Research articles

The gap between adaptation policy planning and actual implementation could delay effective actions. Researchers demonstrate why internal consistency checks should be the starting point to reduce the gap by applying them for city-level adaptation plans across Europe.

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.

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.

Biogas is promoted as an alternative fuel with the potential to lower net CO₂ emissions. However, here the authors calculate that growing biogas feedstock crops on drained peatlands may produce three times more CO₂ than burning natural gas.

The authors link a recent collapse of a commercially valuable snow crab stock to borealization of the Bering Sea that is >98% likely to have been human induced.

Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) are an important international initiative to address the urgent coal phase-out issue in emerging economies. Model-based assessment demonstrates JETPs for South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam provide a promising route for achieving the 1.5 °C target.

Climate change is increasing ocean temperature, particularly in the surface waters. Here the authors show that accelerated surface warming in the North Pacific in the past decade is driven by shoaling of the ocean mixed layer with some dampening by increased latent heat loss from the ocean.

Addressing the consequences of climate change requires political attention and leadership. However, this study shows that apart from Green parties, political parties do not increase their attention to environmental issues following extreme weather events.

Hydrochlorofluorocarbons are important ozone-depleting substances. Here the authors show that the radiative forcing and equivalent effective chlorine from hydrochlorofluorocarbons has decreased in recent years, 5 years earlier than expected.

Carbon removal using carbon capture and storage (CCS) remains controversial. This study finds that cross-border CO₂ transport would hinder public acceptance of CCS, associated with the perceived unfairness.

Most of the meteorites on the Earth’s surface are found in Antarctica. Here the authors show that ~5,000 meteorites become inaccessible per year as they melt into the ice due to climate change.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review on renewable energy expansion and biodiversity. Comparing renewable energy siting maps with the ranges of two threatened species under future climates, they highlight the potential conflict and need for consideration of climate-change-driven range shifts.

International trade of used vehicles lacks regulation on emissions standards. This study shows that vehicles exported from Great Britain generate substantially higher carbon and pollution emissions than scrapped or on-road vehicles.

The authors investigate the impacts of excluding ecosystem data from Russian stations in the Arctic. While the current network of Arctic stations is already biased, the exclusion of Russian stations lowers representativeness and creates further biases that can rival end-of-century climate change shifts.

The increase in atmospheric methane has been accelerating since 2007, and identifying drivers is critical for climate mitigation. In this study, the authors show that the expansion of rice cultivation in Africa accounts for 7% of rising emissions.

Rice paddies are a source of the potent greenhouse gas methane. The authors demonstrate that a rice variety containing naturally lost function in the gene GS3 has reduced allocation of photosynthates to roots, which results in a reduction of methane emissions during growth.

.Observations of glacier response to climate changes prior to the satellite era are sparse. Here the authors use historical aerial photographs to document change in peripheral glaciers in Greenland since 1890, providing enhanced confidence that recent changes are unprecedented on a century timescale.

Upslope migration is a recognized climate change response, but which traits support this migration is unclear. The authors use a global dataset of 807 insect species—flying and non-flying—to show that lagging upslope migration in terrestrial animals may be linked to oxygen demands.

Climate-induced extreme events could disrupt the operation of ports globally, which could affect maritime transport, trade and supply chains. The authors estimate wider impact on the trade and economic activities across different sectors, finding that globally large economic cost is at-risk.

Atmospheric methane concentrations are increasing and a process-based model now estimates greater methane emissions from wetlands since 2007 than previous studies. Substantial increases in 2020 and 2021 contributed to record-high growth rates in the atmospheric methane burden.