Volume 7 Number 10

Editorial

• Look back, looking forward

Understanding of anthropogenic climate change has evolved since the IPCC’s First Assessment Report. Further progress relies on continued collaboration between observationalists and modellers.

• Storms ahead

As the climate changes, extreme storm and flood events are increasing in intensity and frequency, exposing more people to their impacts. Resilience planning needs to start now to limit these impacts.

Commentaries

• Improvements in ice-sheet sea-level projections

Ice losses from Antarctica and Greenland are the largest uncertainty in sea-level projections. Nevertheless, improvements in ice-sheet models over recent decades have led to closer agreement with satellite observations, keeping track with their increasing contribution to global sea-level rise.

Andrew Shepherd and Sophie Nowicki

• Clearing clouds of uncertainty

Since 1990, the wide range in model-based estimates of equilibrium climate warming has been attributed to disparate cloud responses to warming. However, major progress in our ability to understand, observe, and simulate clouds has led to the conclusion that global cloud feedback is likely positive.

Mark D. Zelinka, David A. Randall, Mark J. Webb and Stephen A. Klein

• Whither methane in the IPCC process?

In anticipation of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report we look back at our evolving understanding of atmospheric CH4. Though sources, sinks, and atmospheric burden are now well known, apportionment between the myriad sources and sinks, and forecasting natural emissions, remains a challenge.

Patrick M. Crill and Brett F. Thornton

• Considering agriculture in IPCC assessments

The treatment of agriculture has evolved over the lifetime of the IPCC, as tracked by the assessment reports. Efforts to quantify crop yield impacts and mitigation potentials have increased significantly, as has adaptation research. However, there remains a dearth of experimental and observational studies.texto

John R. Porter, Mark Howden and Pete Smith

INTERVIEW

• Progress in climate modelling

Development and planning for the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) has been years in the making. Nature Climate Change speaks to the Chair of the CMIP Panel, Veronika Eyring, about the aims and projected outcomes of the project.

Graham Simpkins

NEWS AND VIEWS

• Climate policy: Transparency for Loss and Damage

Loss and Damage (L&D) has been gaining traction since the Paris Agreement took the issue on as a separate article, arguably creating a third pillar of international climate policy. Debate so far has led to vague definitions of the remit of the L&D mechanism; research on actor perspectives may help to propel this discourse forward.

Reinhard Mechler

• Behavioural economics: Cash incentives avert deforestation

There is tension in developing countries between financial incentives to clear forests and climate regulation benefits of preserving trees. Now research shows that paying private forest owners in Uganda reduced deforestation, adding to the debate on the use of monetary incentives in forest conservation.

Juan Camilo Cárdenas

• Mitigation: Decarbonization unique to cities

Strategies that reduce fossil-fuel use can achieve both global carbon mitigation and local health-protection goals. Now research shows the dual benefits of compact urban design and circular economy policies in Chinese cities.

Nadine Ibrahim

• Climate variability: Picking apart climate models

Data and model-based evidence suggests that future weather patterns will be more complex than simply those of the past plus background warming. Now research offers physical explanations of how short-term climate variability might adjust.

Chris Huntingford

• Biology: Survival of the finfish

A trait-based approach for assessing physiological sensitivity to climate change can connect a species’ evolutionary past with its future vulnerability. Now a global assessment of freshwater and marine fishes reveals patterns of warming sensitivity, highlighting the importance of different biogeographies and identifying places where vulnerability runs high.

Jennifer Sunday
• Infrastructure: Roadways in a rut

Higher air temperatures cause roadway surfaces to deteriorate more rapidly. Now research suggests that adapting design and material selection procedures to use future climate information can dramatically decrease the damage and ensuing repair cost.

Jo Sias Daniel

Perspective

• New vigour involving statisticians to overcome ensemble fatigue

This Perspective considers how to better use and explore climate model output, considering whether statisticians can help achieve better design of ensembles and interpretation of output.

Rasmus Benestad, Jana Sillmann, Thordis Linda Thorarinsdottir, Peter Guttorp, Michel d. S. Mesquita,

LETTERS

• Increased costs to US pavement infrastructure from future temperature rise

The selection of materials for road construction in the United States is based on assumptions of a stationary climate. With increasing temperatures, upholding these practices could add up to US$26.3 billion in US-wide maintenance costs by 2040 under

B. Shane Underwood, Zack Guido, Padmini Gudipudi & Yarden Feinberg

• Western Pacific emergent constraint lowers projected increase in Indian summer monsoon rainfall

Climate models typically predict an increase in Indian summer monsoon rainfall with anthropogenic warming. Correcting for precipitation biases in the tropical western Pacific using an emergent constraint methodology, however, reduces the magnitude of these increases by ∼50%.

Gen Li, Shang-Ping Xie, Chao He & Zesheng Chen

• Threats to North American forests from southern pine beetle with warming winters

The southern pine beetle is projected to be able to expand into vast areas of the northeastern US and southeastern Canada by 2050 posing risks to forest structure, biodiversity and associated ecosystem services.

Corey Lesk, Ethan Coffel, Anthony W. D’Amato, Kevin Dodds & Radley Horton

• Climatic vulnerability of the world’s freshwater and marine fishes

To understand how species will cope with warming, knowledge of the thermal limits is needed. This study estimates 2,960 ray-fin fish species’ thermal sensitivity. Comparison with projected warming highlights vulnerable freshwater and marine regions.

Lise Comte & Julian D. Olden

ARTICLES

• A typology of loss and damage perspectives

A typology of four perspectives on loss and damage is developed based on the study of actor perspectives, including interviews with stakeholders in research, practice, and policy. This may help with navigation of this necessarily ambiguous territory.

Emily Boyd, Rachel A. James, Richard G. Jones, Hannah R. Young & Friederike E. L. Otto

• Membership nominations in international scientific assessments

The composition of international scientific assessments influences their credibility. This study shows that membership nomination in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was driven by a group of core individuals based on prior institutional co-membership.

Philip Leifeld & Dana R. Fisher

• Urban cross-sector actions for carbon mitigation with local health co-benefits in China

The use of cross-sectoral strategies, such as the exchange of waste energy through co-location of industry, business and residential areas, is shown to be effective for greenhouse gas and particulate mitigation in this study of 637 Chinese cities.

Anu Ramaswami, Kangkang Tong, Andrew Fang, Raj M. Lal, Ajay Singh Nagpure,

• Change in the magnitude and mechanisms of global temperature variability with warming

Natural climate variability can enhance or suppress anthropogenic warming. Model results now show natural variability will decrease in magnitude under warmer conditions, altering the mechanisms causing it and its influence on warming rates.

Patrick T. Brown, Yi Ming, Wenhong Li & Spencer A. Hill

• More losers than winners in a century of future Southern Ocean seafloor warming

Warming waters are causing marine species to shift; however, how species found in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean will adapt is unclear. This study projects significant habitat reductions for individual benthic taxa and benthic communities over the next century.

Huw J. Griffiths, Andrew J. S. Meijers & Thomas J. Bracegirdle