Nature Climate Change
Nature Climate Change is a monthly journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research papers that describe the most significant and cutting-edge research on the causes, impacts and wider implications of global climate change. The journal publishes climate research across the physical, biological and social sciences and strives to integrate and communicate interdisciplinary research. The journal aims to play a leading role in: providing accessibility to a broad audience to research published both within and outside the journal; raising the visibility of climate change research in related research communities as well as the mainstream media; and offering a forum for discussion of the challenges faced by researchers and policy makers (and other interested parties) in understanding the complex mechanisms and impacts associated with the Earth’s changing climate.
Nature Climate Change - Small step funding models fit better for climate research
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) dominates winters in Western Europe and eastern North America. Future climate model projections of the NAO are highly uncertain due to both modelled irreducible internal variability and different model responses. Here we show that some of the model spread in multi-decadal NAO simulations is caused by climatological water vapour errors, and develop an emergent constraint that reveals a substantial response of the NAO to volcanic eruptions and greenhouse gases (GHGs). Taking account of the signal-to-noise paradox apparent in these simulations suggests that under the high-emissions scenario the multi-decadal NAO will increase to unprecedented levels that will likely cause severe impacts, including increased flooding and storm damage. This can be avoided through mitigation to reduce GHG emissions. Our results suggest that taking model projections at face value and seeking consensus could leave society unprepared for impending extremes. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a key pattern of climate variability for surrounding land areas during winter. Here the authors constrain projections to show that the magnitude of the NAO increases under high emissions, leading to more severe winters.
Urban climate actions have resulted in some progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting human settlements to a warmer planet. However, the long-term implications of climate gentrification threaten the continued efficacy of these actions.
Nature Climate Change - Adaptation gaps in airports
Nature Climate Change - Groundwater recharge in a warming world
Nature Climate Change - Southern African flux variability
Nature Climate Change - Germination timing shifts communities
The IPCC is in its seventh assessment cycle, and international collaboration, which established this organization, is still needed to ensure successful deliverables.
Energy-economic models are increasingly being used to inform climate mitigation policies. This Comment describes three situations where models misinform policymakers and calls for more iterative, policy-orientated modelling exercises that maximize learning in the pursuit of long-term emissions reductions goals.
Rooftop photovoltaic (RPV) is often understood as a niche contribution to climate change mitigation. However, the global potential of RPVs to mitigate global warming is unknown. Here we map the global rooftop area at 1-km resolution, quantifying 286,393 km2 of rooftops worldwide through geospatial data mining and artificial intelligence techniques. Using nine advanced Earth system models from the coupled model intercomparison project phase 6, we reveal that RPVs could substantially contribute to reducing global temperatures by 0.05–0.13 °C before 2050. Region-specific analysis underscores the variability in RPV potential and the necessity of tailored approaches to optimize RPV deployment, considering local solar resources, existing infrastructure and grid carbon intensity. Our findings reveal that leveraging RPV systems offers a viable and impactful strategy for reducing carbon footprints and combating climate change globally, while advocating targeted interventions to enhance the benefits of RPVs, particularly in areas with high solar radiation or rapid urbanization. Rooftop photovoltaic systems are often seen as a niche solution for mitigation but could offer large-scale opportunities. Using multi-source geospatial data and artificial intelligence techniques, the authors map their potential for reducing global temperatures and analyse regional differences.
How discussions around key climate change topics evolve over time and which organizations drive such change are important questions. We found that business non-governmental organizations affiliated with fossil fuels focus on hosting renewable energy events but remain absent from anti-fossil-fuel discussions, led instead by a tightly connected network of environmental non-governmental organizations.
Species are shifting their distributions in response to climate change, which on land depends on routes connecting intact habitat patches. Now, an analysis exploring the interaction between climate-driven shifts and human activities across ocean depths reveals threats for deep-sea biodiversity.
Marine life are expected to have fewer thermal barriers restricting their movement to adjacent habitats than terrestrial species do. However, it remains unknown how this warming-induced connectivity loss varies in different ocean strata, limiting the predictability of warming impacts on biodiversity in the whole ocean. Here, we developed a climate connectivity framework across seascape strata under different climate change scenarios, which combines thermal gradient, human impacts and species tolerance thresholds. We show that warming may lead to connectivity loss, with its magnitude increasing with depth. Connectivity loss is projected to increase rapidly in 2050, particularly in deep strata, and may impair the movement capacity of deep-sea phyla in adapting to warming. With the compression of habitat ranges, over one-quarter of deep-sea species inhabit areas that may experience disrupted connectivity, threatening the maintenance of deep-sea biodiversity. Our results highlight the challenges that climate change poses to biodiversity conservation through disruption of deep-sea connectivity. The authors demonstrate that warming will reduce connectivity for ocean species, potentially limiting their capacity to adapt to warming through habitat shifts. The results show particularly strong losses of connectivity in deeper ocean strata, affecting 95% of abyssopelagic species.
