological pump but decreases carbon uptake via the solubility pump, with a net reduction in oceanic uptake of CO₂.

The authors conduct a national inventory on individual tree carbon stocks in Rwanda using aerial imagery and deep learning. Most mapped trees are located in farmlands; new methods allow partitioning to any landscape categories, effective planning and optimization of carbon sequestration and the economic benefits of trees.

The socio-political factors influencing societal responses to drought are often overlooked in risk assessments. Here, a social-environmental scenario that bridges natural and social sciences is used to analyse responses of a Southern African city to unprecedented drought.