Most recent 20 articles: Nature Climate Change
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Global burned area increasingly explained by climate change - Nature Climate Change (Oct 20, 2024) |
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Oct 20, 2024 · Fire behaviour is changing in many regions worldwide. However, nonlinear interactions between fire weather, fuel, land use, management and ignitions have impeded formal attribution of global burned area changes. Here, we demonstrate that climate change increasingly explains regional burned area patterns, using an ensemble of global fire models. The simulations show that climate change increased global burned area by 15.8% (95% confidence interval (CI) [13.1–18.7]) for 2003–2019 and increased the probability of experiencing months with above-average global burned area by 22% (95% CI [18–26]). In contrast, other human forcings contributed to lowering burned area by 19.1% (95% CI ... Read more ...
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Global exposure risk of frogs to increasing environmental dryness - Nature Climate Change (Oct 20, 2024) |
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Oct 20, 2024 · Compared with the risks associated with climate warming and extremes, the risks of climate-induced drying to animal species remain understudied. This is particularly true for water-sensitive groups, such as anurans (frogs and toads), whose long-term survival must be considered in the context of both environmental changes and species sensitivity. Here, we mapped global areas where anurans will face increasing water limitations, analysed ecotype sensitivity to water loss and modelled behavioural activity impacts under future climate change scenarios. Predictions indicate that 6.6–33.6% of anuran habitats will become arid like by 2080–2100, with 15.4–36.1% exposed to worsening drought, ... Read more ...
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Climate justice beliefs related to climate action and policy support around the world - Nature Climate Change (Oct 17, 2024) |
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Oct 17, 2024 · Climate justice is increasingly prominent in climate change communication and advocacy but little is known about public understanding of the concept or how widely it resonates with different groups. In our global survey of 5,627 adults in 11 countries spanning the global north and south, most participants (66.2%) had never heard of climate justice. Nonetheless, endorsement of climate justice beliefs was widespread (for example, acknowledging the disproportionate impact of climate change on poor people and the underpinning roles of capitalism and colonialism in the climate crisis). Climate justice beliefs were also associated with various indices of climate action and policy support. ... Read more ...
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Drought and aridity influence internal migration worldwide - Nature Climate Change (Oct 14, 2024) |
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Oct 14, 2024 · While the effects of climatic changes on migration have received widespread public and scientific attention, comparative evidence for their influence on internal migration worldwide remains scarce. Here we use census-based data from 72 countries (1960–2016) to analyse 107,840 migration flows between subnational regions. We find that increased drought and aridity have a significant impact on internal migration, particularly in the hyper-arid and arid areas of Southern Europe, South Asia, Africa and the Middle East and South America. Migration patterns are shaped by the wealth, agricultural dependency and urbanization of both origin and destination areas with migration responses being ... Read more ...
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Canopy structure regulates autumn phenology by mediating the microclimate in temperate forests - Nature Climate Change (Oct 13, 2024) |
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Oct 13, 2024 · Autumn phenology plays a critical role in shaping the carbon sequestration capacity of temperate forests. Notable local-scale variations in autumn phenology have drawn increasing attention recently, potentially introducing substantial uncertainty when predicting temperate forest productivity. Yet the underpinning mechanisms driving these variations remain inadequately elucidated. Here we observed significant and consistent relationships between canopy structure and autumn phenology across six temperate forest sites, induced by the regulation effect of canopy structure on microclimate conditions. Incorporating the identified 'canopy structure–microclimate–autumn phenology’ pathway ... Read more ...
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Assessing the impacts of fertility and retirement policies on China’s carbon emissions - Nature Climate Change (Oct 10, 2024) |
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Oct 10, 2024 · The gradual adjustment of fertility and retirement policies in China has social benefits in terms of coping with population aging. However, the environmental consequences of these policies remain ambiguous. Here we compile environmentally extended multiregional input–output tables to estimate household carbon footprints for different population age groups in China. Subsequently, we estimate the age-sex-specific population under different fertility policies up to 2060 and assess the impacts of fertility and retirement policies on household carbon footprints. We find that Chinese young people have relatively higher household carbon footprints than their older counterparts due to ... Read more ...
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Maize breeding for smaller tassels threatens yield under a warming climate - Nature Climate Change (Oct 10, 2024) |
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Oct 10, 2024 · Breeding programmes have increased the yields of major crops, including maize (Zea mays L.), but the suitability of optimized traits to future climates remains unclear. Here, by comparing the responses of 323 elite maize inbred lines from different breeding eras under natural field conditions, we show that while newer lines exhibit higher grain yield than the early released lines under standard growth, the bred trait of reduced tassel size increases the susceptibility of newly released lines to high temperature during flowering. We identified a potential threshold for spikelets per tassel (~700), over which maize can produce a stably high seed set ratio under warm conditions, and ... Read more ...