Children will bear some of the heaviest burdens of climate change, putting their survival and health at risk. Our Perspective underlines some of the critical routes through which climate change and its interactions with underlying factors of vulnerability affect children in Africa. We highlight the role of non-climatic factors or ‘socio-political stratifiers’ (poverty, housing conditions, conflicts and violence, displacement and migration) in increasing risks and reinforcing inequalities. We propose three priority areas of action to break vulnerability cycles and protect children: child-centred plans and policies that recognize children as rights bearers and agents of change; financial support for climate action for children; and climate-smart public facilities such as schools and health centres that can continually provide basic services. Children will bear considerable burdens of climate change, particularly where impacts intersect with pre-existing vulnerabilities. In this Perspective, the authors highlight how climate factors and socio-political stratifiers increase children’s risks in Africa and propose action to break vulnerability cycles.
Inclusivity and transparency are the foundations of procedural justice in climate governance. However, concerns persist around the influence of business interest groups at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conferences of Parties (COPs). COPs have increased in size and complexity, obscuring agendas and organizational relationships. Here we analyse the discourse and networks of actors at COP side events from 2003 to 2023 using machine learning-based topic modelling and social network analysis. We trace how discussions on energy, food and forests have evolved. Focusing on energy topics, we show that fossil fuel lobbyists gain COP access through developed-country business non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and developing-country governments. Their nominators focus on renewable energy and system approaches but are peripheral in the anti-fossil fuel discourse which grew from a collaborative network of environmental NGOs. Despite data availability challenges, systematically tracing the inclusivity of COP processes can uncover power dynamics at the highest levels of climate governance. Side events of annual UNFCCC Conferences of Parties are one of several channels by which non-state actors influence climate negotiation. By analysing discourse and networks of actors, this research examines how topics evolve over time and how energy interest groups gain access to agenda setting.
Wealth inequality dynamics influence economic and social outcomes and stability. While climate change and climate policies affect both physical capital and financial assets, their impacts on aggregate wealth and its distribution remain underexplored. Preliminary calculations suggest that climate change and climate investments could have substantial effects on wealth inequality, although the direction of these changes remains uncertain. This Perspective builds on numerical insights, outlines a conceptual framework and proposes a research agenda aimed at advancing the understanding of global wealth inequality under climate change, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary collaboration on the issue. Rising wealth inequality is a major challenge for this century, and climate change could further exacerbate it. Based on an overview of existing studies, this Perspective proposes a framework to advance understanding of wealth inequality in relation to climate change and climate policies.
In 2023–2024, widespread marine heatwaves associated with record ocean temperatures impacted ocean processes, marine species, ecosystems and coastal communities, with economic consequences. Despite warnings, interventions were limited. Proactive strategies are needed for inevitable future events.
Critical methodological choices in marine heatwave detection can yield dramatically different results. We call for context-specific methods that account for regional variability to advance marine heatwave research and socio-ecological outcomes.
Governance of domestic cross-border carbon capture and storage faces great challenges, which varies across political systems, economic structures and socio-cultural backgrounds, yet is often overlooked. Overcoming these challenges requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach built on synergistic cluster governance.
Subtropical western boundary currents (WBCs) refer to swift narrow oceanic currents that flow along the western edges of global subtropical ocean basins. Earlier studies indicated that the WBCs are extending poleward under a warming climate. However, owing to limited observations and coarse resolution of climate models, how greenhouse warming may affect the zonal structure of the WBCs remains unknown. Here, using seven high-resolution climate models, we find an onshore intensification of the WBCs in a warming climate. The multimodel ensemble mean of onshore acceleration ranges from 0.10 ± 0.08 to 0.51 ± 0.24 cm s−1 per decade over 1950–2050. Enhanced oceanic stratification associated with fast surface warming induces an uplift of the WBCs, leading to the projected change. The onshore intensification could induce anomalous warming that exacerbates coastal marine heatwaves, reduces ability of the coastal oceans to absorb anthropogenic carbon dioxide and destabilizes methane hydrate stored below the sea floor of shelf regions. Western boundary currents flow along the western edge of subtropical oceans, transporting heat polewards, and are integral in the climate system. Using high-resolution models, this work shows that western boundary currents will shift shorewards as a result of increased stratification driven by climate change.
