Climate-change adaptation articles within Nature Communications

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  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Setting goals that are context-specific, relevant, and collectively shared is critical in adaptation. As necessary elements in target setting, imaginaries for adaptation and the language connected to them remain vague. Visuals produced through art-science collaborations can be great allies to (de)construct imaginaries and deglobalise discourses of adaptation.

    • Marta Olazabal
    • , Maria Loroño-Leturiondo
    •  & Josune Urrutia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Building renovation is an urgent requirement to reduce the environmental impact associated with the building stock. In this paper, authors identify strategies for robust renovation considering uncertainties on the future and provide recommendations for the residential buildings in Switzerland.

    • Alina Galimshina
    • , Maliki Moustapha
    •  & Guillaume Habert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In a first global analysis, researchers find that sandy shores are severely squeezed between human infrastructure and the rising sea, as on average, the first road or building is currently situated at just 390 meters distance from the shoreline.

    • Eva M. Lansu
    • , Valérie C. Reijers
    •  & Tjisse van der Heide

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study finds that flood insurance policy design affects economic development in floodplains and, consequently, flood risk in Europe. Therefore, the authors advocate for flood insurance design to be integrated in climate change adaptation policy.

    • Max Tesselaar
    • , W. J. Wouter Botzen
    •  & Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Financing of urban greening has traditionally prioritized economic growth. Here the authors argue for action to ensure more socially just green financing.

    • Melissa García-Lamarca
    • , Isabelle Anguelovski
    •  & Kayin Venner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mangrove forests protect communities from storms and support fisheries. Here, the authors show that the association with economic growth has shifted from negatively impacting mangroves to enabling mangrove expansion, and that community forestry is promoting mangrove expansion.

    • Valerie Hagger
    • , Thomas A. Worthington
    •  & Megan I. Saunders

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is projected to impose severe costs on Small Island Developing States, and increase the worldwide social cost of carbon emissions, but costs could be reduced dramatically by efficient, proactive coastal planning.

    • Simon Dietz
    •  & Felix Koninx

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study characterizes adaptation in mitigation pathways, and shows that climate adaptation can lead to higher energy demand, power system costs and carbon prices, with mitigation’s benefits compensating decarbonization costs.

    • Francesco Pietro Colelli
    • , Johannes Emmerling
    •  & Enrica De Cian

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Flooding is a pervasive natural hazard, with new research demonstrating that more than one in five people around the world live in areas directly exposed to 1-in-100 year flood risk. Exposure to such flood risk is particularly concentrated amongst lower income households worldwide.

    • Thomas K. J. McDermott

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors explore the effects of disasters on adaptation actions in 549 cities, finding that the effects of disaster frequency and severity are modest and depend on action type, population size, and adaptive capacity.

    • Daniel Nohrstedt
    • , Jacob Hileman
    •  & Charles F. Parker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study shows that tropical silvopasture systems can provide significant cooling services for local communities, and identifies where these silvopasture systems can most effectively counteract global climate change to help communities adapt to warming.

    • Lucas R. Vargas Zeppetello
    • , Susan C. Cook-Patton
    •  & Yuta J. Masuda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Urban trees influence temperatures in cities. The authors here investigate in spatio-temporal variations in their cooling effect and find 8-12 K decreased temperatures for tree-rich urban areas in Central Europe during hot summers, and up to 4 K for Southern Europe, respectively.

    • Jonas Schwaab
    • , Ronny Meier
    •  & Edouard L. Davin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adaptation to heat stress through the use of air conditioners has received increasing attention. Here the authors show that income and humidity adjusted temperature are common determinants for adopting air conditioning, but their relative contribution varies in relation to household characteristics.

    • Filippo Pavanello
    • , Enrica De Cian
    •  & André F. P. Lucena

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences the weather around the world and, therefore, has strong impacts on society. Here, the authors show that ENSO is associated with child nutrition in many countries, with warmer El Niño conditions leading to more child undernutrition in large parts of the developing world.

    • Jesse K. Anttila-Hughes
    • , Amir S. Jina
    •  & Gordon C. McCord

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heatwaves are becoming increasingly frequent and more intense, causing severe economic impacts through reduced labour productivity. Here, the authors show that economic damages in Europe exceed 1% of the GDP in vulnerable areas, which might increase by a factor of almost five in the medium term without climate action.

    • David García-León
    • , Ana Casanueva
    •  & Lars Nybo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reflective surfaces have been recommended to mitigate urban heat pollution but can be expensive to apply at a large scale. This work shows that applying them to only the upstream half of a neighborhood can lead to disporportionately high cooling benefits relative to cost.

