Volume 7 Issue 4, April 2017

Climate change is a playground for visualization. Yet research and technological innovations in visual communication and data visualization do not account for a substantial part of the world's population: vulnerable audiences with low levels of literacy.

While tackling interdependencies among food, energy, and water security is promising, three fundamental challenges to effective operationalization need addressing: the feasibility of science-policy integration, cross-scale inequalities, and path-dependencies in infrastructure and socio-institutional practices.

Tornadoes pose a significant threat across vast portions of the US. Now research suggests that growth in the human-built environment will be more influential than climate change in driving future disaster potential.

Atmospheric conditions play an important role in driving severe air pollution events in Beijing, China. Now research finds that global warming will enhance weather conditions favouring such events, increasing the chances of severe winter-time haze in the future.

Arctic sea-ice cover has declined precipitously in recent decades. Now research suggests that a sizeable fraction of this observed historical decline could have been caused by internal climate variability rather than by human-induced warming.

The marine carbonate system is changing as uptake of CO₂ from the atmosphere causes ocean acidification. Now, analysis of repeat observations demonstrates that the rate and extent of Arctic Ocean acidification is enhanced through increased transport from the North Pacific.

This Perspective considers the potential mitigation contribution of carbon capture and utilization, such as chemical conversation or to enhance oil recovery. The authors find it will account for a small amount of the required total mitigation effort.

The economic impact of climate change has typically been considered at regional or national levels. This Perspective assesses impacts at household level to determine effects on poverty and the poor. It shows how rapid development could reduce these impacts.

Severe winter air pollution events, attributed to emissions from development, have increased in Beijing in recent decades. This study looks at how atmospheric conditions contribute and projects climate change will increase conditions favourable to such events.

Arctic precipitation is projected to increase and this study shows that rainfall will become the dominant phase of precipitation, with a decrease in snowfall across all seasons.

Extreme rainfall increases with temperature and this is predicted to continue in a future warmer climate. Whilst a downturn in rainfall scaling is observed at high temperatures in the present day, this does not imply an upper limit on rainfall extremes in the future.

Gains in maize yield from the US Corn Belt have been attributed to agricultural technologies. A study now shows that solar brightening was responsible for approximately 27% of yield growth from 1984 to 2013.

Experimental evidence from a mature, phosphorous-limited, eucalypt forest finds that aboveground productivity was not significantly stimulated by elevated CO₂. Findings suggest that this effect may be limited across much of the tropics.

The financial system will be impacted by climate policies. Network analysis of the exposures of financial actors to climate-relevant sectors in the Euro Area shows early implementation of climate policy is needed to avoid adverse systemic consequences.

The Arctic is warming and sea ice is declining, but how the two link is unclear. This study shows changes in summertime atmospheric circulation and internal variability may have caused up to 60% of September sea-ice decline since 1979.

Remote sensing and in situ observations show that non-radiative mechanisms dominate the local climatic response to land cover and land management changes in most regions of the globe for 8 of 9 common land cover and management perturbations.