Volume 4 Issue 10, October 2014

An understanding of the personal frameworks we use to absorb and contextualize climate change information might help us to have more fruitful exchanges about climate policy.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports provide the most reliable and robust assessment of understanding of the climate system. However, they do not include practitioner-based evidence, which is fundamental to make the reports a relevant source of information for decision-making.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, its credibility as a climate change mitigation option is unproven and its widespread deployment in climate stabilization scenarios might become a dangerous distraction.

For the first time since the failed 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, momentum is building towards a new climate agreement. But expectations must be kept in check, and making expert advice more useful to the process will require engaging the social sciences more fully.

Future Earth is a new international research initiative that aims to better prepare society for global environmental change and improve global sustainability. Nature Climate Change spoke to James Syvitski, Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, one of the member organizations.

The Green Climate Fund needs more contributions if it is to become the world's main source of climate finance. Anna Petherick considers an upcoming effort to make that happen.

Climate change mitigation can benefit human health by reducing air pollution. Research now shows that the economic value of health improvements can substantially outweigh mitigation costs, and that more flexible policies could have higher benefits.

Low oxygen levels in tropical oceans shape marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry, and climate change is expected to expand these regions. Now a study indicates that regional dynamics control tropical oxygen trends, bucking projected global reductions in ocean oxygen.

Land-use change from pre-industrial times to the present day has altered Earth's surface energy balance. Until now, the role of volatile hydrocarbons, emitted by plants, in controlling this balance and driving climate change has been overlooked.

The development and implementation of measures aimed at climate change adaptation face many obstacles. This Perspective takes stock of current research on barriers to adaptation, and argues that more comparative research is now required to increase our in-depth understanding of barriers and to develop strategies to overcome them.

Future cumulative CO₂ emissions consistent with a given warming limit are a finite common global resource that countries need to share — a carbon quota. Strategies to share a quota consistent with a 2 °C warming limit range from keeping the present distribution to reaching an equal per-capita distribution of cumulative emissions. This Perspective shows that a blend of these endpoints is the most viable solution.

Climate change will impact ocean plankton through changing resources, temperatures and ocean physical processes. This study discusses how climate change could affect the relationship between predators and prey, what it means for population abundunce — whether rapid cell division to form bloom events will occur — and how it could influence the ocean ecosystem.

The Pacific trade winds have strengthened since the late 1990s, and there has been related strengthening of the atmospheric Walker circulation. Although the impacts of these changes are becoming known, their cause has not been identified. This study, using observations and models, shows that warming of the Atlantic sea surface and corresponding displacement of atmospheric pressure centres are key drivers.

The role of natural decadal variability in the global warming slowdown has been hinted at, but not quantified. This study looks at decadal average surface temperature anomalies for the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The results show that decadal variability is a large contributor to temperature trends, but its influence has decreased, from 47% in the 1980s to 27% in the 2000s, as anthropogenic warming has increased.

Accounting for natural decadal variability allows better prediction of short-term trends. This study looks at the ability of individual models, which are in phase with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, to simulate the current global warming slowdown. The authors highlight that the current trend could have been predicted in the 1990s with this technique and the need for consistent hindcast skills to allow reliable decadal predictions.

Whether rising temperatures will reduce global soil carbon stocks and enhance climate warming remains uncertain, in part because of a poor understanding of the mechanisms of soil microbial response to warming. Research now shows that microbial growth efficiency is insensitive to temperature change and that the response of microbial respiration to warming is driven by accelerated microbial turnover and enzyme kinetics.

The global radiative effects of historical cropland expansion are typically estimated as the trade-off between reduced land carbon storage (causing warming) and increased surface albedo (causing cooling). Now research shows that the net atmospheric chemistry effect (−0.11 ± 0.17 W m⁻²) is of comparable magnitude and should also be taken into account.

The slowdown in global warming has been identified predominately through changes in the Pacific Ocean. This study investigates the teleconnections and seasonal changes associated with the slowdown. The present forcing from the tropical Pacific is found to produce many of the changes in atmospheric circulation, for example, changes in the upper troposphere wave patterns increase the chances of cold European winters.

The near-term costs of greenhouse-gas emissions reduction may be offset by the air-quality co-benefits of mitigation policies. Now research estimates the monetary value of the human health benefits from air-quality improvements due to US carbon abatement policies, and finds that the benefits can offset 26–1,050% of the cost of mitigation policies.

With food demand set to double, agriculture will account for a larger proportion of total future greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet global food production and land-use scenarios have received relatively little attention in relation to climate change mitigation. This study shows that to avoid dangerous climate change, we must address food demand, as sustainable intensification of agriculture does not, in itself, suffice.

The countdown is on to reach a legally binding agreement between all nations on actions to mitigate climate change. In 2011, the United Nations Climate Change Conference agreed that such a deal will be in place by 2015, and implemented by 2020. In this joint web Focus, timed to coincide with the New York Climate Summit, Nature GeoscienceandNature Climate Changepresent a series of overview articles and opinion pieces that take stock of emissions and climate change uncertainties and discuss potential ways forward.