Search

Ecosystems generate a wide range of benefits for humans, including some market goods as well as other benefits that are not directly reflected in market activity 1 . Climate change will alter the distribution of ecosystems around the world and change the flow of these benefits 2,3 . However, the specific implications of ecosystem changes for human welfare remain unclear, as they depend on the nature of these changes, the value of the affected benefits and the extent to which communities rely on natural systems for their well-being 4 . Here we estimate country-level changes in economic production and the value of non-market ecosystem benefits resulting from climate-change-induced shifts in terrestrial vegetation cover, as projected by dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) driven by general circulation climate models. Our results show that the annual population-weighted mean global flow of non-market ecosystem benefits valued in the wealth accounts of the World Bank will be reduced by 9.2% in 2100 under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP2-6.0 with respect to the baseline no climate change scenario and that the global population-weighted average change in gross domestic product (GDP) by 2100 is -1.3% of the baseline GDP. Because lower-income countries are more reliant on natural capital, these GDP effects are regressive. Approximately 90% of these damages are borne by the poorest 50% of countries and regions, whereas the wealthiest 10% experience only 2% of these losses., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

As the human population and demand for food grow 1 , the ocean will be called on to provide increasing amounts of seafood. Although fisheries reforms and advances in offshore aquaculture (hereafter 'mariculture') could increase production 2 , the true future of seafood depends on human responses to climate change 3 . Here we investigated whether coordinated reforms in fisheries and mariculture could increase seafood production per capita under climate change. We find that climate-adaptive fisheries reforms will be necessary but insufficient to maintain global seafood production per capita, even with aggressive reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. However, the potential for sustainable mariculture to increase seafood per capita is vast and could increase seafood production per capita under all but the most severe emissions scenario. These increases are contingent on fisheries reforms, continued advances in feed technology and the establishment of effective mariculture governance and best practices. Furthermore, dramatically curbing emissions is essential for reducing inequities, increasing reform efficacy and mitigating risks unaccounted for in our analysis. Although climate change will challenge the ocean's ability to meet growing food demands, the ocean could produce more food than it does currently through swift and ambitious action to reduce emissions, reform capture fisheries and expand sustainable mariculture operations., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked 1-3 , yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently 4,5 . Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice) 4 . The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Estimates of global economic damage caused by carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions can inform climate policy 1-3 . The social cost of carbon (SCC) quantifies these damages by characterizing how additional CO 2 emissions today impact future economic outcomes through altering the climate 4-6 . Previous estimates have suggested that large, warming-driven increases in energy expenditures could dominate the SCC 7,8 , but they rely on models 9-11 that are spatially coarse and not tightly linked to data 2,3,6,7,12,13 . Here we show that the release of one ton of CO 2 today is projected to reduce total future energy expenditures, with most estimates valued between -US$3 and -US$1, depending on discount rates. Our results are based on an architecture that integrates global data, econometrics and climate science to estimate local damages worldwide. Notably, we project that emerging economies in the tropics will dramatically increase electricity consumption owing to warming, which requires critical infrastructure planning. However, heating reductions in colder countries offset this increase globally. We estimate that 2099 annual global electricity consumption increases by about 4.5 exajoules (7 per cent of current global consumption) per one-degree-Celsius increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST), whereas direct consumption of other fuels declines by about 11.3 exajoules (7 per cent of current global consumption) per one-degree-Celsius increase in GMST. Our finding of net savings contradicts previous research 7,8 , because global data indicate that many populations will remain too poor for most of the twenty-first century to substantially increase energy consumption in response to warming. Importantly, damage estimates would differ if poorer populations were given greater weight 14 ., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

The social cost of methane (SC-CH 4 ) measures the economic loss of welfare caused by emitting one tonne of methane into the atmosphere. This valuation may in turn be used in cost-benefit analyses or to inform climate policies 1-3 . However, current SC-CH 4 estimates have not included key scientific findings and observational constraints. Here we estimate the SC-CH 4 by incorporating the recent upward revision of 25 per cent to calculations of the radiative forcing of methane 4 , combined with calibrated reduced-form global climate models and an ensemble of integrated assessment models (IAMs). Our multi-model mean estimate for the SC-CH 4 is US$933 per tonne of CH 4 (5-95 per cent range, US$471-1,570 per tonne of CH 4 ) under a high-emissions scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5), a 22 per cent decrease compared to estimates based on the climate uncertainty framework used by the US federal government 5 . Our ninety-fifth percentile estimate is 51 per cent lower than the corresponding figure from the US framework. Under a low-emissions scenario (RCP 2.6), our multi-model mean decreases to US$710 per tonne of CH 4 . Tightened equilibrium climate sensitivity estimates paired with the effect of previously neglected relationships between uncertain parameters of the climate model lower these estimates. We also show that our SC-CH 4 estimates are sensitive to model combinations; for example, within one IAM, different methane cycle sub-models can induce variations of approximately 20 per cent in the estimated SC-CH 4 . But switching IAMs can more than double the estimated SC-CH 4 . Extending our results to account for societal concerns about equity produces SC-CH 4 estimates that differ by more than an order of magnitude between low- and high-income regions. Our central equity-weighted estimate for the USA increases to US$8,290 per tonne of CH 4 whereas our estimate for sub-Saharan Africa decreases to US$134 per tonne of CH 4 .

