Volume 7 Number 6, June 2017

Editorials

• The balance of power

Britain’s energy supply is undergoing a revolution: for the first time since 1880, electricity production was coal-free for 24 hours.

• Identifying authors

A requirement for unique author identifiers will enable clearer tracking of scientific contributions.

Commentaries

• A road map for global environmental assessments

Increasing demand for solution-oriented environmental assessments brings significant opportunities and challenges at the science–policy–society interface. Solution-oriented assessments should enable inclusive deliberative learning processes about policy alternatives and their practical consequences.

Martin Kowarsch, Jason Jabbour, Christian Flachsland, Marcel T. J. Kok, Robert Watson

• Emerging clean energy technology investment trends

Early-stage capital providers and clean energy technology incubators are supporting a new wave of innovations focused on end-use efficiency and demand control. This wave complements expanding investments in supply technologies required for electricity sector decarbonization.

A. Bumpus, S. Comello

Books and Arts

• Whose forests, whose gain?

Constance L. McDermottreviews Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics, and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change
by Frances Seymour and Jonah Busch

Constance L. McDermott

• On our bookshelf

 

Research Highlights

• Ecological impacts: Gut-wrenching heat
• Climate governance: EU emissions benefits
• Climate dynamics: Shorter monsoon season
• Climate change impacts: Contemporary evolution

 

News and Views

• Climate change economics: Make carbon pricing a priority

Estimates of the social cost of carbon vary widely as a function of different ethical parameters. Faced with values ranging from US$10 to US$1,000 per tCO₂ and above, some perplexed policymakers have adopted ‘target-consistent’ carbon pricing instead.

Cameron Hepburn

See also: Article by Matthew Adleret al.

• Ecohydrology: When will the jungle burn?

Fire weather indices are unsuited to forecast fire in tropical rainforests. Now research shows the area burnt across Borneo is related to drought-depleted water tables, presenting the opportunity to predict fire danger in these environments.

David Bowman

See also: Letter by Muh Taufiket al.

• Hydroclimate: Understanding rainfall extremes

Warming induced by greenhouse gases will increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, causing heavier rainfall events. Changing atmospheric circulation dynamics are now shown to either amplify or weaken regional increases, contributing to uncertainty in future precipitation extremes.

Geert Lenderink, Hayley J. Fowler

See also: Letter by S. Pfahlet al.

• Biogeochemistry: Tracing carbon fixation

Land surface models show large divergences in simulating the terrestrial carbon cycle. Atmospheric observations of the tracer carbonyl sulfide allow selection of the most realistic models.

Alexander Knohl, Matthias Cuntz

See also: Article by Timothy W. Hiltonet al.

 

Review

• Forest disturbances under climate change

Changes in forest disturbance are likely to be greatest in coniferous forests and the boreal biome, according to a review of global climate change effects on biotic and abiotic forest disturbance agents and their interactions.

Rupert Seidl, Dominik Thom, Markus Kautz, Dario Martin-Benito, Mikko Peltoniemi, Giorgio Vacchiano

 

Letters

• A global economic assessment of city policies to reduce climate change impacts

Quantification of the economic costs of the urban heat island effect for the main cities around the world. The cost–benefit analyses for some mitigation options are presented and their contribution to the global mitigation efforts is discussed.

Francisco Estrada, W. J. Wouter Botzen, Richard S. J. Tol

• Population-based emergence of unfamiliar climates

The signal to noise ratio of temperature change can be used to determine exposure to unusual, unfamiliar and unknown climates. For large groups of the world’s population, mitigation can delay the onset of unfamiliar or unknown climates by several decades.

Dave Frame, Manoj Joshi, Ed Hawkins, Luke J. Harrington, Mairead de Roiste

• Australian climate extremes at 1.5 °C and 2 °C of global warming

Limiting warming to 1.5 °C is expected to lessen the risk of extreme events, relative to 2 °C. Considering Australia, this work shows a decrease of about 25% in the likelihood of record heat, both air and sea surface, if warming is limited to 1.5 °C.

Andrew D. King, David J. Karoly, Benjamin J. Henley

• Drylands face potential threat under 2 °C global warming target

Limiting average global warming to 2 °C will not limit regional warming to the same levels. This study shows drylands have warmed, and will continue to warm, more than the humid lands that are primarily responsible for emissions.

Jianping Huang, Haipeng Yu, Aiguo Dai, Yun Wei, Litai Kang

• Understanding the regional pattern of projected future changes in extreme precipitation

Regional projections of daily extreme precipitation are uncertain, but can be decomposed into thermodynamic and dynamic contributions to improve understanding. While thermodynamics alone uniformly increase extreme precipitation, dynamical processes introduce regional variations.

S. Pfahl, P. A. O’Gorman, E. M. Fischer

See also: News and Views by Geert Lenderinket al.

• Amplification of wildfire area burnt by hydrological drought in the humid tropics

Predictions of fire-burnt areas are typically based on climate data. Including hydrological processes in models improves projections of burnt area in Borneo, with large wildfires clustered in years of hydrological drought associated with strong El Niño events.

Muh Taufik, Paul J. J. F. Torfs, Remko Uijlenhoet, Philip D. Jones, Daniel Murdiyarso, Henny A. J. Van Lanen

See also: News and Views by David Bowman

• Climate mitigation from vegetation biophysical feedbacks during the past three decades

Greening—increasing leaf area index—affects regional climate in a number of contradictory ways. The net global effect is now revealed to be cooling that has offset the equivalent of 12% of global land-surface warming over the past 30 years.

Zhenzhong Zeng, Shilong Piao, Laurent Z. X. Li, Liming Zhou, Philippe Ciais, Tao Wang

 

Articles

• Climate negotiators’ and scientists’ assessments of the climate negotiations

It is difficult to objectively evaluate climate negotiation outcomes. This study shows that climate negotiation participants are pessimistic about the specific approach of voluntary pledges, but are optimistic about the general usefulness of negotiations, particularly if they are more involved.

Astrid Dannenberg, Sonja Zitzelsberger, Alessandro Tavoni

• Priority for the worse-off and the social cost of carbon

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is usually calculated by an approach that gives less importance to future generations and does not consider well-being distribution. This study presents an alternative that takes these aspects into account.

Matthew Adler, David Anthoff, Valentina Bosetti, Greg Garner, Klaus Keller

See also: News and Views by Cameron Hepburn

Using carbonyl sulfide as a tracer, gross primary production in the Midwest USA is shown to significantly exceed that of any other region of North America. This approach provides a valuable means of assessing the regional accuracy of ecosystem land models.

Timothy W. Hilton, Mary E. Whelan, Andrew Zumkehr, Sarika Kulkarni, Joseph A. Berry, Ian T. Baker

See also: News and Views by Alexander Knohlet al.