Volume 13 Issue 2, February 2023

Despite the trajectory towards climate catastrophe, governments are failing to take disability-inclusive climate action. We discuss how the scientific community could advance and hasten the development of disability-inclusive climate resilience, and which areas should be prioritized.

Global lessons are emerging on the enablers of effective knowledge co-production. An inclusion of greater reflexivity, which incorporates broad socio-political perspectives and feedbacks, could be the next frontier for the integrated assessment communities.

When considering how ecosystems will react to climate change the importance of dead matter has been largely overlooked. Here we discuss why dead material is integral to ecosystem form and function, and why its persistence or degradation must be explicitly included in models considering ecosystem futures in a rapidly changing world.

Modelled low-carbon pathways rarely incorporate processes reflecting social and political realities. Now two studies rise to this challenge by exploring the implications of a landmark initiative to phase out coal, showing that we need greater political ambition for faster transitions to keep a 1.5 °C outcome in sight.

Floating ice shelves that fringe Antarctica are at risk from warming ocean water and from above by warming air. Work now reveals that snow accumulation on ice shelves can minimize surface melt and ponding, but that future atmospheric warming will likely overpower this protection that snow provides, leaving ice shelves vulnerable to collapse.

Temperature affects both erosion and carbon cycling in the soil. Research now shows that under warming, the replacement of soil organic carbon lost by erosion increases but the preservation of deposited carbon decreases, with an overall rise in the cropland carbon sink.

A changing climate is altering vegetation phenology and probably impacts drought frequency and severity. Changes in vegetation phenology have some unexpected consequences on the trajectories of drought recovery.

Statistical analysis of a climate institutions dataset has identified four national models of climate governance used across countries with high emissions. These models are associated with the climate policy ambition and performance of each country. This analysis reveals that the effectiveness of climate policymaking could be strengthened by building climate institutions.

The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai eruption in January 2022 injected large amounts of water vapour into the atmosphere. Here, the authors show that this can cause additional warming over the next years, which increases the likelihood of exceeding 1.5 °C warming over a short time period.

Coal phase-out is an irreplaceable part of the overall mitigation effort and bottom-up momentum has emerged to accelerate the process. With a new approach considering political feasibility, this research shows the potential spillover risks that may undermine the sectoral actions.

While important, coal power phase-out in models may be faster than is socio-politically feasible in highly coal-dependent countries. This research shows that reaching the temperature target with these constraints requires faster decline in emissions from the global North and in global oil and gas production.

Oceanic eastern boundary currents are regions with strong upwelling, which is expected to intensify with global warming through enhanced winds. Here the authors show that geostrophic flow dominates over wind effects on long-term upwelling changes for the major eastern boundary upwelling systems.

Snow is an important component of the environment and climate of mountain regions, but providing a long-term historical context for recent changes is challenging. Here, the authors use ring-width data from shrubs to show that recent snow loss in the central Alps is unprecedented over the last 600 years.

Melt ponding is an important process for the stability of ice shelves. Here the authors estimate the temperature thresholds at which melt ponding emerges over Antarctic ice shelves and find that cold and dry ice shelves are more vulnerable to melt ponding than expected.

How the spatial structures of large storms will change is not well resolved in most climate models. Here the authors use high-resolution models to show that winter storms become sharper under warming because precipitation in the storm centre increases more strongly than the storm area.

The authors demonstrate the interacting impacts of warming on erosion and soil organic carbon (SOC) cycling. Under warming, they project increased replacement of SOC lost by erosion but lower preservation of deposited SOC, with an overall increase in the global C sink by erosion.

The authors reveal complex drought recovery responses to phenology shifts, in that early spring can shorten or lengthen recovery, while delayed spring following drought events delays it. These effects suggest a need to incorporate phenology aspects into resilience models.

National climate institutions could greatly impact the process of policy design and implementation. This analysis identifies four models of climate governance for major emitters, estimates their policy ambitions and performance, then shows how they are related to macro features.

With increasing river flooding risk caused by climate and socioeconomic changes, different adaptation strategies can help to improve the resilience to the threat. This Analysis compares four major options, then examines the potential benefits and costs across Europe under different scenarios.