Volume 14 Issue 4, April 2024

Mitigation and adaptation strategies have historically been, and continue to be, developed separately. The climate is already changing and integration of adaptation and mitigation in policy and practice is now urgently needed.

Many cities are developing plans and strategies to achieve net-zero emissions and combat climate change. However, the operational value of residual emissions remains unknown, thus challenging the integrity, transparency and impact of such pledges.

Following a groundswell of voluntary net-zero targets by companies, regulators are increasingly introducing mandatory rules. If governments can overcome the barriers to rigour, coherence and fairness, such mandatory ‘ground rules’ have the potential to overcome the obstructionism that holds back a just climate transition.

Meteorites recovered from Antarctica provide a bounty of materials from asteroids and planets and revolutionized the field of meteoritics. Warming temperatures in Antarctica may lead to the loss of a significant fraction of meteorites exposed at the surface and thus threaten the impact Antarctic meteorites have on planetary science.

The ocean stores about 30% of the carbon emitted by human activities, regulating atmospheric CO₂ levels and the Earth’s climate. Research suggests that this uptake of CO₂ has strengthened much faster in coastal ocean waters than in the open ocean due to enhanced biological activity.

The worldwide trend of decreasing corporate tax in recent years has contributed to an increase in global carbon emissions, but implementing a global minimum tax rate of 15% could partially mitigate this impact. Policymakers should coordinate corporate tax policies with climate regulations.

Analysis of patent data from 1990 to 2019 reveals a global decline in the invention and international diffusion of high-quality methane-targeted abatement technologies (MTATs) from 2010 to 2019. Moreover, there is a mismatch between where MTAT inventions are concentrated and the countries or regions expected to have most growth in future methane emissions.

Groundwater recharge replenishes aquifers and enables them to sustain irrigated agriculture and household water access, but the sensitivity of recharge to climate change remains unclear. Our analysis of global recharge rates demonstrates their sensitivity to climatic conditions, implying that amplified and nonlinear impacts of climate change on recharge rates are likely.

When the temperature increases, so do the energetic requirements of species. We find that the energetic stress caused by increases in temperature pushes fish species to consume the first prey they encounter to fulfil their immediate needs, rather than focusing on more energetically rewarding prey. This behaviour increases the vulnerability of communities to climate change.

Behavioural science offers valuable insights for mitigating climate change, but existing work focuses mostly on consumption and lacks coordination across disciplines. In this Perspective, the authors make six recommendations for improving the quality and impact of behavioural research on mitigation.

Global climate change will continue to reconfigure water resources and lead to more extreme events. Water markets may provide a low-cost adaptation tool. This Perspective discusses the opportunities and challenges for surface and groundwater markets to manage water resources.

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.

Increasing exposure to climate hazards under climate change will disproportionately impact poor communities. This study shows that disruptions to infrastructure service threaten progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in coastal Bangladesh, but impacts can be mediated through adaptation.

Countries use corporate tax cuts to attract foreign investment, which reshapes patterns of global production. This research shows that such competition will lead to higher carbon emissions and shift them to developing countries, while a global minimum tax could help alleviate these problems.

How groundwater recharge changes with global warming is not well constrained. Here, the authors use an empirical relationship to show that groundwater recharge is more sensitive to aridity changes than expected, implying a strong response of water resources to climate change.

It is important to detect human influence on the climate, but natural variability can hide signals of change. Here the authors show the anthropogenic signal has emerged for sea surface temperature seasonality, primarily driven by greenhouse gas increases, and with geographical differences in change.

The coastal ocean is a dynamic environment, and CO₂ uptake is increasing faster than in the open ocean. Incorporating coastal processes into a global model shows that biological responses to climate-induced circulation changes and riverine nutrient inputs are key to the enhanced uptake.

Grazing has been shown to have diverse effects on soil carbon, with local variation. This study assesses carbon changes related to grazing globally and finds that, although grazing has reduced soil carbon stocks, managing intensity could increase carbon uptake in both soils and vegetation.

The authors use stomach contents from six fish species sampled for 12 years to show that warming shifts foraging behaviour to favour consumption of less energetically rewarding prey. Using food web models, they show that this flexible foraging could lead to reduced community biodiversity.

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.

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.