Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 4 Issue 12, December 2014

Editorial

  • Time is running out to tackle climate change — it is not too late, but the next 10–15 years will be critical.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Commentary

  • The climate movement is failing to engage a diverse set of stakeholders in efforts to address climate change, and a lack of diversity within the climate community itself may be, in part, to blame. Research-informed solutions are urgently needed to address the problem and help build a more inclusive and influential movement.

    • Adam R. Pearson
    • Jonathon P. Schuldt
    Commentary
  • Climate models have increased in complexity over time as more processes have been included. Now we need to return to the underpinning basics in the models and ensure they are the best they can be.

    • Christian Jakob
    Commentary
  • The definition of baselines is a major step in determining the greenhouse-gas emissions of bioenergy systems. Accounting frameworks with a planning objective might require different baseline attributes and designs than those with a monitoring objective.

    • Thomas Buchholz
    • Stephen Prisley
    • Neil Sampson
    Commentary
  • Recent studies show that current IUCN Red List assessment methods can identify species vulnerable to extinction because of climate change. But species must be assessed more completely and more regularly, and adaptation actions initiated swiftly once threatened species are identified.

    • H. Resit Akçakaya
    • Stuart H. M. Butchart
    • Richard G. Pearson
    Commentary
Top of page ⤴

Research Highlights

Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • Direct experience of global warming is expected to increase the number of people who accept that it is real and human-caused. A study now shows that people's perceptions about abnormal temperatures mostly match actual measurements but do not affect climate change beliefs.

    • Jennifer E. Givens
    News & Views
  • Interactions between soil microbes, the physical soil environment and vegetation will determine the magnitude of the terrestrial carbon sink under climate change.

    • William Wieder
    News & Views
  • Non-genetic transgenerational acclimation cannot always be relied upon to provide populations with an effective, short-term response to climatic changes.

    • Santiago Salinas
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Perspective

  • Climate change research is necessarily interdisciplinary in nature. This Perspective takes stock of research done at the cutting edge of economics and ecology with the aim of stimulating future collaborative work through the sharing of research methods and insights.

    • Alessandro Tavoni
    • Simon Levin
    Perspective
  • The linkage of bottom-up climate policies is now widely favoured over the top-down approach exemplified by the Kyoto Protocol. This Perspective critiques this new received wisdom, and argues for a balance of top-down and bottom-up approaches.

    • Jessica F. Green
    • Thomas Sterner
    • Gernot Wagner
    Perspective
  • Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach to the development of agricultural systems intended to help support food security under climate change. This Perspective outlines a set of CSA actions needed from public, private and civil society stakeholders: building evidence; increasing local institutional effectiveness; fostering coherence between climate and agricultural policies; and linking climate and agricultural financing.

    • Leslie Lipper
    • Philip Thornton
    • Emmanuel F. Torquebiau
    Perspective
Top of page ⤴

Letter

  • The evidence that climatic conditions influence beliefs about anthropogenic climate change is mixed. Now research analyses the extent to which US state-level winter temperature anomalies influence the likelihood of perceiving warmer-than-usual temperatures, and the attribution of such temperatures to global warming. Results show that temperature anomalies have a strong influence on perception, whereas attribution is mainly driven by perceived scientific consensus and political orientation.

    • Aaron M. McCright
    • Riley E. Dunlap
    • Chenyang Xiao
    Letter
  • Mean summer temperature in Eastern China has increased by 0.82 °C since the 1950s and five of the hottest summers have occurred since 2000. This study estimates anthropogenic influence to have caused a greater than 60-fold increase in the likelihood of extreme summer heat and projects that hot summers will continue to increase in frequency.

    • Ying Sun
    • Xuebin Zhang
    • Guoyu Ren
    Letter
  • A significant challenge for policies aiming to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation is the avoidance of international carbon leakage. Research now shows, however, that even globally implemented forest conservation schemes could allow another type of carbon leakage through cropland expansion into non-forested areas.

    • Alexander Popp
    • Florian Humpenöder
    • Jan Philipp Dietrich
    Letter
  • Much uncertainty in the response of soil organic carbon (SOC) to climate change relates to the relative effects of microbial priming and mineral protection. Now research indicates that although protected C provides an important constraint on microbial priming, it is not sufficient to prevent reduced SOC storage in most terrestrial areas.

    • Benjamin N. Sulman
    • Richard P. Phillips
    • Stephen W. Pacala
    Letter
Top of page ⤴

Article

  • A project to develop an approach to adaptation to sea-level rise with a local community is described. The result is a theoretically informed, empirically tested and locally supported adaptation pathway.

    • J. Barnett
    • S. Graham
    • A. Hurlimann
    Article
Top of page ⤴

Search

Quick links