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  • Article |

    Northern peatlands are a significant carbon sink but are vulnerable to decomposition during drought and low water tables. Woody litter added to these ecosystems during high water table conditions leaches polyphenolics that protect carbon stores against decomposition, even during subsequent drought.

    • Nathalie Fenner
    •  & Chris Freeman

  • Article |

    Changes in the leaf area index alter the distribution of heat and moisture. The change in energy partitioning related to leaf area, increasing latent and decreasing sensible fluxes over the observational period 1982–2016, is moderated by plant functional type and background climate.

    • Giovanni Forzieri
    • , Diego G. Miralles
    • , Philippe Ciais
    • , Ramdane Alkama
    • , Youngryel Ryu
    • , Gregory Duveiller
    • , Ke Zhang
    • , Eddy Robertson
    • , Markus Kautz
    • , Brecht Martens
    • , Chongya Jiang
    • , Almut Arneth
    • , Goran Georgievski
    • , Wei Li
    • , Guido Ceccherini
    • , Peter Anthoni
    • , Peter Lawrence
    • , Andy Wiltshire
    • , Julia Pongratz
    • , Shilong Piao
    • , Stephen Sitch
    • , Daniel S. Goll
    • , Vivek K. Arora
    • , Sebastian Lienert
    • , Danica Lombardozzi
    • , Etsushi Kato
    • , Julia E. M. S. Nabel
    • , Hanqin Tian
    • , Pierre Friedlingstein
    •  & Alessandro Cescatti

  • Article |

    Climate change beliefs in the US are politically polarized. Using longitudinal survey data, this study finds that climate change beliefs are less stable over time for Republicans compared with Democrats, suggesting that public beliefs may eventually shift towards broader acceptance.

    • Hank C. Jenkins-Smith
    • , Joseph T. Ripberger
    • , Carol L. Silva
    • , Deven E. Carlson
    • , Kuhika Gupta
    • , Nina Carlson
    • , Ani Ter-Mkrtchyan
    •  & Riley E. Dunlap

  • News & Views |

    The partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats on climate change is large and shows no signs of narrowing. However, a new analysis shows that Republicans’ climate change attitudes were relatively unstable between 2014–2018, triggering cautious optimism that a tipping point in attitudes might be around the corner.

    • Matthew J. Hornsey

  • Perspective |

    Flash droughts, which develop over the course of weeks, are difficult to forecast given the current state of subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction. This Perspective offers operational and research definitions, places them in the broader context of climate and suggests avenues for future research.

    • Angeline G. Pendergrass
    • , Gerald A. Meehl
    • , Roger Pulwarty
    • , Mike Hobbins
    • , Andrew Hoell
    • , Amir AghaKouchak
    • , Céline J. W. Bonfils
    • , Ailie J. E. Gallant
    • , Martin Hoerling
    • , David Hoffmann
    • , Laurna Kaatz
    • , Flavio Lehner
    • , Dagmar Llewellyn
    • , Philip Mote
    • , Richard B. Neale
    • , Jonathan T. Overpeck
    • , Amanda Sheffield
    • , Kerstin Stahl
    • , Mark Svoboda
    • , Matthew C. Wheeler
    • , Andrew W. Wood
    •  & Connie A. Woodhouse

  • News & Views |

    Under climate change, sea-level rise is expected to bring about large changes in the world’s coastlines. Now, research predicting future shoreline change from satellite data indicates loss of nearly 50% of sandy beaches by the end of the century.

    • Sue Brooks

  • Letter |

    Erosion is a major problem facing sandy beaches that will probably worsen with climate change and sea-level rise. Half the world’s beaches, many of which are in densely populated areas, could disappear by the end of the century under current trends; mitigation could lessen retreat by 40%.

