Volume 14 Issue 9, September 2024

US healthcare contributes 8.5% of national greenhouse gas emissions, but its policies to guide mitigation and waste reduction are underdeveloped. We recommend national policies to streamline the adoption of best practices, address implementation challenges to achieve net-zero goals and serve as useful exemplars for other nations.

Large animal conservation and rewilding are increasingly considered to be viable climate mitigation strategies. We argue that overstating animal roles in carbon capture may hinder, rather than facilitate, effective climate mitigation and conservation efforts.

Technological feasibility and project-level economic costs are only two important considerations in previous estimations of climate mitigation costs. Now a study shows how political and institutional constraints matter too.

The erosion of melting permafrost in the coastal Arctic Ocean is projected to lower the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, triggering unexpected carbon–climate feedbacks in the Arctic region.

Eliminating government infrastructure spending, public disaster insurance and post-disaster aid in high-risk coastal areas reduces development there and leads to lower flood damages and higher property values on nearby lands. The strategic withdrawal of development incentives could be used more broadly to reduce climate risks.

The greenhouse gas abatement costs for two forest restoration methods — natural regeneration and plantations — are estimated by integrating observations on the costs of reforestation projects with other biophysical and economic data. This analysis reveals that a mix of reforestation methods offers greater potential to mitigate climate change at low cost than previously estimated.

Analysis of high-resolution climate models reveals a substantial reduction in global oceanic kinetic energy under global warming. This reduction of oceanic kinetic energy is mainly due to weakened mesoscale eddies in the deep ocean.

A free-air CO₂ enrichment experiment exposed a 180-year-old oak forest in central England to elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentrations for 7 years. Increases in wood production and net primary productivity were observed in response to this CO₂ enrichment, contrary to expectations that such responses are limited to young tree plantations.

The decarbonization of energy systems needs to be integrated with electric grid infrastructure, yet combined climate–grid studies are lacking. This Perspective discusses electric grid research that should be prioritized, and how researchers from different communities could better collaborate.

Machine learning methods allow for advances in many aspects of climate research. In this Perspective, the authors give an overview of recent progress and remaining challenges to harvest the full potential of machine learning methods.

Climate change is increasing ocean temperature, particularly in the surface waters. Here the authors show that accelerated surface warming in the North Pacific in the past decade is driven by shoaling of the ocean mixed layer with some dampening by increased latent heat loss from the ocean.

The authors link a recent collapse of a commercially valuable snow crab stock to borealization of the Bering Sea that is >98% likely to have been human induced.

Adaptation requires limiting exposure to climate threats, and policies should focus on curbing development in risky areas. By examining the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, researchers demonstrate that removing financial incentives for development can lower climate risks and damages.

Food choices greatly affect global GHG emissions, but the contributions of different groups, across or within countries, are highly unequal. Adopting the global planetary health diet could yield co-benefits by reducing both emissions and inequality among populations.

The Paris Agreement requires reaching net-zero carbon emissions, but a debate exists on how fast this can be achieved. This study establishes scenarios with different feasibility constraints and finds that the institutional dimension plays a key role for determining the feasible peak temperature.

Studies show climate change will alter the ocean, with increased surface layer kinetic energy. This work, using full ocean depth and high-resolution projections with a high-emission scenario, shows an overall ocean kinetic energy decrease due to a calmer deep ocean with weaker mesoscale eddies.

The rate of Arctic coastal permafrost erosion is predicted to increase up to 3 times by 2100. Here the authors model how organic matter released from coastal permafrost erosion will reduce the CO₂ sink capacity of the Arctic Ocean and lead to positive feedbacks on climate.

Protection afforded by inorganic minerals is assumed to make mineral-associated organic carbon less susceptible to loss under climate change than particulate organic carbon. However, a global study of soil organic carbon from drylands suggests that this is not the case.

While experiments in younger trees support increased production under higher CO₂, it is unclear whether more mature trees can respond similarly. Here, the authors show increased production of biomass in a 180-year-old Quercus robur L. woodland under 7 years of free-air CO₂ enrichment (FACE).

The authors demonstrate that integrating phenology data with evolutionary relationships can improve predictions of change. They show how including phylogenetic structure in plant responses to temperature produces better estimates and reveals markedly different responses across species.

It is important to understand the cost-effectiveness of natural regeneration and plantations, which are common reforestation methods for mitigation. The authors estimate and map abatement costs for the two approaches across low- and mid-income countries, helping to guide reforestation initiatives.