The risks of climate change are enormous, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions to billions of people. The economic consequences of many of the complex risks associated with climate change cannot, however, currently be quantified. Here we argue that these unquantified, poorly understood and often deeply uncertain risks can and should be included in economic evaluations and decision-making processes. We present an overview of these unquantified risks and an ontology of them founded on the reasons behind their lack of robust evaluation. These consist of risks missing owing to delays in sharing knowledge and expertise across disciplines, spatial and temporal variations of climate impacts, feedbacks and interactions between risks, deep uncertainty in our knowledge, and currently unidentified risks. We highlight collaboration needs within and between the natural and social science communities to address these gaps. We also provide an approach for integrating assessments or speculations of these risks in a way that accounts for interdependencies, avoids double counting and makes assumptions clear. Multiple paths exist for engaging with these missing risks, with both model-based quantification and non-model-based qualitative assessments playing crucial roles. A wide range of climate impacts are understudied or challenging to quantify, and are missing from current evaluations of the climate risks to lives and livelihoods. Strong interdisciplinary collaboration and deeper engagement with uncertainty is needed to properly inform policymakers and the public about climate risks., (© 2022. Springer Nature Limited.)

Although anthropogenic climate change is expected to have caused large shifts in temperature and rainfall, the detection of human influence on global drought has been complicated by large internal variability and the brevity of observational records. Here we address these challenges using reconstructions of the Palmer drought severity index obtained with data from tree rings that span the past millennium. We show that three distinct periods are identifiable in climate models, observations and reconstructions during the twentieth century. In recent decades (1981 to present), the signal of greenhouse gas forcing is present but not yet detectable at high confidence. Observations and reconstructions differ significantly from an expected pattern of greenhouse gas forcing around mid-century (1950-1975), coinciding with a global increase in aerosol forcing. In the first half of the century (1900-1949), however, a signal of greenhouse-gas-forced change is robustly detectable. Multiple observational datasets and reconstructions using data from tree rings confirm that human activities were probably affecting the worldwide risk of droughts as early as the beginning of the twentieth century.

Offshore Antarctic polynyas-large openings in the winter sea ice cover-are thought to be maintained by a rapid ventilation of deep-ocean heat through convective mixing. These rare phenomena may alter abyssal properties and circulation, yet their formation mechanisms are not well understood. Here we demonstrate that concurrent upper-ocean preconditioning and meteorological perturbations are responsible for the appearance of polynyas in the Weddell Sea region of the Southern Ocean. Autonomous profiling float observations-collected in 2016 and 2017 during the largest polynyas to form near the Maud Rise seamount since 1976-reveal that the polynyas were initiated and modulated by the passage of severe storms, and that intense heat loss drove deep overturning within them. Wind-driven upwelling of record strength weakened haline stratification in the upper ocean, thus favouring destabilization in 2016 and 2017. We show that previous Weddell polynyas probably developed under similarly anomalous conditions, which are associated with a mode of Southern Hemisphere climate variability that is predicted to strengthen as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

The ocean-the Earth's largest ecosystem-is increasingly affected by anthropogenic climate change 1,2 . Large and globally consistent shifts have been detected in species phenology, range extension and community composition in marine ecosystems 3-5 . However, despite evidence for ongoing change, it remains unknown whether marine ecosystems have entered an Anthropocene 6 state beyond the natural decadal to centennial variability. This is because most observational time series lack a long-term baseline, and the few time series that extend back into the pre-industrial era have limited spatial coverage 7,8 . Here we use the unique potential of the sedimentary record of planktonic foraminifera-ubiquitous marine zooplankton-to provide a global pre-industrial baseline for the composition of modern species communities. We use a global compilation of 3,774 seafloor-derived planktonic foraminifera communities of pre-industrial age 9 and compare these with communities from sediment-trap time series that have sampled plankton flux since AD 1978 (33 sites, 87 observation years). We find that the Anthropocene assemblages differ from their pre-industrial counterparts in proportion to the historical change in temperature. We observe community changes towards warmer or cooler compositions that are consistent with historical changes in temperature in 85% of the cases. These observations not only confirm the existing evidence for changes in marine zooplankton communities in historical times, but also demonstrate that Anthropocene communities of a globally distributed zooplankton group systematically differ from their unperturbed pre-industrial state.

In June 2004, the results of an ambitious Antarctic ice-drilling project brought insight into hundreds of thousands of years of climatic changes. The extraordinary sample still has much to offer climate research — even as its successor is being drilled. Twentieth anniversary of a 800,000-year sample of climate history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the capacity animals and plant to shift with the changing climates and habitats. Plants and animals tend to shift with the changes at a phenomenal speed, according to global ecologist Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. While Carnegie postdoc Scott Loarie said that species who are used to the tropics tend to prefer continuous forests, than forest fragments.