    • Michalis I. Vousdoukas
    • , Roshanka Ranasinghe
    • , Lorenzo Mentaschi
    • , Theocharis A. Plomaritis
    • , Panagiotis Athanasiou
    • , Arjen Luijendijk
    •  & Luc Feyen

  • Article |

    Exceptionally warm years in 2017–2019 have caused changes in the physical and biological characteristics of the Pacific Arctic Ocean. What these changes mean for the ecosystem and societal consequences will depend on if they are evidence of a transformation or anomalies in the system.

    • Henry P. Huntington
    • , Seth L. Danielson
    • , Francis K. Wiese
    • , Matthew Baker
    • , Peter Boveng
    • , John J. Citta
    • , Alex De Robertis
    • , Danielle M. S. Dickson
    • , Ed Farley
    • , J. Craighead George
    • , Katrin Iken
    • , David G. Kimmel
    • , Kathy Kuletz
    • , Carol Ladd
    • , Robert Levine
    • , Lori Quakenbush
    • , Phyllis Stabeno
    • , Kathleen M. Stafford
    • , Dean Stockwell
    •  & Chris Wilson

  • Comment |

    Researchers are more accustomed to writing about climate change than adapting their work to it. But as climate change impacts on the research sector become more evident, rapid adaptation is needed.

    • Lauren Rickards
    •  & James E. M. Watson

  • Comment |

    Much of Australia has been in severe drought since at least 2017. Here we link Australian droughts to the absence of Pacific and Indian Ocean mode states that act as key drivers of drought-breaking rains. Predicting the impact of climate change on drought requires accurate modelling of these modes of variability.

    • Andrew D. King
    • , Andy J. Pitman
    • , Benjamin J. Henley
    • , Anna M. Ukkola
    •  & Josephine R. Brown

  • Editorial |

    The bushfires burning in Australia have led to widespread local and global calls for increased efforts to mitigate climate change.

  • Comment |

    To improve climate resilience for extreme fire events, researchers need to translate modelling uncertainties into useful guidance and be wary of overconfidence. If Earth system models do not capture the severity of recent Australian wildfires, development is urgently needed to assess whether we are underestimating fire risk.

    • Benjamin M. Sanderson
    •  & Rosie A. Fisher

  • Comment |

    Catastrophic fires have generated intensified public responses in favour of transformative climate change action. Realizing the potential of this moment requires us to understand and puncture the cultural and emotional politics of our collective denial.

    • Lesley Head

  • News & Views |

    Temperature affects the metabolic rates of species, their feeding interactions and their ability to persist in a given environment. Now research suggests that different effects of temperature on consumers and resources could cause food webs in cold climates to become less vulnerable to species loss, whereas tropical communities may be more vulnerable as temperatures climb.

    • Alyssa R. Cirtwill

  • Article |

    Climate change has led to earlier spring leaf-out in northern temperate and boreal regions. This advanced leaf-out causes warming in the Northern Hemisphere due to the combined effects of water vapour, cloud and snow-albedo feedbacks on the surface energy budget.

    • Xiyan Xu
    • , William J. Riley
    • , Charles D. Koven
    • , Gensuo Jia
    •  & Xiaoyan Zhang

  • Article |

    Global warming will affect food-web structure and species persistence, and real world data is needed for better prediction. Combining species counts and temperature data from rock pools with dynamic modelling predicts biodiversity increases in arctic to temperate regions and declines in the tropics.

    • Benoit Gauzens
    • , Björn C. Rall
    • , Vanessa Mendonça
    • , Catarina Vinagre
    •  & Ulrich Brose

  • News & Views |

    Atmospheric aerosols have probably masked a significant portion of the greenhouse-gas-induced warming so far. Research now shows that this also may have masked some of the world’s increasing economic inequality.

    • Marianne T. Lund

  • Letter |

    Anthropogenic aerosols mask some greenhouse warming via radiation scattering and cloud interactions. Research suggests the economic impact of this aerosol-induced cooling was small globally, although it benefitted developing countries in warm climates and harmed high-latitude developed countries.

