Volume 11 Issue 12, December 2021

Transdisciplinary research is increasingly seen as critical for advancing climate change adaptation. Operationalizing transdisciplinary research in the global South, however, confronts ingrained cultural and systemic barriers to participatory research.

The social cost of nitrous oxide does not account for stratospheric ozone depletion. Doing so could increase its value by 20%. Links between nitrous oxide and other nitrogen pollution impacts could make mitigation even more compelling.

Since the Paris Agreement, the impacts of 1.5 and 2 °C global warming have been emphasized, but the rate of warming also has regional effects. A new framework of model experiments is needed to increase our understanding of climate stabilization and its impacts.

Trees outside of forests are numerous and can be important carbon sinks, while also providing ecosystem services and benefits to livelihoods. New monitoring tools highlight the crucial contribution they can make to strategies for both mitigation and adaptation.

Geert Jan van Oldenborgh was a tireless advocate for inclusive science and a pioneer of event attribution science.

Finding effective ways to support rural communities in adapting to climate change is critical for building climate-resilient societies. Now research shows the potential of risk-transfer policies for improving adaptation and securing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Most emissions scenarios in line with the Paris Agreement have shown a large amount of net-negative CO₂ emissions during the second half of this century. A new set of scenarios expands this picture.

Eastward flow in the Southern Ocean is the primary conduit between ocean basins. A comprehensive study of multi-decadal observational records and model experiments reveals that warming in the upper ocean is causing this flow to accelerate.

We find that if all countries adopt the necessary uniform global carbon tax and then return the revenues to their citizens on an equal per capita basis, it will be possible to meet a 2 °C target while also increasing wellbeing, reducing inequality and alleviating poverty. These results indicate that it is possible for a society to implement strong climate action without compromising goals for equity and development.

Natural climate solutions, along with reduction in fossil fuel emissions, are critical to mitigating climate change and meeting climate goals. This Perspective outlines a hierarchy for decision-making regarding protecting, managing and then restoring natural systems for climate mitigation.

Assessing the cost of climate change mitigation is essential to policy-making, yet for many the perception remains that meeting climate goals will entail economic loss. This Perspective unpacks key aspects of mitigation cost estimates to clarify interpretation and discussion of costs.

Smallholder farmers will be impacted substantially by climate change and need to adapt. Agent-based modelling shows that interventions, particularly cash transfer paired with risk transfer mechanisms, lead to increased migration and uptake of cash crops, with higher income and lower inequality.

Mitigation pathways tend to focus on an end temperature target and calculate how to keep within these bounds. This work uses seven integrated assessment models to consider current mitigation efforts and project likely temperature trajectories.

Current emissions scenarios include pathways that overshoot the temperature goals set out in the Paris Agreement and rely on future net negative emissions. Limiting overshoot would require near-term investment but would result in longer-term economic benefit.

Mitigation pathways allowing for temperature overshoot often ignore the related climate and macroeconomic impacts. Net-zero pathways with limited overshoot could reduce low-probability high-consequence risks and economic loss.

Climate mitigation policies often provide health co-benefits. Analysis of individual power plants under future climate–energy policy scenarios shows reducing air pollution-related deaths does not automatically align with emission reduction policies and that policy design needs to consider public health.

Heat extremes threaten the health of urban residents with particularly strong impacts from day–night sustained heat. Observation and simulation data across eastern China show increasing risks of compound events attributed to anthropogenic emissions and urbanization.

The remoteness and paucity of historic observations of the Southern Ocean limit understanding of the effects of climate change on circulation. Using observations, CMIP6 and eddy-resolving models, this Article shows that acceleration of its zonal flow emerged in recent decades as a result of uneven ocean warming.

Soybean and maize yields in the Amazon-Cerrado region of Brazil are dependent on water from rain. Warming and drying will make the climate less suitable for agricultural production; changes have already moved 28% of croplands out of their optimum climate space.

The authors project future rates of temporal and spatial displacement of climate and land-use in protected areas (PAs), and show that more than one-quarter of the world’s PAs are highly threatened, with particular risk to PAs across tropical moist and grassland biomes.

Climate policy analyses often ignore the possibility of progressive redistribution of carbon tax revenues and assume that mitigation cost will burden the poor in the short term. Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) estimation suggests such redistribution could reduce inequality, alleviate poverty and increase well-being globally.