Nature climate change, November
Volume 11 Issue 11, November 2021
Measuring adaptation progress
Roads and paths formerly lined with cacti are now buried under the sand in the desert regions of southern Madagascar. The hunger season, which usually ends in April, is becoming more critical each year; three consecutive years of drought have severely affected harvests and access to food. These and other impacts of climate change are being felt across the world, making effective adaptation critical. Writing in this issue, Berrang-Ford et…
Image: Ainga Razafy/MSF. Cover Design: Valentina Monaco
Editorial
Editorial | 29 October 2021
Financing adaptation
As climate change impacts are felt more and more around the world, adapting to change is becoming critical. However, it is not clear whether actions being taken are effective in reducing risk and increasing resilience, and access to financing is crucial.
Correspondence
Correspondence | 11 October 2021
Climate finance for Africa requires overcoming bottlenecks in domestic capacity
- Rabah Arezki
Comment
Comment | 11 October 2021
Debt-for-climate swaps for small islands
Small island developing states are currently faced with two significant challenges that are more onerous due to limited financial resources: adapting to increasing climate change risk and recovering from the pandemic. Debt-for-climate swaps provide an avenue for SIDS to address these challenges.
- Adelle Thomas
- Emily Theokritoff
Comment | 18 October 2021
Peat management by local communities can reduce emissions
Local communities can play a role in helping to restore tropical peatlands by using more sustainable agricultural practices. Enhancing this role would help to address interconnected crises such as climate change, food security and environmental degradation.
- Massimo Lupascu
Q&A
Q&A | 11 October 2021
City climate challenges
Nature Climate Change talks to Felipe C. Mandarino, city information coordinator within the Rio de Janeiro city government, Brazil, about building cooperation, facing data and knowledge gaps and responding to climate change in Brazilian cities.
- Tegan Armarego-Marriott
Collection:
Q&A | 11 October 2021
Climate action and just transition
Climate action is needed across the Global South, with just transition the central priority. Nature Climate Change spoke to Maisa Rojas, associate professor at the University of Chile, about Chile’s progress in climate governance and the challenges ahead, as well as the opportunities with COP26.
- Lingxiao Yan
Collection:
Q&A | 28 October 2021
Banking on change
Civil society has an important role to play in climate action. Nature Climate Change speaks to Chidi Oti-Obihara, investment banker turned climate activist, about how he found his role in the discussion.
- Bronwyn Wake
Research Highlights
Research Highlight | 29 October 2021
Feeling the heat
- Alyssa Findlay
Research Highlight | 29 October 2021
Central America drying
- Bronwyn Wake
Research Highlight | 29 October 2021
Trust and mitigation
- Lingxiao Yan
Research Highlight | 29 October 2021
Plankton lose fats
- Tegan Armarego-Marriott
News & Views
News & Views | 29 October 2021
Labour reallocation as adaptation
Climate change is threatening agricultural productivity and the welfare of farmers. Increasing employment in non-farm sectors could mitigate such negative impacts, especially in developing countries.
- Xiaomeng Cui
- Shuaizhang Feng
News & Views | 25 October 2021
The hidden benefits of high-speed rail
Improvements in public transport are often regarded as essential to combat climate change. A study investigating the Chinese high-speed rail system suggests that these benefits could operate through channels other than those that one might expect.
- Armin Schmutzler
News & Views | 04 October 2021
Greenhouse gases strengthen atmospheric rivers
Atmospheric rivers substantially affect the global hydrologic cycle, yet their response to past and future anthropogenic forcing remains highly uncertain. New research reveals the counterbalancing effects of aerosols and greenhouse gases and how this balance will shift to favour stronger atmospheric rivers in the coming decades.
- Breanna L. Zavadoff
News & Views | 28 October 2021
Rare migration strategy key during climate change
Southern salmon populations face increased risk from a warming climate. New analysis of salmon ear bones shows outsized reliance on rarely used cold-water habitat for population survival through drought years — habitat that is expected to shrink under climate change.
- Rebecca A. Buchanan
News & Views | 28 October 2021
Assessing adaptation implementation
Assessing the global implementation of climate adaptation is critical. Now, research quantifies where adaptation is happening and where gaps remain.
- Johanna Nalau
Policy Brief
Policy Brief | 28 October 2021
Most people prefer constant carbon costs over increasing cost schedules even if costs are high
We find that the public prefers the costs of climate action to be constant over time, irrespective of whether average costs are low or high. Policymakers interested in combating global warming should therefore introduce policies that initially rely on stable cost schedules instead of the widely discussed alternative of ramping up costs over time.
- Michael M. Bechtel
- Kenneth F. Scheve
- Elisabeth van Lieshout
Policy Brief | 28 October 2021
To achieve deep cuts in US emissions, state-driven policy is only slightly more expensive than nationally uniform policy
Using a multi-sector model of human and natural systems, we find that the nationwide cost from state-varying climate policy in the United States is only one-tenth higher than that of nationally uniform policy. The benefits of state-led action — leadership, experimentation and the practical reality that states implement policy more reliably than the federal government — do not necessarily come with a high economic cost.
