Volume 4 Issue 11, November 2014

Institutions need to adapt to ensure coequal social and biophysical global change science.

Policymakers are creating mechanisms to help developing countries cope with loss and damage from climate change, but the negotiations are largely neglecting scientific questions about what the impacts of climate change actually are.

The China–Russia gas deal will play an important role in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution in China.

China should take more active participation in a prospective agreement on the global phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons.

Groundwater depletion the world over poses a far greater threat to global water security than is currently acknowledged.

Adaptation of water resources management will help communities adjust to changes in the water cycle expected with climate change, but it can't be fixed by innovations alone.

The use of biomass for energy generation is helping European Union countries meet their renewable energy and emissions targets, but demand from other sectors means policy needs to be developed for maximum climate benefits, reports Sonja van Renssen.

Many international river basins are suffering from climate-driven impacts, with implications for national security. Now, research highlights the need to analyse shifting river boundaries to better understand potential socio-political threats.

In recent decades, over nine-tenths of Earth's top-of-the-atmosphere energy imbalance has been stored in the ocean, which is rising as it warms. Combining satellite sea-level data with ocean mass data or model results allows insights into ocean warming.

Natural climate variability complicates the detection of anthropogenic climate change in the twenty-first century. Now, research shows that evidence of human influence first emerges from sea level rather than temperature rise.

The regular beat of the seasons and between day and night are far more noticeable than recent increases in surface temperature. Researchers now show that these rhythms are changing in a way that parallels the pattern of long-term surface warming.

Energy use is crucial for economic development, but drives greenhouse-gas emissions. A low-carbon growth path requires a radical transformation of the energy system that would be too costly for developing nations. Efforts should focus on feasible mitigation actions such as fossil fuel subsidy reform, decentralized access to modern energy and fuel switching in the power sector.

The authors of this Review argue that changes to carbonate dissolution in an acidifying ocean, which have been relatively overlooked, are potentially more important than calcification for the future accretion and survival of coral reef ecosystems.

In the United States, a key goal of states’ climate change policies is to reduce CO₂ emissions from electric power plants. This study shows that specific policy packages significantly shape CO₂ emissions from individual power plants.

The characteristics of the global mean temperature response to bioenergy production systems is explored under different assumptions and emissions scenarios in the context of the 2 °C target.

An analysis of a high-resolution global temperature data set shows that temperate and polar regions are becoming more tropical in their temperature variation profiles, potentially affecting organisms and impacting human agriculture and health.

The glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula are experiencing faster melt because of increased temperatures; however, changes in precipitation may offset some of the future melt. This study looks at the relationship between glaciers and climate and finds a representative glacier is more sensitive to temperature change, rather than precipitation change. This indicates that precipitation increases are unlikely to counter the increased melt from warming.

The ocean stores over 90% of the heat due to anthropogenic warming. This study uses satellite observations and climate models to investigate the warming of the upper ocean (0–700 m) and finds that warming is biased low, most likely because of poor Southern Hemisphere sampling. Applying adjustments results in a large increase in upper-ocean heat content estimates.

This work investigates when the anthropogenic signal in regional sea-level rise will emerge from natural variability. Considering thermal expansion and changes in density and circulation, 50% of the global ocean will show an anthropogenic signal by the early-to-mid 2040s, whereas when all variables are considered, the anthropogenic signal will emerge in over 50% of the global ocean by 2020. This is substantially earlier than for surface air temperature and has little dependence on emissions scenarios.

This study shows that the biological impact and footprint of a leakage from a controlled sub-seabed release of carbon dioxide is confined to a few tens of metres, and identifies monitoring strategies for full-scale carbon storage operations.

A systematic analysis shows that China’s climate policy on carbon intensity reduction may not help all Chinese regions to become more efficient and could actually lock the whole nation into a long-term emission-intensive economic structure.

Climate change is increasing ocean temperatures and acidification. This study tests the adaptive evolution of a globally important phytoplankton, Emiliania huxleyi, and finds they are able to evolve to cope with the changing marine environment.

The global ocean is a major heat reservoir of the climate system. This study investigates ocean warming for 2005–2013 in the context of global sea-level rise and Earth’s energy budget, and finds that the deep ocean (below 2,000 m) has contributed negligibly to both.