Nature Climate Change June 2021
Volume 11 Issue 6, June 2021
Cloud feedbacks
Whether clouds will warm or cool the planet under climate change is uncertain. Writing in this issue, two separate studies investigate the climate impacts of clouds. Mülmenstädt et al. show that overestimates of precipitation from warm clouds lead to substantial biases in climate models. Meyers et al. find that feedbacks from tropical and subtropical marine clouds are smaller than previously reported.
See Myers et al., Mülmenstädt et al. News & Views…
Image: GUADALUPE ISLAND, VON KARMAN VORTEX/The Image Bank/Getty. Cover Design: Valentina Monaco.
Editorial
Editorial | 03 June 2021
Enhancing commitments
COP26 will mark six years since the Paris Agreement was reached, with the ambitious 1.5 °C warming target. After the turbulent year of 2020, now is the time that countries need to commit to drive global climate action forward.
Correspondence
Correspondence | 20 May 2021
Don’t forget subterranean ecosystems in climate change agendas
- David Sánchez-Fernández
- Diana M. P. Galassi
- Stefano Mammola
Comment
Comment | 29 April 2021
Normative approach to risk management for insurers
Private insurance is a key component of strategies to manage physical climate change impacts, but existing scenarios used by insurers are not well suited to making business decisions. We call for a complementary normative approach, based on business objectives, that delivers actionable information to decision-makers.
- Cameron J. Rye
- Jessica A. Boyd
- Andrew Mitchell
Comment | 17 May 2021
Reorienting emissions research to catalyse African agricultural development
Improving agricultural activity data is a cost-effective option for reducing the uncertainty of greenhouse gas inventories and monitoring mitigation actions, meeting multiple national data needs, and bolstering investments. It’s time to direct effort to this opportunity.
- Todd S. Rosenstock
- Andreas Wilkes
Research Highlights
Research Highlight | 03 June 2021
Ecosystem energy exchange
- Tegan Armarego-Marriott
Research Highlight | 03 June 2021
Going way back
- Alyssa Findlay
Research Highlight | 03 June 2021
Changing spatial extent
- Baird Langenbrunner
Research Highlight | 03 June 2021
Nomadic herders
- Lingxiao Yan
News & Views
News & Views | 31 May 2021
Climate attribution of heat mortality
Mortality associated with rising temperatures is one of the clearest and impactful fingerprints of a changing climate. Research now shows an attributable increase in mortality due to climate change is already evident in cities on every continent.
- Dann Mitchell
News & Views | 03 June 2021
The cooling of light rains in a warming world
Recent changes to how clouds are represented in global models, especially over the Southern Ocean, resulted in increased climate warming. Correcting rain processes in a model shows improved cloud representation but leads to a greatly enhanced negative feedback, offsetting documented increases in model climate sensitivity.
- Graeme L. Stephens
News & Views | 03 June 2021
Novel thermal habitat in lakes
Lakes are warming globally at variable rates with important consequences for species survival. Now, research quantifies change in thermal habitat of lakes around the world and shows that season or depth restrictions on species responses may increase thermal habitat change threefold.
- Gretchen J. A. Hansen
Perspectives
Perspective | 27 May 2021
A framework for national scenarios with varying emission reductions
There is no common structure for the way national emissions scenarios are created, hindering efforts for comparison and analysis at the larger scale. This Perspective presents a framework to guide individual national scenario creation in a standardized way.
- Shinichiro Fujimori
- Volker Krey
- Keywan Riahi
Brief Communications
Brief Communication | 24 May 2021
Temperatures that sterilize males better match global species distributions than lethal temperatures
Prediction of current and future species distributions using thermal limits often relies on lethal temperatures, yet many organisms lose fertility at sublethal temperatures. The authors show that distributions of 43 Drosophila species better match male-sterilizing, than lethal, temperatures.