- Wei Peng
- Gokul Iyer
- David G. Victor
Policy Brief | 28 October 2021
Freely available deforestation alerts can reduce emissions from land-use change
Subscriptions to a free, weekly deforestation alert system available on the simple interface Global Forest Watch reduced deforestation in the protected areas and logging concessions of tropical African forests. This suggests that freely available near-real-time forest monitoring systems can help reduce emissions from deforestation if they are integrated with forest policies.
- Fanny Moffette
- Jennifer Alix-Garcia
- Amy H. Pickens
Policy Brief | 28 October 2021
International trade is a key component of climate change adaptation
Trade liberalization in the early 21st century increased the adaptation capacity of global food systems to climate change; further liberalization and trade facilitation could help to avoid dozens of millions being undernourished at mid-century. The global trade agenda should explicitly include climate change adaptation to achieve SDG 2 Zero Hunger.
- Charlotte Janssens
- Petr Havlík
- Miet Maertens
Perspectives
Perspective | 07 October 2021
Misplaced expectations from climate disclosure initiatives
Disclosure of climate risk to investments was expected to drive divestment from high-carbon assets. This Perspective considers the limitations of transparency to shift investment and the different markets of low- and high-carbon assets; mobilizing finance requires more than disclosure.
- Nadia Ameli
- Sumit Kothari
- Michael Grubb
Perspective | 21 October 2021
Uncertain storage prospects create a conundrum for carbon capture and storage ambitions
Carbon capture and storage is key to strong climate change mitigation scenarios, but growth is slow. This Perspective argues that confidence in the expansion of carbon capture and storage requires greater attention to reducing uncertainty over injection dynamics and the pace of storage investment decision-making.
- Joe Lane
- Chris Greig
- Andrew Garnett
Articles
Article | 07 October 2021
Climate change literacy in Africa
Climate literacy—awareness of climate change and understanding that humans are responsible—is necessary for adaptation and mitigation. Levels of climate literacy across Africa are highly variable, with positive predictors of literacy identified, suggesting areas to target for increasing climate change literacy.
- Nicholas P. Simpson
- Talbot M. Andrews
- Christopher H. Trisos
Article | 07 October 2021
Trade-linked shipping CO2 emissions
More than 80% of trade by volume occurs via maritime shipping, with growing pressure to reduce associated GHG emissions. The top 10 single-direction trade pairs account for nearly 20% of emissions; optimizing trade patterns could reduce emissions by 38% of current totals.
- Xiao-Tong Wang
- Huan Liu
- Ke-Bin He
Article | 25 October 2021
Impact of high-speed rail on road traffic and greenhouse gas emissions
Intercity high-speed rail (HSR) can have large climate benefits with its high energy efficiency. This study explores the substitution effects of HSR on road traffic in China, which can be translated to an annual reduction of 14.76 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions.
- Yatang Lin
- Yu Qin
- Mandi Xu
Article | 04 October 2021
Counterbalancing influences of aerosols and greenhouse gases on atmospheric rivers
Atmospheric rivers, concentrated plumes of moisture important to extratropical precipitation, have not changed with historical warming. Model simulations suggest that this is due to the competing weakening effect of aerosols and strengthening effect of greenhouse gases, which dominates with future warming.
- Seung H. Baek
- Juan M. Lora
Article | 11 October 2021
Machine-learning-based evidence and attribution mapping of 100,000 climate impact studies
Evidence is growing on the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems. A two-step attribution approach—machine-learning-assisted literature review coupled with grid-cell-level temperature and precipitation—allows comprehensive mapping of the evidence on impacts and tentative attribution to anthropogenic influence.
- Max Callaghan
- Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
- Jan C. Minx
Article | 21 October 2021 |
Next-generation ensemble projections reveal higher climate risks for marine ecosystems
Use of an enhanced suite of marine ecosystem models and Earth system model outputs from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) reveals greater decline in mean global ocean animal biomass than previously projected under both strong-mitigation and high-emissions scenarios.
- Derek P. Tittensor
- Camilla Novaglio
- Julia L. Blanchard
Article | 28 October 2021
Threatened salmon rely on a rare life history strategy in a warming landscape
Highlighting the importance of rare phenotypes in population persistence, the authors show that spring-run Chinook salmon late-migrant juveniles were critical for cohort success in drought and ocean heatwave years. Combined further warming and impassable dams threaten these late migrants’ survival.
- F. Cordoleani
- C. C. Phillis
- R. C. Johnson
Analysis
Analysis | 28 October 2021
A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change
Determining progress in adaptation to climate change is challenging, yet critical as climate change impacts increase. A stocktake of the scientific literature on implemented adaptation now shows that adaptation is mostly fragmented and incremental, with evidence lacking for its impact on reducing risk.
- Lea Berrang-Ford
- A. R. Siders
- Thelma Zulfawu Abu
Amendments & Corrections
Publisher Correction| 17 September 2021
Publisher Correction: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
- Niklas Boers
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