Stewardship of soil carbon sits at the nexus of efforts to mitigate climate change, improve soil health and increase climate resiliency of agricultural production. Unlocking the full potential of soils to support a sustainable future requires embracing the unique and contrasting realities of soil carbon dynamics in arid versus humid systems.
The ability to explain and predict phenology across space, time and taxa has largely relied on annual average and seasonal climatic variables, ignoring the potential role of extreme weather events (EWEs) in regulating phenology. Yet, EWEs, which are predicted to increase in their severity and frequency with climate change, are also probably strong proximal phenology cues. Here we leveraged expansive community science resources to determine how EWEs affect plant flowering and insect flight beginning, termination and duration for 581 angiosperm species and 172 Lepidoptera across the contiguous United States. Our results provide evidence that plant and insect phenology is highly responsive to EWEs after accounting for seasonal and annual average climatic variables. The impact of EWEs on phenology varies depending on climatic context, and plant and insect responsiveness, while often similar, can be in the opposite directions. This suggests that EWEs may be key drivers of multitrophic phenological mismatches. Using community data of 581 angiosperm and 172 Lepidoptera species, the authors consider the impacts of extreme weather events (EWE) on the timing of life events (phenology). They show high responsiveness of phenology to EWEs and highlight the potential for EWEs to drive phenological mismatches.
As urban extent continues to grow, the impact this major land-use change has on soils and their carbon stocks is an increasingly important question. A recent global study suggests that the effects are not straightforward.
Climate research centres provide valuable support to scholars wanting to engage with interdisciplinary research. Fully leveraging this support requires strategic individual efforts. We outline how scholars can achieve collaborative synergy at the intersection of top-down institutional support and bottom-up individual action.
Accurately assessing future precipitation changes presents one of the greatest challenges of climate change. In the tropics, changes in the Hadley circulation are expected to considerably affect precipitation in dry subtropical and wet equatorial regions. However, while climate models project a robust weakening of the Northern Hemisphere circulation in the coming decades, currently, there is low confidence in the magnitude of such weakening and its impact on regional precipitation patterns. Here we use emergent constraint analyses and observation-based Hadley circulation strength changes to show that the projected circulation weakening will probably be larger than in current predictions. The more pronounced weakening of the flow results in a doubling of the subtropical precipitation increase compared with current forecasts, specifically over Asia, Africa and the Pacific Ocean. Our findings provide more accurate tropical circulation and precipitation projections and have considerable societal impacts, given the scarcity of water in subtropical regions. The degree to which the tropical circulation changes with warming is not well known. Here, the authors use an emergent constraint to show that the tropical Hadley circulation is weakening more intensely than previously thought, resulting in stronger precipitation increases in subtropical regions.
Nature Climate Change - Author Correction: Wildfires offset the increasing but spatially heterogeneous Arctic–boreal CO2 uptake
Nature Climate Change - Author Correction: Carbon burial in sediments below seaweed farms matches that of Blue Carbon habitats
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is critical to most net-zero pathways, especially given challenges due to slow decarbonization, hard-to-abate (H2A) economic activities and non-CO2 GHGs. However, land-based CDR, which is the most widely deployed currently and in future projections, requires extensive land and water. Here we examine least-cost 1.5 °C overshoot pathways, finding that 78 of 81 scenarios would require all available sustainable CDR to compensate for H2A emissions and overshoot. Use of CDR to compensate for emissions from easier-to-decarbonize sectors such as electricity would leave less available to compensate for H2A emissions, increasing system-wide costs of net zero or rendering such goals impossible. Such usage, however, is allowed in many jurisdictions and is widespread in voluntary markets. We suggest that rapidly transitioning CDR usage to exclusively compensate for H2A emissions and overshoot is required to prevent lower costs for near-term actors leading to larger long-term system-wide costs. Land-based carbon dioxide removals are critical for meeting the low-warming targets, yet their availability is limited when avoiding excessive risks to sustainability. Scenario-based analysis suggests that they should only be used to compensate for emissions from hard-to-abate sectors and overshoot.
