Volume 9 Issue 2, February 2019

Carbon mitigation efforts often focus on the world’s poorest people, dealing with topics such as food and energy security, and increased emissions potential from projected population, income and consumption growth. However, more policies are needed that target people at the opposite end of the social ladder — the super-rich.

The current narrow focus on afforestation in climate policy runs the risk of compromising long-term carbon storage, human adaptation and efforts to preserve biodiversity. An emphasis on diverse, intact natural ecosystems — as opposed to fast-growing tree plantations — will help nations to deliver Paris Agreement goals and much more.

Climate change adaptation encompasses a wide range of behaviours in response to a variety of short- and long-term risks. Now meta-analyses identify which motivational factors are consistent predictors of adaptation action, and which are more context-specific.

In the Southern Ocean, climate-driven contraction of Antarctic krill from open ocean toward the frozen continent is a perilous journey. Research now shows that a poleward shift in distribution is accompanied by diminished spatial less habitat, lower densities and larger mean size of adults.

Global greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise again in 2018. New research from the United States Geological Survey casts light on emissions from fuels produced on federal lands and finds that they accounted for over 20% of US emissions in recent years.

Near-term climate predictions bridge the gap between seasonal forecasts and long-term projections. This Perspective outlines the challenges and opportunities for near-term climate prediction, highlighting the need for co-ordinated efforts to benefit society.

Earth system models project likely future climates, however, evaluation of their output is challenging. This Perspective discusses new evaluation approaches, considering both simulations and observations, to ensure credible information for decision-making.

In this Review, a Bayesian framework is used to explain climate change belief updating, and the evidence required to support claims of directional motivated reasoning versus a model in which people aim for accurate beliefs, but vary in how they assess information credibility.

The connections between Arctic sea-ice loss and severe Eurasian winters are complicated by differences among studies. Correcting model underestimates reveals that 44% of the central Eurasian cooling trend is attributable to sea-ice loss in the Barents–Kara Seas.

Synthetic aperture radar interferometry reveals that 19 Gt of ice is lost per year from glaciers in South America — mostly from Patagonia — contributing 0.04 mm annually to global sea-level rise.

Groundwater model results and hydrologic data sets reveal that half of global groundwater fluxes may equilibrate with climate-driven recharge variations on human timescales, indicating that hydraulic memory may buffer climatic change impacts.

As the southwest Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean has warmed, the distribution of a key species, Antarctic krill, has contracted southwards. This has occurred in tandem with a decline in recruitment of juveniles, linked to increasingly positive anomalies of the Southern Annular Mode.

Climate change will alter primary productivity in the Southern Ocean, and warming and iron limitation will influence the composition of diatoms in the region. Optimum growth temperatures are wider than expected, but limited iron will affect which species flourish.

Bluetongue risk to livestock across northern Europe is projected to extend further north, with a longer transmission season and larger outbreaks on average. As a result, disease detection and control measures will be increasingly important.

Meta-analyses with data from 106 studies show that descriptive norms, negative affect, perceived self-efficacy and outcome efficacy are most strongly associated with climate change adaptation, whereas knowledge and experience are only weakly associated with adaptive behaviour.

Accurate emissions data are required to monitor progress towards climate goals. Firms’ self-reported emissions show convergence with independently verified emissions in two pilot emissions trading systems in China over several years, suggesting the effectiveness of oversight and third-party audits.

Arctic sea-ice melt causes a release of dissolved organic material (DOM) into the surface waters. The increased dominance of first-year ice and DOM release is impacting under-ice bacterial communities.