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A multi-model assessment of inequality and climate change - Nature Climate Change (Oct 03, 2024) |
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Oct 03, 2024 · Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated issues. Despite growing empirical evidence on the distributional implications of climate policies and climate risks, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. Here we fill this gap through an ensemble of eight large-scale integrated assessment models that belong to different economic paradigms and feature income heterogeneity. We quantify the distributional implications of climate impacts and of the varying compensation schemes of climate policies compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. By 2100, climate impacts will increase inequality by ... Read more ...
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Arctic soil carbon trajectories shaped by plant–microbe interactions - Nature Climate Change (Oct 02, 2024) |
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Oct 02, 2024 · Rapid warming in the Arctic threatens to amplify climate change by releasing the region’s vast stocks of soil carbon to the atmosphere. Increased nutrient availability may exacerbate soil carbon losses by stimulating microbial decomposition or offset them by increasing primary productivity. The outcome of these competing feedbacks remains unclear. Here we present results from a long-term nutrient addition experiment in northern Alaska, United States, coupled with a mechanistic isotope-tracing experiment. We found that soil carbon losses observed during the first 20?years of fertilization were caused by microbial priming and were completely reversed in the subsequent 15?years by ... Read more ...
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Climate variability shifts the vertical structure of phytoplankton in the Sargasso Sea - Nature Climate Change (Sep 24, 2024) |
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Sep 24, 2024 · Marine phytoplankton are essential to ocean biogeochemical cycles. However, our understanding of changes in phytoplankton rely largely on satellite data, which can only assess changes in surface phytoplankton. How climate variability is impacting their vertical structure remains unclear. Here we use 33?years’ worth of data from the Sargasso Sea to show distinct seasonal and long-term phytoplankton climate responses in the surface mixed layer compared with the subsurface. Seasonally, the surface community alters their carbon-to-chlorophyll ratio without changing their carbon biomass, whereas the chlorophyll a and carbon of the subsurface community covaries with no change in their ... Read more ...
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Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets - Nature Climate Change (Sep 24, 2024) |
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Sep 24, 2024 · Climate change mitigation requires the large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS). Recent plans indicate an eight-fold increase in CCS capacity by 2030, yet the feasibility of CCS expansion is debated. Using historical growth of CCS and other policy-driven technologies, we show that if plans double between 2023 and 2025 and their failure rates decrease by half, CCS could reach 0.37?GtCO2?yr-1 by 2030 - lower than most 1.5?°C pathways but higher than most 2?°C pathways. Staying on-track to 2?°C would require that in 2030–2040 CCS accelerates at least as fast as wind power did in the 2000s, and that after 2040, it grows faster than nuclear power did in the 1970s to ... Read more ...
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Ocean warming as a trigger for irreversible retreat of the Antarctic ice sheet - Nature Climate Change (Sep 19, 2024) |
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Sep 19, 2024 · Warmer ocean conditions could impact future ice loss from Antarctica due to their ability to thin and reduce the buttressing of laterally confined ice shelves. Previous studies highlight the potential for a cold to warm ocean regime shift within the sub-shelf cavities of the two largest Antarctic ice shelves - the Filchner–Ronne and Ross. However, how this impacts upstream ice flow and mass loss has not been quantified. Here using an ice sheet model and an ensemble of ocean-circulation model sub-shelf melt rates, we show that transition to a warm state in those ice shelf cavities leads to a destabilization and irreversible grounding line retreat in some locations. Once this ocean ... Read more ...
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Carbon dioxide emissions from global overseas coal-fired power plants - Nature Climate Change (Sep 18, 2024) |
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Sep 18, 2024 · Foreign investments in overseas coal-fired power plants (OCPs) largely impede decarbonization efforts, yet their global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have not been sufficiently quantified. Here we analyse investment data from 908 OCPs worldwide, and then reveal current annual emissions of 0.53?GtCO2?yr-1 and a historical cumulative total of 26?GtCO2. Developed nations account for 78% of these cumulative emissions on the basis of investments, while emissions from developing nations have surged from 8% in 1960 to 39% in 2022. Assuming unchanged policies and technologies, OCPs are projected to contribute an additional 15–30?GtCO2 in cumulative emissions by 2060 directly. Furthermore, ... Read more ...
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Limited net poleward movement of reef species over a decade of climate extremes - Nature Climate Change (Sep 18, 2024) |
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Sep 18, 2024 · Warming seas are expected to drive marine life poleward. However, few systematic observations confirm movement among entire communities at both warm and cool range edges. We analysed two continent-scale reef monitoring datasets to quantify changes in latitudinal range edges of 662 Australian shallow-water reef fishes and invertebrates over a decade punctuated by climate extremes. Temperate and tropical species both showed little net movement overall, with retreat often balancing expansion across the continent. Within regions, however, range edges shifted ~100?km per decade, on average, in the poleward or equatorward directions expected from warming or cooling. Although some species ... Read more ...
