Volume 6 Issue 10, October 2016

Hot on the heels of last year's Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, representatives from the global conservation community met to set the conservation agenda that will help to implement these targets.

Recent observations of Earth's energy budget indicate low climate sensitivity. Research now shows that these estimates should be revised upward, resolving an apparent mismatch with climate models and implying a warmer future.

The Sahel has suffered through severe droughts but recent years have seen increased rainfall. Now research suggests warming of the Mediterranean Sea surface may dictate future rainfall in the region.

Observed vegetation change in the Northern Hemisphere can, with a high degree of confidence, be attributed to human-caused global change.

The imbalance of observations and knowledge of impacts between developed and developing countries leads to a procedural injustice in the attribution of responsibility for climate change.

The use of long-term ecological proxies in conservation planning is currently very limited. Recent advances offer exciting prospects for enhanced use of retrospective knowledge to forecast and manage ecological outcomes under global change.

Antarctic climate trends observed in the satellite record are compared with a two hundred year paleoclimate record. The satellite record is found to be too short to attribute changes to anthropogenic forcing, with natural variability overwhelming the forced signal.

Mortality rates based on data representing 400 million people in 200 European regions show countries other than the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium remain exposed to increased mortality due to winter temperature fluctuations.

Energy budget and climate model estimates of transient climate response match when model output is processed in the same manner as an observational record. Removal of observational sampling biases infers an estimate of 1.66 °C, consistent with model estimates.

The global warming slowdown has been attributed to the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Modelling work simulates this negative phase in response to anthropogenic aerosols, indicating that external forcings may influence natural cycles.

Historically the sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans has influenced Sahel rainfall. This study shows that increased surface temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea have driven recent rainfall increases.

Tendencies towards climate-change-induced continental drying, as characterized by offline-computed runoff and other potential-evapotranspiration-dependent metrics, may be artefactual. Consequently they may be much weaker and less extensive than previously thought.

A meta-analysis of soil incubation studies from the permafrost zone suggests that thawing under aerobic conditions, which releases CO₂, will strengthen the permafrost carbon feedback more than waterlogged systems, which releases CO₂ and CH₄.

The process of breeding, delivery and adoption of new maize varieties can take 30 years. Projected difference in temperature between the start and end of the maize development cycle suggests the need for immediate development to prevent yield losses.

Observed northern extratropical land greening is consistent with anthropogenic forcings, where greenhouse gases play a dominant role, but not with simulations that include only natural forcings and internal climate variability.

Energy storage is vital to the widespread rollout of renewable electricity technologies. Modelling shows that energy storage can add value to wind and solar technologies, but cost reduction remains necessary to reach widespread profitability.

The North America winter cooling trend in the early 2000s can be explained by decadal climate signals. For the northwest, fluctuations in the remote tropical Pacific were responsible, whereas for central North America it was mid-latitude circulation changes.