Articles on or after 4/10/2024: Nature Climate Change
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Climate change will impact the value and optimal adoption of residential rooftop solar - Nature Climate Change  (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Rooftop solar adoption is critical for residential decarbonization and hinges on its value to households. Climate change will probably affect the value of rooftop solar through impacts on rooftop solar generation and cooling demand, but no studies have quantified this effect. In this study, we quantified household-level effects of climate change on rooftop solar value and techno-economically optimal capacity by integrating empirical demand data for over 2,000 US households across 17 cities, household-level simulation and optimization models, and downscaled weather data for historic and future climates. We found that climate change will increase the value of rooftop solar to ... Read more ... |
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Climate change-driven cooling can kill marine megafauna at their distributional limits - Nature Climate Change  (Apr 14) |
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Apr 14 · The impacts on marine species from secular warming and heatwaves are well demonstrated; however, the impacts of extreme cold events are poorly understood. Here we link the death of organisms from 81 species to an intense cold upwelling event in the Agulhas Current, and show trends of increasing frequency and intensification of upwelling in the Agulhas Current and East Australian Current. Using electronic tagging, we illustrate the potential impacts of upwelling events on the movement behaviour of bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas, including alterations of migratory patterns and maintenance of shallower dive profiles when transiting through upwelling cells. Increasing upwelling could ... Read more ... |
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Climate damage projections beyond annual temperature - Nature Climate Change  (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Estimates of global economic damage from climate change assess the effect of annual temperature changes. However, the roles of precipitation, temperature variability and extreme events are not yet known. Here, by combining projections of climate models with empirical dose–response functions translating shifts in temperature means and variability, rainfall patterns and extreme precipitation into economic damage, we show that at +3?°C global average losses reach 10% of gross domestic product, with worst effects (up to 17%) in poorer, low-latitude countries. Relative to annual temperature damage, the additional impacts of projecting variability and extremes are smaller and dominated by ... Read more ... |
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Frugivores enhance potential carbon recovery in fragmented landscapes - Nature Climate Change  (Apr 14) |
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Apr 14 · Forest restoration is fundamental to overcoming biodiversity crises and climate change. In tropical forests, animals can improve forest recovery as they disperse >70% of tree species. However, representing animals in restoration and climate change policies remains challenging because a quantitative assessment of their contribution to forest and carbon recovery is lacking. Here we used individual-based models to assess frugivore-mediated seed rain in open areas along a fragmentation gradient. Movements of large birds were limited in landscapes with <40% forest cover, although small birds continued to disperse seeds. Large birds disperse seeds of late-successional species with ... Read more ... |
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Revisiting Copenhagen climate mitigation targets - Nature Climate Change  (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Many economies set climate mitigation targets for 2020 at the 2009 15th Conference of the Parties conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Yet no retrospective review of the implementation and actual mitigation associated with these targets has materialized. Here we track the national CO2 emissions from both territory and consumption (trade adjusted) perspectives to assess socioeconomic factors affecting changes in emissions. Among the 34 countries analysed, 12 failed to meet their targets (among them Portugal, Spain and Japan) and 7 achieved the target for territorial emissions, albeit with carbon leakage through international trade to ... Read more ... |
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Western North Pacific tropical cyclone activity modulated by phytoplankton feedback under global warming - Nature Climate Change  (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · The effects of bio-optical feedback through chlorophyll on future tropical cyclone (TC) activity are not well understood. Here we use Earth system model simulations with the biogeochemical feedback turned on and off to investigate the influence of chlorophyll changes on projections of TCs over the western North Pacific (WNP). An increase in chlorophyll in the tropical eastern Pacific and a decrease in the tropical western Pacific lead to a La Niña-like sea surface temperature warming. This pattern plays a crucial role in enhancing the genesis potential index over the southeastern WNP by 10.16% through strengthening of the Walker and local Hadley circulations. The enhanced genesis ... Read more ... |
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