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Even if some sceptics consider climate science akin to witchcraft and politicians pursue ineffective policies, private enterprise is beginning to take climate change seriously.
Truly understanding climate-related disaster risk, and the management of that risk, can inform effective action on climate adaptation and the loss and damage mechanism, the main vehicle under the UN Climate Convention for dealing with climate-related effects, including residual impacts after adaptation.
Effective mitigation of climate change requires investment flows to be redirected from high- to low-carbon technologies. However, especially in developing countries, low-carbon investments often suffer from high risks. More research is needed to address these risks and allow sound policy decisions to be made.
When it comes to investments, the smart bet may be on clean energy and low-carbon infrastructure. Sonja van Renssen looks at the causes and implications of divestment from fossil fuels.
Relative to the scale of the problem, climate policies worldwide have failed. Now research explains why policy innovations are often inadequate, routinely reflecting the aversion of policymakers to the risk of failure.
The various supply chains that deliver the services society needs are often managed in silos. Research now shows the advantages of integrated management.
Studies often assume that climate is equally sensitive to emissions of warming greenhouse gases and cooling sulphate aerosols. Now, research illustrates that this is not true in models and that without this assumption recent assessments would have produced higher estimates of future temperatures.
From 1974 to 1976, an unexpected large hole appeared in the Weddell Sea winter sea-ice cover, a consequence of ocean heat carried to the sea surface by convection. This may have been a window to the past, as model analysis suggests anthropogenic climate change will diminish the chances of a repeat performance.
An up-to-date synthesis of climate change impacts on crop yields shows that the bounds of uncertainty are increasing. So why do estimates of the effect of climate change on crop productivity differ so much?
Different estimates of the social cost of carbon make its translation to policy difficult. This Perspective evaluates past estimates of this cost and calculates a lower bound. Results show that dominant values for the social cost of carbon are gross underestimates and suggest that climate policy should be more stringent than previously proposed.
Scientists, educators and stakeholders are grappling with how best to approach climate change education for diverse audiences, given the persistent social controversy associated with it. This Perspective examines how socio-cultural learning theories inform climate change education for learners with varied understanding of and attitudes towards climate change.
An assessment of economic flood risk trends across Europe reveals high current and future stress on risk financing schemes. The magnitude and distribution of losses can be contained by investing in flood protection, increasing insurance coverage or by expanding public compensation funds. However, these climate change adaptation instruments have vastly different efficiency, equity and acceptability implications. Moreover, the spatial variation in disaster risk can necessitate cross-subsidies between individual countries in the European Union.
Information about vulnerability to changes in temperature at the local level would improve the assessment of health risks created by climate change. Research now uses geo-coded data and spatial methods to quantify the effects of warm temperature on mortality for all districts in England and Wales. Mortality risk increases in southern districts by over 10% for a temperature increase of 1 °C, whereas northern districts are not significantly affected.
Understanding how sensitive the climate is to different forcings is essential for projecting change. Analysis of results from climate model intercomparison projects shows that the climate has a greater sensitivity to aerosols and ozone compared with CO2. This result means that the low-range projections of climate response to CO2, <1.3 °C, are unlikely.
The Southern Ocean is a major site of open-ocean deep convection. Using observational data and model simulations, it is found that surface waters have freshened since the 1950s and deep convection has weakened, and could cease, as a result of the freshening. This has implications for bottom-water formation, ocean heat and carbon storage.
Large ocean waves are predominantly caused by winds associated with extratropical cyclones. However, these winds are poorly represented in current global climate models, making wave projection difficult. A statistical study of large wave occurence in eastern Australia is applied to different climate models, allowing conclusions to be drawn about anthropogenic influence and improving wave projections.
A comprehensive summary of studies that simulate climate change impacts on agriculture are now reported in a meta-analysis. Findings suggest that, without measures to adapt to changing conditions, aggregate yield losses should be expected for wheat, rice and maize in temperate and tropical growing regions even under relatively moderate levels of local warming.
The Greenland ice sheet is a large contributor to sea-level rise primarily because of the increased speed of its glaciers in the southeast and northwest. This study looks at a previously stable ice stream in northeast Greenland, and finds that it is thinning due to regional warming. This region drains 16% of the ice sheet but has not figured in model projections of sea-level rise, indicating an under-estimation of Greenland contributions.