- Steven R. Parratt
- Benjamin S. Walsh
- Tom A. R. Price
Articles
Article | 10 May 2021
Increased economic drought impacts in Europe with anthropogenic warming
Climate change impacts precipitation patterns, and thus the risk for drought. Damages from drought in Europe will increase with losses more than €65 billion per year in a scenario without climate mitigation; keeping warming below 2 °C avoids most impacts.
- Gustavo Naumann
- Carmelo Cammalleri
- Luc Feyen
Article | 31 May 2021
The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change
Current and future climate change is expected to impact human health, both indirectly and directly, through increasing temperatures. Climate change has already had an impact and is responsible for 37% of warm-season heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018, with increases in mortality observed globally.
- A. M. Vicedo-Cabrera
- N. Scovronick
- A. Gasparrini
Article | 13 May 2021
Observational constraints on low cloud feedback reduce uncertainty of climate sensitivity
Marine low clouds cool the planet, but their response to warming is uncertain and dominates the spread in model-based climate sensitivities. Observational constraints suggest smaller cloud feedbacks than previously reported and imply a more moderate climate sensitivity.
- Timothy A. Myers
- Ryan C. Scott
- Peter M. Caldwell
Article | 03 June 2021
An underestimated negative cloud feedback from cloud lifetime changes
CMIP6 models simulate higher and more accurate cloud liquid water fraction relative to CMIP5, but both ensembles overestimate warm cloud precipitation. Correcting these warm cloud processes in a model exposes compensating biases large enough to offset CMIP5–CMIP6 climate sensitivity differences.
- Johannes Mülmenstädt
- Marc Salzmann
- Johannes Quaas
Article | 17 May 2021
Data-driven reconstruction reveals large-scale ocean circulation control on coastal sea level
Coastal sea levels are impacted by local vertical land motion plus local and remote changes to ocean circulation, density and mass changes. Tide-gauge records are used to reconstruct the coastal sea-level budget over nine regions, showing its variability has been dominated by ocean circulation since 1960.
- Sönke Dangendorf
- Thomas Frederikse
- Benjamin D. Hamlington
Article | 03 June 2021
Climate change drives widespread shifts in lake thermal habitat
Using measurements from 139 global lakes, the authors demonstrate how long-term thermal habitat change in lakes is exacerbated by species’ seasonal and depth-related constraints. They further reveal higher change in tropical lakes, and those with high biodiversity and endemism.
- Benjamin M. Kraemer
- Rachel M. Pilla
- Rita Adrian
Article | 13 May 2021
Light and energetics at seasonal extremes limit poleward range shifts
Using mechanistic models that incorporate visual foraging and temperature-driven physiology for two fish types, the authors reveal how latitudinal light gradients, which are not affected by climate change, can constrain warming-related shifts to high latitudes.
- Gabriella Ljungström
- Tom J. Langbehn
- Christian Jørgensen
Article | 17 May 2021
Quantifying global potential for coral evolutionary response to climate change
The authors model the role of algal symbiont shuffling and evolution in coral resilience to warming and ocean acidification, globally. They find that shuffling is more effective than evolution, and show global patterns of vulnerability due to the interaction of warming rate and adaptive capacity.
- Cheryl A. Logan
- John P. Dunne
- Simon D. Donner
Article | 03 June 2021
Biodiversity–productivity relationships are key to nature-based climate solutions
Exploring how biodiversity and climate change are interlinked, the authors show that limiting warming could maintain tree diversity, avoiding primary productivity loss. Countries with greater climate change economic costs benefit most: a potential triple win for climate, biodiversity and society.
- Akira S. Mori
- Laura E. Dee
- Forest Isbell
Amendments & Corrections
Author Correction | 17 March 2021
Author Correction: Genomic evidence of past and future climate-linked loss in a migratory Arctic fish
- K. K. S. Layton
- P. V. R. Snelgrove
- I. R. Bradbury
Publisher Correction | 07 April 2021
Publisher Correction: Projected shifts in the foraging habitat of crabeater seals along the Antarctic Peninsula
- Luis A. Hückstädt
- Andrea Piñones
- Daniel P. Costa
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