Climate impact models have a limited ability to represent risks to the poor and vulnerable. Wider adoption of best practices and new model features that incorporate social heterogeneity and different policy mechanisms are needed to address this shortcoming.

See Nature Climate Change 7, 857–862 (2017).

The ability of species to shift their range as a result of climate change is significantly threatened by habitat fragmentation. Distribution modelling of 3 taxonomic groups, including grasshoppers as shown on the cover, now suggests that habitatbased conservation strategies will be insufficient to save species from regional extinction under twenty-first-century climate change.

Letter p823

IMAGE: DIRK HEUER/MOMENT/GETTY

COVER DESIGN: LAUREN HESLOP

Higher roadway maintenance costs

The selection of materials for road construction in the United States is based on assumptions of a stationary climate. With increasing temperatures, upholding these practices could add up to US$26.3 billion in US-wide maintenance costs by 2040 under RCP8.5, including infilling of cracks as shown on the cover.

See Nature Climate Change 7, 704-707 and Nature Climate Change 7, 694-695

IMAGE: GARY YEOWELL/ DIGITALVISION/GETTY

COVER DESIGN: LAUREN HESLOP

Coral rapid adaption

Due to anthropogenically driven thermal heat stress, tropical coral species, including Porites lichen as shown on the cover, are in decline. Their survival is therefore dependent on the ability to adapt or acclimatise. The prospects for rapid adaptive responses, including the role of transgenerational plasticity, are discussed in this Perspective.

See Nature Climate Change 7, 627-636

IMAGE: GERGELY TORDA

COVER DESIGN: LAUREN HESLOP