Satellite observations suggest a slowdown in the decay of sea surface temperature anomalies over the past four decades, coinciding with an increase in the duration of marine heatwaves. This change is probably linked to factors such as stronger upper-ocean stratification, a deepening mixed layer and weakening oceanic forcing.
The Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) is a basin-scale mode of sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the North Atlantic, exerting a global impact, including contribution to the multidecadal Sahel drought and subsequent recovery and the post-1998 global warming hiatus. How greenhouse warming affects AMV remains unclear. Here, using models with multicentury-long outputs of future climate, we find an intensified AMV under greenhouse warming. Surface warming and freshwater input from sea-ice melt increase surface buoyancy, leading to a slowdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Reduced vertical mixing associated with suppressed oceanic deep convection results in a thinned mixed layer and its variability, favouring stronger AMV SST variability. Further, a weakened AMOC and the associated northward heat transport prolong the lifespan of the AMV, providing a long time for the AMV to grow. Thus, multidecadal global surface fluctuations and the associated climate extremes are likely to be more intense. This study uses available models to show intensified Atlantic multidecadal variability under global warming. Warmer and fresher waters, along with slowed overturning circulation, reduce the mixed layer, intensifying sea surface temperature variability, suggesting increased global climate extremes.
June 2024 was the twelfth month in a row with global mean surface temperatures at least 1.5 °C above pre-industrial conditions, but it is not clear if this implies a failure to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting long-term warming below this threshold. Here we show that in climate model simulations, the long-term Paris Agreement target is usually crossed well before such a string of unusually warm temperatures occurs. The 12 months before July 2024 were more than 1.5 °C warmer than the pre-industrial baseline. Using climate models, the author shows that the first year that exceeds 1.5 °C of warming most probably also occurs within the first 20-year period with an average temperature that exceeds temperature targets.
The temperature goals of the Paris Agreement are measured as 20-year averages exceeding a pre-industrial baseline. The calendar year of 2024 was announced as the first above 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, but the implications for the corresponding temperature goal are unclear. Here we show that, without very stringent climate mitigation, the first year above 1.5 °C occurs within the first 20-year period with an average warming of 1.5 °C. What a first year with temperature 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial baseline implies for long-term temperature goals is unclear. Here the authors show that such a first year above the baseline is highly likely to occur within the first 20-year period with average warming of 1.5 °C.
Nature Climate Change - Uniformity of climate anxiety scales
Nature Climate Change - Plants countering downpours
Nature Climate Change - Thermal impacts on aquatic fertility
Nature Climate Change - Ineffective carbon offset
The ocean’s surface layer has a crucial role in Earth’s climate, absorbing excess atmospheric heat, thereby regulating global temperatures. Here, using global daily sea surface temperature (SST) data, we document a notable increase in the persistence of SST anomalies across the global ocean since 1982. This trend is also evident in frequency space, showing a decreased variance in SSTs on timescales shorter than a month, but a slight increase on longer timescales. A simple stochastic model attributes this prolonged memory to three key factors––a deepening of the surface mixed layer, a weakening of oceanic forcing and reduced damping rates. The first two factors decrease the variance on shorter timescales, while the third increases it on longer timescales. Our findings have great relevance to the observed increase in the duration of marine heatwaves and the associated heightened thermal threats to marine organisms. Our study also suggests that the ocean’s ability to sequester heat is weakening. Analysis of 42 years of daily sea surface temperature data shows increasing persistence of anomalies. These changes, which are attributed to deepening of the mixed layer, reduced oceanic forcing and reduced damping associated with stronger stratification, have implications for marine heatwave duration.
There is growing concern about the potential impacts of climate change on financial stability but little quantitative evidence available on the potential magnitude of financial risks induced by climate extremes. Here we provide a forward-looking assessment of the impacts of floods, storms, and wildfires on a universe of securities representative of global market capitalization, using the structural climate credit-risk model CLIMACRED-PHYS. We show that there can be a substantial amplification of direct economic losses arising from firms’ financial leverage. We highlight the importance of cross-border climate financial risks, notably the transfer of impacts from production facilities in emerging economies to firms in developed economies. Finally, we quantify the potential increase of financial risks induced by climate change. Overall, our results emphasize the relevance of asset-level climate risk assessment for financial regulation and the importance of integrating financial impacts in the assessment of adaptation policies. Climate change will impact financial stability, but the quantitative evidence on the magnitude of such risks is still rare. With a forward-looking structural credit-risk model, researchers map how physical risks can be amplified through financial leverage and generate cross-border climate risks.
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