Volume 13 Issue 6, June 2023

Large language models offer an opportunity to advance climate and sustainability research. We believe that a focus on regulation and validation of generative artificial intelligence models would provide more benefits to society than a halt in development.

Climate change mitigation politics is not delivering on climate targets. Recent research suggests that a general formal framework that represents the behaviour of citizens, consumers, firms and parties explains why.

At COP26 in Glasgow, major emitters significantly ratcheted up their climate commitments. Such increased ambition will substantially contribute to getting closer to the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement but more ambition is required, and mitigation might face different challenges in different regions.

The deepest reaches of the ocean are ventilated by sinking of cold and relatively saline seawater around Antarctica. Observations from the Australian sector of the Southern Ocean reveal a decline in sinking and abyssal ventilation, linked to dropping ocean salinity on the Antarctic shelf.

The ozone layer is slowly recovering due to the Montreal Protocol. The only exception is the ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere, which keeps decreasing. Now, a modelling study demonstrates that the tropical ozone loss is partly driven by ozone-depleting very short-lived substances that are not regulated by the Montreal Protocol.

A large gap exists between the concerns over the risks of climate change and the support needed for effective climate actions. We show that participating in a market where individuals make predictions on future climate outcomes and earn money can change climate attitudes, behaviour and knowledge.

The value of climate change mitigation largely depends on the social discount rate, which has almost exclusively been influenced by economists. A survey of expert philosophers shows that, as a group, they support the same social discount rate as economists, resulting in the same mitigation policy, but for different ethical and practical reasons.

Economists often dominate public climate policy discussions, such as those on the proper social discount rate and optimal climate pathways. This Article shows that philosophers, experts in underlying ethical matters, generally agree with economists but put more weight on various normative considerations.

Climate change is a politically polarized subject, and changing peoples’ beliefs is challenging. This study shows that participation in a climate prediction market by betting on future climate outcomes may be an effective way to change both attitudes and behaviour around climate change.

Social cost of carbon is the cornerstone of optimal climate policy design and implementation, yet the large uncertainties remain since the first published work. This meta-analysis demonstrates that estimates of the social cost of carbon have increased over time, correcting for inflation and emission year.

Antarctic bottom water (AABW), a key component of ocean circulation, provides oxygen to the deep ocean. This work shows that AABW transport reduced over the past decades in the Australian Antarctic Basin, weakening the abyssal overturning circulation and decreasing deep ocean oxygen.

The drivers of uncertainties in hydrological sensitivity, the global-mean precipitation response to warming, are currently not well understood. Here the authors show that the spatial pattern of sea surface temperature warming explains much of this uncertainty and could allow to constrain projections.

In contrast to the overall recovery of stratospheric ozone, ozone depletion in the tropical lower stratosphere has been ongoing over recent years. Here the authors show that currently unregulated halogenated ozone-depleting very short-lived substances play a key role in this ongoing depletion.

The authors investigate the response of Archaea to experimental warming in a tallgrass prairie ecosystem. Warming was linked to reduced diversity and convergent succession, with further links to changed ecosystem function. Stochastic processes dominated community changes but decreased over time.

Although many countries have strengthened their emissions reduction pledges, their ability to limit the warming outcomes is still in question. A multimodel analysis demonstrates that these trajectories are in line with the 2 °C target but countries probably face feasibility challenges to achieve them.

The authors show that estuarine and coastal vegetation are collectively a greenhouse gas (GHG) sink for the atmosphere, but methane and nitrous oxide emissions counteract the carbon dioxide uptake. Critical coastal GHG sink hotspots are identified in Southeast Asia, North America and Africa.