Volume 8 Issue 12, December 2018

Nature Climate Change will now ask reviewers if they can be named on the published paper they reviewed.

Scenarios have supported assessments of the IPCC for decades. A new scenario ensemble and a suite of visualization and analysis tools is now made available alongside the IPCC 1.5 °C Special Report to improve transparency and re-use of scenario data across research communities.

The tendency of modern science to reduce complex phenomena into their component parts has many advantages for advancing knowledge. However, such reductionism in climate science is also a problem because it narrows the evidence base, limiting visions of possible futures and the ways they might be achieved.

Urban development induces local warming in addition to climate change. New research shows that urban growth, climate change and urban adaptation interact nonlinearly and diurnally.

Recent, rapid and (in many cases) unprecedented climate changes in the Arctic continue to outpace all other regions. New research argues that local, not remote, mechanisms are responsible for amplifying polar climate change.

Climate policy is heavily focused on reducing demand for fossil fuels, but supply-side polices represent a potentially powerful tool to reduce CO₂ emissions. This Perspective uses the US state of California as a case study to explore the rationale and possible impacts of limiting oil production.

With warming, meltwater will play an increasingly important role in driving ice loss from Antarctica, raising global sea levels. This Perspective discusses the key process through which Antarctic surface hydrology impacts mass balance.

This Review synthesizes knowledge on projections of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets at 1.5 °C and 2 °C of warming, discussing possible nonlinear responses, and outlining the need for more insight into future atmospheric and oceanic forcings.

This Review examines the pathways through which humans are impacted by climate change and shows that by 2100 the world’s population will be simultaneously exposed to at least three hazards, and in some locations as many as six, under an RCP 8.5 scenario.

Corporations are an important source of GHG emissions and an important climate-mitigation actor. An assessment of corporate climate action and systematic benchmarking against international targets is conducted for 138 companies in high-emitting sectors.

Model simulations with CO₂ forcing prescribed in discrete geographical regions reveal that polar amplification arises primarily due to local lapse-rate feedback, with ice-albedo and Planck feedbacks playing subsidiary roles.

Ocean acidification will result in biological winners and losers. A mesocosm experiment shows that a toxic algal species is a winner under ocean acidification, with implications for the marine food web and, more generally, ecosystem services.

A global experiment using model caterpillars shows that climate explains patterns of predation better than latitude or elevation alone. Predation pressure is found to be greater under higher temperatures and more stable climatic conditions.

Rising pre-season daytime and night-time temperatures have contrasting effects on the timing of autumn-leaf senescence date in the Northern Hemisphere. Diurnal differences in drought stress may be the underlying mechanism.

Urban expansion and climate change interact to produce less night-time warming than their sum. Combined implementation of adaptation strategies can offset projected daytime urban warming when applied with GHG emissions reductions, but cannot offset projected nocturnal warming.

Reactive mineral retention of carbon accounts for 3–72% of organic carbon found in mineral soil. In many biomes, the size of this fraction is determined by modest shifts in effective moisture, suggesting high sensitivity to climate change.

Managed coastal wetlands have been included for the first time in the US Greenhouse Gas Inventory. Intact vegetated coastal wetlands are shown to represent a net greenhouse gas sink, but these are being lost to development, despite robust regulation, causing emissions.