    • Yixuan Zheng
    • , Steven J. Davis
    • , Geeta G. Persad
    •  & Ken Caldeira

  • Letter |

    Climate change induced warming, hypoxia and acidification threaten marine species. Experimental work shows that the susceptibility of clades to climate-related stressors in the modern ocean is related to their extinction risk in the fossil record, which could allow prediction of future responses.

    • Carl J. Reddin
    • , Paulina S. Nätscher
    • , Ádám T. Kocsis
    • , Hans-Otto Pörtner
    •  & Wolfgang Kiessling

  • Letter |

    Earth’s energy imbalance from human and natural drivers—effective radiative forcing—is difficult to constrain, contributing to uncertainty in long-term climate change. A top-down observational constraint reduces IPCC AR5 assessed uncertainty by nearly 40% and suggests models are biased low.

    • Timothy Andrews
    •  & Piers M. Forster

  • Review Article |

    Individual responses to climate hazards can contribute to long-term societal resilience. This Review finds that the literature emphasizes intrapersonal cognitive and affective drivers of adaptation behaviour rather than the interpersonal social factors that promote coordinated cooperative action.

    • Robyn S. Wilson
    • , Atar Herziger
    • , Matthew Hamilton
    •  & Jeremy S. Brooks

  • Letter |

    Intergenerational inheritance of traits in corals can help species survive environmental change. Examination of intergenerational DNA methylation profiles in a reef-building coral shows there to be genome-wide inheritance, with the potential for adaptive capacity to environmental stressors.

    • Yi Jin Liew
    • , Emily J. Howells
    • , Xin Wang
    • , Craig T. Michell
    • , John A. Burt
    • , Youssef Idaghdour
    •  & Manuel Aranda

  • Letter |

    Warming in the Arctic has been thought to cause mid-latitude weather and climate changes. Simulations show Arctic changes have small influence outside of high latitudes, with background global warming exerting more influence over mid-latitude winter precipitation and wind changes.

    • Aiguo Dai
    •  & Mirong Song

  • Letter |

    Anthropogenic aerosol emissions decreased over North America and Europe but increased over Asia since the 1970s. This caused jet stream winds to shift poleward over the Atlantic, decreasing planetary wave activity and partially inhibiting extreme winter weather over northern Eurasia.

    • Yuan Wang
    • , Tianhao Le
    • , Gang Chen
    • , Yuk L. Yung
    • , Hui Su
    • , John H. Seinfeld
    •  & Jonathan H. Jiang

  • Letter |

    The stability of climatic conditions since the Last Glacial Maximum has contributed to current global patterns of species richness. Changes in patterns of climate stability this century reveal areas where climate change could reduce biodiversity, with largest losses in past climatic safe havens.

    • Stuart C. Brown
    • , Tom M. L. Wigley
    • , Bette L. Otto-Bliesner
    • , Carsten Rahbek
    •  & Damien A. Fordham

  • Perspective |

    As tundra ecosystems respond to rapid Arctic warming, satellite records suggest a widespread greening. This Perspective highlights the challenges of interpreting complex Arctic greening trends and provides direction for future research by combining ecological and remote sensing approaches.

    • Isla H. Myers-Smith
    • , Jeffrey T. Kerby
    • , Gareth K. Phoenix
    • , Jarle W. Bjerke
    • , Howard E. Epstein
    • , Jakob J. Assmann
    • , Christian John
    • , Laia Andreu-Hayles
    • , Sandra Angers-Blondin
    • , Pieter S. A. Beck
    • , Logan T. Berner
    • , Uma S. Bhatt
    • , Anne D. Bjorkman
    • , Daan Blok
    • , Anders Bryn
    • , Casper T. Christiansen
    • , J. Hans C. Cornelissen
    • , Andrew M. Cunliffe
    • , Sarah C. Elmendorf
    • , Bruce C. Forbes
    • , Scott J. Goetz
    • , Robert D. Hollister
    • , Rogier de Jong
    • , Michael M. Loranty
    • , Marc Macias-Fauria
    • , Kadmiel Maseyk
    • , Signe Normand
    • , Johan Olofsson
    • , Thomas C. Parker
    • , Frans-Jan W. Parmentier
    • , Eric Post
    • , Gabriela Schaepman-Strub
    • , Frode Stordal
    • , Patrick F. Sullivan
    • , Haydn J. D. Thomas
    • , Hans Tømmervik
    • , Rachael Treharne
    • , Craig E. Tweedie
    • , Donald A. Walker
    • , Martin Wilmking
    •  & Sonja Wipf

