Research articles

Governments around the world have pledged to reduce fossil fuel subsidies, yet the actual implementation has not been measured. With a unique dataset and approach, researchers find since 2016 there are more frequent reforms, yet most of them do not survive over 12 months.

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.

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.

Scenarios for mitigation pathways lay the foundation for IPCC reporting and provide guidelines for future climate actions. This Analysis compares all the scenarios included since the Fifth Assessment Report and discusses how the portfolio has evolved over the past decade and the driving factors behind these changes.

Multiple climate-related coastal hazards could impact people, infrastructure and ecosystems, yet previous works often focused on flooding only. By analysing the future exposure to four types of hazard along the US Southeast Atlantic coast, this research emphasizes the risks beyond flooding.

The authors provide a global, cradle-to-gate quantification of the changes in the global warming potential and sustainability index of conventional agriculture from 1961 to the 2020s. They show an eightfold global warming potential increase and threefold decrease in sustainability index, largely due to tillage, fertilizer use and irrigation.

It is important to understand the cost-effectiveness of natural regeneration and plantations, which are common reforestation methods for mitigation. The authors estimate and map abatement costs for the two approaches across low- and mid-income countries, helping to guide reforestation initiatives.

Tracking adaptation requires countries’ commitments as the baseline for measuring future progress. By analysing 65 African national adaptation documents, this research finds that most countries fail to provide internally consistent and operational plans, while efforts towards adequacy exist.

Carbon dioxide removals (CDR) have been integrated into country-submitted reports under the Paris Agreement. However, this Analysis finds a gap between levels of CDR in these national proposals and the scenarios limiting global warming to the 1.5 °C target.

The authors perform a meta-analysis to assess current and future capacities of healthcare systems under climate change. They summarize the key focus points of current literature and highlight the need for effective policies, trained workforces and redesigned infrastructure to meet future burdens.

Methane emissions from abandoned mines have been underestimated in emissions inventories even though they may become a dominant source of emissions as coal is phased out. Using a detailed bottom-up dataset, the authors find that a strategy targeting the closure of gas-rich mines could have a large mitigation potential

Nature-based climate solutions are widely incorporated into climate change mitigation plans and need firm scientific foundations. Through literature review and expert elicitation, this analysis shows that for some major pathways there is strong support, while for others their efficacy remains uncertain.

Innovations in methane-targeted abatement technologies (MTAT) are needed to curb climate change in the short term. This Analysis reveals the trend, distributions and diffusion of MTAT-related patents for the past few decades, highlighting the mismatch between emissions sources and technical capacity.

For global adaptation effort, it is essential to understand which actors are participating and what their roles are. This Analysis, based on comparative case studies, displays the dominant actors in adaptation, and how the actor–role patterns vary across regions.

To test the reproducibility of ocean acidification research, the authors conducted a meta-analysis of 373 studies on calcification of marine calcifiers across 24 years. While the size of negative effects declined over time, the results remained reproducible and their limitations were then explored.

Climate policy requires proenvironment attitudes and voting by the public in democracies, yet economic conditions can impact such perceptions and behaviour. Higher exposure to globalization can lead to lower support for environmentalist parties and more climate scepticism.

Non-CO₂ emissions, including methane and nitrous oxide, are non-negligible contributors to global warming. A multimodel analysis incorporating recent advances in damage functions shows that the social cost of these greenhouse gases would increase substantially, although uncertainty remains.

Bulk materials are essential to modern society, but their production releases large amounts of GHG emissions. This Analysis shows that circular economy strategies have great potential for emissions mitigation, alongside reduced material demand.

Climate-induced extreme events could lead to drastic socioeconomic consequences, including altered cooperation behaviours. With survey experiments among Iraqi and Syrian refugees, this study finds drought experience could reduce altruism and group identity function as the key moderator.

Effective spatial allocation of the nature-based solutions is important for city mitigation through various pathways. This Analysis allocates prioritized urban nature-based solutions to major European cities and estimates their potential contribution to emission reductions, then the carbon neutrality targets.