Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2014

The proposed 'cost assessment cycle' is a framework for the integrated cost assessment of natural hazards.

Faced with serious air pollution, China is aggressively reshaping its energy system, building on recent progress with renewables and on available supplies of gas. This should help contain global warming and provide new impetus to climate change negotiations.

Rewarding smallholders for sequestering carbon in agricultural land can improve food security while mitigating climate change. Verification of carbon offsets in food-insecure regions is possible and achievable through rigorously controlled monitoring.

The impacts of extreme weather are being felt by us all and scientific research points to a likely worsening of weather patterns in the next decades. Therefore, it is imperative to think carefully about how we build the infrastructure of the future to increase the resilience of our societies.

Climate change, alongside numerous other pressures, is having unprecedented effects on water resources both globally and locally. Retailers need to implement a range of adaptation measures to ensure the sustainability of supply chains.

As global population continues to grow, managing the relationships between water, food and energy is becoming increasingly critical. Businesses need to react to the challenge and be mindful of the important role they play in implementing solutions.

The growing scarcity of freshwater due to rising water demands and a changing climate is increasingly seen as a major risk for the global economy. Consumer awareness, private sector initiatives, governmental regulation and targeted investments are urgently needed to move towards sustainable water use.

Colombia's sustainable cattle ranching programme restores degraded land while boosting livestock production and making farmland more resilient to climate change.

The rooftop solar industry in the United States is experiencing rapid growth. Anna Petherick reports on its progress.

Over short periods of time, it can be difficult to isolate sea-level increase in observations as it is hidden by natural shifts in rainfall quantities over ocean and land, which cause temporary drops in the global sea-level curve. Now research shows how to detect the signal, even in short records, by estimating these variations.

Temperature reconstructions of the past millennium rely heavily on Northern Hemisphere data. Now a Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction is available and sheds light on the complexity of the interhemispheric temperature relationship.

Management practices applied to existing types of land cover can influence the local climate as much as a conversion to a different type of plant cover.

Accounting for time-dependent mechanisms in greenhouse gas radiative forcing and evaluating the performance of mitigation technologies in the context of climate stabilization targets can better inform technology choices today and in the future.

It is widely recognized that cities must play a leading role in efforts to mitigate climate change. Building on previous inventory work, this study looks at options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from major cities around the world. The strategies identified reflect the unique characteristics of different cities, such as their climate, industry, urbanized density and electricity supply.

There has been a rapid growth in the use of natural gas and biofuels. This study evaluates energy technologies against climate targets and shows that the impact of technologies that result in the emission of both methane and carbon dioxide depends on their time of use. The changes in climate impacts over time are large, with several technologies that are widely considered mitigation options becoming unfavourable within two decades.

Prediction of seasonal Arctic sea-ice extent is of increased interest as the region opens up due to climate change. This work uses spring melt-pond area to forecast the Arctic sea-ice minimum in September. This proves accurate, as increasing melt-ponds reduce surface albedo, allowing more melt to occur, creating a positive feedback mechanism.

In recent years there has been a slowdown in sea-level rise, along with the slowdown in global surface temperatures. This study analyses sea-level data to separate long-term natural variability from anthropogenic influence on sea level. They find that correcting for natural variability shows recent sea-level rise has not slowed compared with earlier periods.

Palaeoclimate temperature records are dominated by Northern Hemisphere reconstructions. This study introduces a new Southern Hemisphere millennial temperature reconstruction from terrestrial and oceanic proxy records. This highlights the asynchronicity of temperature fluctuations across the two hemispheres, which should be taken into consideration in climate models and projections.

Anthropogenic influence, due to greenhouse gases and aerosols, on the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones is not well known. In this study, aerosols are shown to delay development, weaken intensity and cause early dissipation of storms, but also to increase precipitation across an enlarged rainband.

Increasing concentrations of atmospheric particles are expected to impact Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude precipitation and temperature. This study finds that there is little evidence that aerosol concentrations affect land precipitation in the region, which they attribute to changes in observational techniques that increased measured values at the time aerosols were expected to suppress precipitation.

Understanding how climate change will impact whole ecosystems, rather than single species within them, remains challenging. Now, research into the direct and indirect impacts of climate on the functioning of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems reveals effects on tundra primary production, food-web structure and the strength of species interaction.

Large parts of the circumpolar Arctic are grazed by reindeer but the effects of grazing pressure on ecological responses to climate change, and the associated climate feedbacks, remain unclear. Now, research using a long-term environmental manipulation experiment finds that although warming decreased the carbon sink of tundra experiencing light grazing pressure, it had no effect on tundra under high grazing pressure.

The direct effects of land-cover change on surface climate are increasingly well understood, but fewer studies have investigated the consequences of the trend towards more intensive land management practices. Now, research investigating the biophysical effects of temperate land-management changes reveals a net warming effect of similar magnitude to that driven by changing land cover.

The response of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change remains a large source of uncertainty in the global carbon budget. Now results from a ten-year ecological manipulation experiment in the Mojave Desert provide direct evidence that CO₂ fertilization can substantially increase ecosystem carbon storage in arid ecosystems.

Life-cycle assessment of biofuel carbon emissions does not usually take into account the potential for soil carbon loss resulting from crop residue removal. Now estimates of CO₂ emissions due to corn residue removal across the US Corn Belt indicate that the emissions from soil carbon loss could push total emissions above the US legislative mandate.

Growing population and increasing demand for higher living standards have led to the overuse of water resources. More recently, the management of watersheds has been threatened by the impacts of climate change on the water cycle. In the face of these challenges, water companies and agribusinesses need to seek solutions. In this focus, Nature Climate Changepresents four opinion pieces that discuss the risks and opportunities posed to private companies by water scarcity, highlight the steps some companies have already taken and, overall, the actions still required.