  • Editorial |

    In the upper atmosphere, ozone is essential to protect the planet through absorption of ultraviolet radiation; but at ground level, ozone is a pollutant, and increasing anthropogenic emissions are resulting in higher levels. Reducing emissions would mitigate the harmful effects of ozone as well as potentially increasing a natural carbon sink.

  • Article |

    Mountain forest drought can paradoxically increase evapotranspiration (green water), helping vegetation at the expense of runoff (blue water). This is quantified for the 2003 event in the European Alps, highlighting underappreciated vulnerability of blue-water resources to future warmer summers.

    • Theodoros Mastrotheodoros
    • , Christoforos Pappas
    • , Peter Molnar
    • , Paolo Burlando
    • , Gabriele Manoli
    • , Juraj Parajka
    • , Riccardo Rigon
    • , Borbala Szeles
    • , Michele Bottazzi
    • , Panagiotis Hadjidoukas
    •  & Simone Fatichi

  • News & Views |

    The impacts of climate change on the ecohydrology of forested mountain regions are uncertain. New high-resolution modelling suggests that during a hot, dry summer in the Alps, stressed vegetation capitalizes on downslope water subsidies, amplifying runoff deficits and further depleting water resources.

    • Reed M. Maxwell

  • Letter |

    The rapid growth of climate change research presents challenges for IPCC assessments and their stated aim of being comprehensive, objective and transparent. Here the authors use topic modelling to map the climate change literature, and assess how well it is represented in IPCC reports.

    • Max W. Callaghan
    • , Jan C. Minx
    •  & Piers M. Forster

  • Letter |

    Ozone forms in the atmosphere when other anthropogenically emitted gases react with sunlight and negatively impacts terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP). Reducing emissions of ozone precursors by 50%, particularly in the road transportation and energy sectors, could increase GPP by 750 TgC yr–1.

    • Nadine Unger
    • , Yiqi Zheng
    • , Xu Yue
    •  & Kandice L. Harper

  • News & Views |

    Ground-level ozone is an air pollutant that is harmful to human health, as well as to plants, trees and crops. New analyses based on Earth system modelling show that reducing ozone from the energy, industrial and transportation sectors could mitigate climate change by enhancing the ability of vegetation to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

    • Benjamin S. Felzer

  • Article |

    Changes in ocean temperature and pH will impact on species, as well as impacting on community interactions. Here warming and acidification cause a clam species to change their feeding mode, with cascading effects for the marine sedimentary food web.

    • Carl Van Colen
    • , Ee Zin Ong
    • , Mark Briffa
    • , David S. Wethey
    • , Emmanuel Abatih
    • , Tom Moens
    •  & Sarah A. Woodin

  • News & Views |

    For years, halogens have been known as destroyers of ‘good’ ozone, which acts as an upper-atmosphere shield from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Research now shows that natural halogen compounds emitted from the ocean help to control ‘bad’ ozone pollution at ground level and may continue to do so at a similar rate in future climate.

    • Andrea Stenke

  • Letter |

    Crustose coralline algae help build coral reef structures through calcification, a process threatened under ocean acidification. Juvenile algae were highly sensitive on initial exposure to ocean acidification, but continued exposure over six generations showed a gain of tolerance.

    • C. E. Cornwall
    • , S. Comeau
    • , T. M. DeCarlo
    • , E. Larcombe
    • , B. Moore
    • , K. Giltrow
    • , F. Puerzer
    • , Q. D’Alexis
    •  & M. T. McCulloch