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Disproportionate impact of atmospheric heat events on lake surface water temperature increases - Nature Climate Change (Sep 16, 2024) |
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Sep 16, 2024 · Hot temperature extremes (HTEs) in the atmosphere can also affect lake surface water temperature, but how this impact changes with global warming is not well understood. Here we use numerical modelling and satellite observations to quantify the contribution of HTEs to variations in summer lake surface water temperature and lake heatwaves in 1,260 water bodies worldwide between 1979 and 2022. Over this time period, HTE duration and cumulative intensity over the studied lakes increased significantly, at average rates of 1.4 days per decade and 0.92?°C days per decade, respectively. Despite only accounting for 7% of the total summer days, HTEs are responsible for 24% of lake surface ... Read more ...
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Rising cause-specific mortality risk and burden of compound heatwaves amid climate change - Nature Climate Change (Sep 16, 2024) |
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Sep 16, 2024 · Global warming shifts daytime-only heatwaves to nighttime-only and day–night compound heatwaves. However, evidence on the cause-specific burdens of these heatwaves in a changing climate and ageing population is limited. Here, by analysing 1,088,742 non-accidental deaths from 272 Chinese cities, we found that compound heatwaves posed significantly higher cardiopulmonary mortality risks and burdens than daytime-only and nighttime-only heatwaves, particularly for ischaemic stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and regions with high summer temperature variation. Projections suggested substantial increases in compound heatwave-related mortality (4.0–7.6-fold) by the 2090s ... Read more ...
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A focus group study of ethical issues during climate-informed health decision-making - Nature Climate Change (Sep 11, 2024) |
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Sep 11, 2024 · Healthcare delivery contributes to carbon emissions, exacerbating climate change and its associated health impacts. There is limited understanding of stakeholder views regarding ethical issues at the intersection of health choices and environmental impact. Here we performed a qualitative study involving seven focus groups with 46 participants who were patients and physicians in the northeastern US health systems. Both patients and physicians were amenable to health decisions that are beneficial for the environment and health. A consumptive healthcare system impeded both groups’ assumption of health-related climate responsibilities. Physicians, however, underestimated patients’ ... Read more ...
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Elevated urban energy risks due to climate-driven biophysical feedbacks - Nature Climate Change (Sep 11, 2024) |
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Sep 11, 2024 · Climate-driven impacts on future urban heating and cooling (H&C) energy demand are critical to sustainable energy planning. Existing global H&C projections are predominantly made without accounting for future two-way biophysical feedbacks between urban climate and H&C use. Here, using a hybrid modelling framework we show that the prevalent degree-days methods misrepresent the magnitude, nonlinearity and uncertainty in the climate-driven projections of H&C energy demand changes due to the missing two-way feedbacks. We find a 220% increase (47% decrease) in cooling (heating) energy demand with amplified uncertainty by 2099 under a very high emission scenario, roughly twice that ... Read more ...
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Fisheries track the future redistribution of marine species - Nature Climate Change (Sep 11, 2024) |
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Sep 11, 2024 · The redistribution of fish stocks induced by climate change is expected to have global implications for fisheries, particularly the poleward shifts of species. However, the responses of different fishing gears and fleet of countries and their potential attempts to spatially redistribute catches remain unknown. Here, by developing environmental niche models for industrial fisheries of 82 countries and 13 fishing gears, we demonstrate that without management, global fleets are expected to shift poleward by the end of the century. This is driven by polar fishing gears moving to higher Arctic areas and tropical fishing gears expanding both within the tropics and poleward. Most nations, ... Read more ...
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Global patterns and drivers of tropical aboveground carbon changes - Nature Climate Change (Sep 11, 2024) |
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Sep 11, 2024 · Tropical terrestrial ecosystems play an important role in modulating the global carbon balance. However, the complex dynamics and factors controlling tropical aboveground live biomass carbon (AGC) are not fully understood. Here, using remotely sensed observations, we find a moderate net AGC sink of 0.21?±?0.06?PgC?yr-1 throughout the global tropics from 2010 to 2020. This arises from a gross loss of -1.79?PgC?yr-1 offset by a marked gain of 2.01?±?0.06?PgC?yr-1. Fire emissions in non-forested African shrubland/savanna biomes, coupled with post-fire carbon recovery, substantially dominated the interannual variability of tropical AGC. Fire radiative power was identified as the primary ... Read more ...
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