    • Sushobhan Sen
    •  & Lev Khazanovich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is expected that tropical deforestation and related increases in heat exposure have negative impacts on labour productivity, but the size of the effect is not well known. Here, the authors show that deforestation reduces productivity by 8.22% in rural Indonesia and causes behavioural adaptation responses like more work breaks.

    • Yuta J. Masuda
    • , Teevrat Garg
    •  & June T. Spector

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gender inequality increases vulnerability to climate change impacts and reduces societies’ adaptive capacity. Here the authors show how gender inequality may evolve in the future in five scenarios of socioeconomic development and highlight the importance of incorporating gender inequality in climate change research and policy.

    • Marina Andrijevic
    • , Jesus Crespo Cuaresma
    •  & Carl-Friedrich Schleussner

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Extreme heat adversely affects human health, productivity, and well-being, with more frequent and intense heatwaves projected to increase exposures. However, current risk projections oversimplify critical inter-individual factors of human thermoregulation, resulting in unreliable and unrealistic estimates of future adverse health outcomes.

    • Jennifer K. Vanos
    • , Jane W. Baldwin
    •  & Kristie L. Ebi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Switching and relocating crops could be a key pathway for agricultural adaptation to climate change. Here, Rising and Devineni use data-driven Bayesian modelling to estimate the potential for crop switching to mitigate climate impacts on US crop production under a high-emission scenario, showing considerable opportunities but also limitations.

    • James Rising
    •  & Naresh Devineni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity remain debated. Here, the authors present new evidence for the magnitude and causes of U.S. crop insurance losses, using a database of production risk from 1989–2014 across 1733 counties for corn and 1632 counties for soybeans, and find that crop production risk will increase in response to warmer temperatures.

    • Edward D. Perry
    • , Jisang Yu
    •  & Jesse Tack

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors compared the performance of a range of rural water supply types during drought in Ethiopia. They show that prioritising access to groundwater via multiple improved water sources and technologies, such as hand-pumped and motorised boreholes, supported by monitoring and proactive operation and maintenance increases rural water supply resilience.

    • D. J. MacAllister
    • , A. M. MacDonald
    •  & R. Calow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Minimum mortality temperature (MMT) changes geographically and over time. Here, by analysing MMTs in 420 global locations during 1984-2018, the authors found that MMT is very close to the local most frequent temperature (MFT) in the same period, and the association between MFT and MMT is not changed when adjusted for lattitude and study year.

    • Qian Yin
    • , Jinfeng Wang
    •  & Yuming Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Future energy demand maybe induced by climate change and subject to uncertainties arising from different extent of climate change and socioeconomic development. Here the authors follow a top-down approach and combined the recently developed socio-economic and climate scenarios and found that across 210 scenarios, moderate warming increases global climate-exposed energy demand before adaptation by 25–58% between 2010 and 2050.

    • Bas J. van Ruijven
    • , Enrica De Cian
    •  & Ian Sue Wing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social intelligence and general intelligence are two distinct cognitive abilities. Here, the authors show that groups of people with high competency in both social and general intelligence perform better in a resource-management task involving cooperation, and adjustment to unexpected ecological change.

    • Jacopo A. Baggio
    • , Jacob Freeman
    •  & David Pillow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydropower generation in the Nile River Basin is vulnerable to climatic changes. Here, the authors assess infrastructure resilience of the Eastern African power pool (EAPP) to the effects of a changing climate and suggest that failing to climate-proof infrastructure investments can result in significant electricity price fluctuations.

    • Vignesh Sridharan
    • , Oliver Broad
    •  & Raffaello Cervigni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change will affect both the demand for electrical power and the generating capabilities of hydropower plants. Here the authors investigated the combined impact of these effects in the US Pacific Northwest by considering the dynamics of the regional  power grid, where they reveal a profound impact of climate change on power shortfall risk by the year 2035.

    • S. W. D. Turner
    • , N. Voisin
    •  & M. Jourabchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate deterioration towards desertification in North Africa following the African Humid Period has previously been associated with the emergence of pastoralism. Here, using a climate-vegetation model, the authors show that pastoralism in fact likely slowed the deterioration of orbitally-driven climate change.

    • Chris Brierley
    • , Katie Manning
    •  & Mark Maslin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impact of climate change on phosphorus (P) loss from land to water is unclear. Here, the authors use P flux data, climate simulations and P transfer models to show that only large scale agricultural change will limit the effect of climate change on average winter P loads in three catchments across the UK.

    • M. C. Ockenden
    • , M. J. Hollaway
    •  & P. M. Haygarth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The risks of flooding to coastal communities are increasing due to coastal development and climate change. Here, the authors use meta-analyses to quantitatively show that coral reefs can significantly reduce risks from natural hazards, and that reef defences can be enhanced cost effectively.

    • Filippo Ferrario
    • , Michael W. Beck
    •  & Laura Airoldi

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