The article reports that the balmier climate of recent years has helped the mountain pine beetle of western North America reach ever-higher latitudes and elevations, resulting in the largest recorded outbreak of this insect. An effort to catalogue and predict the effects of the outbreak reveals that the destruction of pine forests by growing beetle populations will contribute to climate change. Werner Kurz, a forest ecologist with the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British Columbia, believes that the only way to stop the beetle is to kill it and its host which means cutting down and burning infected trees.

The article presents the debate of the development of new species and the extinction of others. The reason given is climate change, or the ability to compete. Scientists collected and studied rodent fossils spanning more than 22 million years. They conclude that the human-induced extinction had exceeded the extinction caused by either global climatic ahanges or competetion with other species.

The heat stored in the world’s oceans increased by the greatest margin ever in 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health is on the agenda at the COP28 climate meeting. Rising temperatures increase the spread of infectious diseases, claim lives and drive food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon storage in Earth’s oceans is controlled by deep-sea mixing processes, but the details have proved difficult to test. Ambitious efforts to track ocean mixing using dye have now demonstrated the pivotal role of the sea floor.Observations of upwelling in a deep-ocean canyon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research reveals the deaths and diseases linked to rising temperatures across the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letter to the Editor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative use of medieval musings about the Moon has revealed that volcanic eruptions coincided with abrupt, global-scale cooling events. The approach is exciting from the perspective of climate scientists and historians alike.Two views on gauging the impact of volcanism from lunar-eclipse records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconstructions of the strength of a powerful current that circles the South Pole reveal that it has undergone no long-term change in the past five million years, even though Earth cooled substantially over that time.Reconstructions of the strength of the Antarctic circumpolar current. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every large organization should plot a path to net gain in biodiversity — here’s how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in species diversity towards the tropics is a striking and unexplained global phenomenon. Ocean microfossil evidence suggests that this pattern arose as a result of ancient climate cooling and polar-climate dynamics. Microfossil evidence sheds light on global patterns of species diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world should redouble its efforts on the SDGs, not abandon them. Here’s how to progress the United Nations’ agenda towards 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A policy paper published 20 years ago led to expanded research collaboration between emerging economic powers. But its main recommendation was ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Omicron investigator, a Mars explorer and an AI ethics pioneer are some of the people behind the year's big research stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of floods or droughts that hit the same place twice shows that using risk management alone does not reduce the effect of extreme events. Addressing the social drivers of hazard impact, equitably, is essential.Repeated disasters reveal exposure inequity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters are going to the polls this year — the results could determine whether humanity can correct its trajectory of dangerous global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glaciers should be prioritized in conservation agendas — and soon. Analysis suggests that glaciers could lose around half their area by the century’s end, with uncertain consequences for postglacial ecosystems.Predicted loss of glacier area and its ecological impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of sediment from a lake in eastern Africa reveal the relationship between temperature and moisture over the past 75,000 years, and hint at why climate-model projections in the Horn of Africa are at odds with modern trends.Palaeoclimate data from Lake Chala link aridity to temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biophysical and sociopolitical factors have been integrated into a set of measures of planetary change that aim to pinpoint safe and just thresholds for all living things. The exercise is immensely ambitious and inevitably challenging.Safe and just boundaries for Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the efforts of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to address criticisms on the absence of programs related to problems of global climate change and the country's dependency on foreign oil. Announcement of plans to encourage private companies to set limits on their own carbon emissions; Inadequacy of the government's programs.

A generation of farmers and scientists are finding ways to sequester carbon in the soil while improving crop yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hundreds of millions of people cross deficient bridges each day. With damage to these structures likely to intensify because of climate change and ageing, technicians and policymakers must act to make them safer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are using various machine-learning strategies to speed up climate modelling, reduce its energy costs and hopefully improve accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States and China are pursuing parallel scientific tracks. To solve crises on multiple fronts, the two roads need to become one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly intense wildfires in the United States could have profound impacts on natural habitats — potentially leaving hundreds of animal species struggling to recover.Severe wildfires expected to profoundly affect wildlife habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letter to the Editor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmic dust, microscopic syrup, a flying gecko and more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, a group of women from the villages of the Western Himalayas sparked Chipko, a green movement that remains relevant in the age of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are urban trees and parks essential to improving the environment and human health — or just a sop to middle-class ideals of gentrification? Two books debate these opposing views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fed up with a lack of political progress in solving the climate problem, some researchers are becoming activists to slow global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulations show that the melting of Antarctic ice reduces the production of deep water that stores heat at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. Comprehensive models could reveal whether the trend will persist.Ocean warming linked to reduced production of Antarctic Bottom Water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists are among hundreds of demonstrators at the COP26 climate conference — and want more to join them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most threatened animals might not survive in their current habitat because of climate change. Researchers are testing a controversial strategy to relocate them before it’s too late — starting with Australia’s rarest reptile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, deforestation and other human threats are driving therainforest towards a tipping point of sustainability. Researchers are racingto chart the Amazon’s future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modelling reveals that the carbon emissions associated with plastics could be negative by 2100 under a strict set of technological and socio-economic conditions — including increased recycling and plant-derived production.Net carbon emissions from plastics could be negative by 2100. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]