Volume 6 Issue 11, November 2016

The academic community is beginning to gather content for a special report on the Paris Agreement's most ambitious aspiration.

Avoiding losses from climate change requires socially engaged research that explains what people value highly, how climate change imperils these phenomena, and strategies for embracing and managing grief.

The US presidential candidates and the nation they seek to lead are divided over climate change. The stakes are high as voters head to the polls.

Large growth in East Asia's sea-borne trade has increased premature deaths and atmospheric warming in the region. New legislation could reduce these impacts in areas around China, but joint efforts are needed for region-wide benefits.

Malaria risk in West Africa is expected to fall (western region) or remain the same (eastern region) in response to climate change over the twenty-first century. This is primarily due to extreme temperature conditions projected under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

It has been predicted, by theory and models, that heavy precipitation will increase with climate change and this is now being seen in observations. Emergence of signals such as this will enable testing of predictions, which should increase confidence in them.

Understanding the influence of the changing Arctic on mid-latitude weather is complex, and a challenge for researchers. This Perspective considers current approaches and proposes a way forward based on accepting the chaotic nature of the atmospheric circulation.

Results from four integrated assessment models show countries’ efforts to cut emissions fall towards the lower end of the social cost of carbon distribution, suggesting insufficient levels of ambition to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

Natural multidecadal climate variability contributes to global mean surface temperature trends. This study quantifies those from the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, finding that the largest contributions are during the positive phase, which accelerates warming.

The importance of climate change for malaria transmission has been hotly debated. Research based on ten years of field observations and a model that simulates village-scale transmission for West Africa suggests that we should not be overly concerned.

Ocean acidification impairs reef fish behaviour. This study shows offspring of spiny damselfish sensitive to high CO₂ levels have different brain molecular responses to those of tolerant individuals, suggesting individual variation may allow adaptation.

China’s ‘Grain for Green’ revegetation programme has potential to help mitigate climate change. However, the increased water demand in the Loess Plateau is approaching a level that will impact on water availability to meet human demand.

During periods of hydrologic stress, vegetation productivity is limited by soil moisture supply and atmospheric water demand. This study shows that atmospheric demand has a greater effect in many biomes, with implications for climate change impacts.

Remote sensing of tropical forest activity indicates that temporal autocorrelation—an indicator of slow recovery from stress—rises steeply as precipitation falls sufficiently. This offers some support for a tipping point for forest collapse.

Application of a terrestrial biogeochemical model that simulates diverse forest communities suggests that plant trait diversity may enable the Amazon rainforest to adjust to new climate conditions via a process of ecological sorting.

Analysis of over 18,000 vessels shows that the CO₂ emissions from shipping in East Asia accounted for 16% of global shipping emissions in 2013 (compared to 4–7% in 2002–2005), and account for 14,500–37,500 premature deaths per year.

In 2014–2015 the northeast Pacific Ocean experienced a strong marine heatwave. This study shows teleconnections to the tropical Pacific and the weak El Niño were key sources in the atmospheric forcing and persistence of the event.