Nature Climate Change

Hydrofluorocarbons are a potent greenhouse gas, yet there remains a lack of quantitative estimates of their social cost. The present study addresses this gap by directly calculating the social cost of hydrofluorocarbons (SC-HFCs) using perturbations of exogenous inputs to integrated assessment models. We first develop a set of direct estimates of the SC-HFCs using methods currently adopted by the United States Government, and then derive updated estimates that incorporate recent advances in climate science and economics...

More than 60% of meteorite finds on Earth originate from Antarctica. Using a data-driven analysis that identifies meteorite-rich sites in Antarctica, we show climate warming causes many extraterrestrial rocks to be lost from the surface by melting into the ice sheet. At present, approximately 5,000 meteorites become inaccessible per year (versus ~1,000 finds per year) and, independent of the emissions scenario, ~24% will be lost by 2050, potentially rising to ∼76% by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario...

Higher temperatures are expected to reduce species coexistence by increasing energetic demands. However, flexible foraging behaviour could balance this effect by allowing predators to target specific prey species to maximize their energy intake, according to principles of optimal foraging theory. Here we test these assumptions using a large dataset comprising 2,487 stomach contents from six fish species with different feeding strategies, sampled across environments with varying prey availability over 12 years in Kiel Bay (Baltic Sea)...

Wetland methane (CH4 ) emissions over the Boreal-Arctic region are vulnerable to climate change and linked to climate feedbacks, yet understanding of their long-term dynamics remains uncertain. Here, we upscaled and analysed two decades (2002-2021) of Boreal-Arctic wetland CH4 emissions, representing an unprecedented compilation of eddy covariance and chamber observations. We found a robust increasing trend of CH4 emissions (+8.9%) with strong inter-annual variability. The majority of emission increases occurred in early summer (June and July) and were mainly driven by warming (52...

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Increasing the number of environmental stressors could decrease ecosystem functioning in soils. Yet this relationship has never been globally assessed outside laboratory experiments. Here, using two independent global standardized field surveys, and a range of natural and human factors, we test the relationship between the number of environmental stressors exceeding different critical thresholds and the maintenance of multiple ecosystem services across biomes. Our analysis shows that, multiple stressors, from medium levels (>50%), negatively and significantly correlates with impacts on ecosystem services, and that multiple stressors crossing a high-level critical threshold (over 75% of maximum observed levels), reduces soil biodiversity and functioning globally...

Deciduous tree cover is expected to increase in North American boreal forests with climate warming and wildfire. This shift in composition has the potential to generate biophysical cooling via increased land surface albedo. Here we use Landsat-derived maps of continuous tree canopy cover and deciduous fractional composition to assess albedo change over recent decades. We find, on average, a small net decrease in deciduous fraction from 2000 to 2015 across boreal North America and from 1992 to 2015 across Canada, despite extensive fire disturbance that locally increased deciduous vegetation...

Seafood is an important source of bioavailable micronutrients supporting human health, yet it is unclear how micronutrient production has changed in the past or how climate change will influence its availability. Here combining reconstructed fisheries databases and predictive models, we assess nutrient availability from fisheries and mariculture in the past and project their futures under climate change. Since the 1990s, availabilities of iron, calcium and omega-3 from seafood for direct human consumption have increased but stagnated for protein...

Arctic wetlands are known methane (CH4 ) emitters but recent studies suggest that the Arctic CH4 sink strength may be underestimated. Here we explore the capacity of well-drained Arctic soils to consume atmospheric CH4 using >40,000 hourly flux observations and spatially distributed flux measurements from 4 sites and 14 surface types. While consumption of atmospheric CH4 occurred at all sites at rates of 0.092 ± 0.011 mgCH4  m-2  h-1 (mean ± s.e...

Rising temperatures are impacting the range and prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases. A promising biocontrol technology replaces wild mosquitoes with those carrying the virus-blocking Wolbachia bacterium. Because the most widely used strain, w Mel, is adversely affected by heat stress, we examined how global warming may influence w Mel-based replacement. We simulated interventions in two locations with successful field trials using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate projections and historical temperature records, integrating empirical data on w Mel's thermal sensitivity into a model of Aedes aegypti population dynamics to evaluate introgression and persistence over one year...

Climate change interacts with local processes to threaten biodiversity by disrupting the complex network of ecological interactions. While changes in network interactions drastically affect ecosystems, how ecological networks respond to climate change, in particular warming and nutrient supply fluctuations, is largely unknown. Here, using an equation-free modelling approach on monthly plankton community data in ten Swiss lakes, we show that the number and strength of plankton community interactions fluctuate and respond nonlinearly to water temperature and phosphorus...

Trees sustain livelihoods and mitigate climate change but a predominance of trees outside forests and limited resources make it difficult for many tropical countries to conduct automated nation-wide inventories. Here, we propose an approach to map the carbon stock of each individual overstory tree at the national scale of Rwanda using aerial imagery from 2008 and deep learning. We show that 72% of the mapped trees are located in farmlands and savannas and 17% in plantations, accounting for 48.6% of the national aboveground carbon stocks...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The new and updated emission reduction pledges submitted by countries ahead of COP26 represent a meaningful strengthening of global ambition compared to the 2015 Paris pledges1,2 . Yet, limiting global warming below 1.5°C this century will require countries to ratchet ambition for 2030 and beyond2-6 . We explore a suite of emissions pathways in which countries ratchet and achieve ambition through a combination of increasing near-term ambition through 2030, accelerating post-2030 decarbonization, and advancing the dates for national net-zero pledges...

At high elevations of ice sheets, melting snow generally percolates and refreezes, so does not contribute to the shrinking of the ice sheet. Here, we systematically map the runoff area of the Greenland ice sheet, using surface rivers visible on satellite imagery. Between 1985 and 2020, the maximum runoff elevation rose by 58-329 metres, expanding the runoff area by 29% (-8%/+6%). Excess melt beyond the refreezing capacity of pores in snowfall has created near-impermeable ice slabs that sustain surface runoff even in cooler summers...

Marine heatwaves (MHWs), episodic periods of abnormally high sea surface temperature (SST), severely affect marine ecosystems. Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) cover ~22% of the global ocean but account for 95% of global fisheries catches. Yet how climate change affects MHWs over LMEs remains unknown, because such LMEs are confined to the coast where low-resolution climate models are known to have biases. Here, using a high-resolution Earth system model and applying a "future threshold" that considers MHWs as anomalous warming above the long-term mean warming of SSTs, we find that future intensity and annual days of MHWs over majority of the LMEs remain higher than in the present-day climate...

A comprehensive and systematic literature review reveals that over 58% of human pathogenic diseases are aggravated by climatic hazards that are sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions.

It is relatively well accepted that climate change can affect human pathogenic diseases; however, the full extent of this risk remains poorly quantified. Here we carried out a systematic search for empirical examples about the impacts of ten climatic hazards sensitive to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on each known human pathogenic disease. We found that 58% (that is, 218 out of 375) of infectious diseases confronted by humanity worldwide have been at some point aggravated by climatic hazards; 16% were at times diminished...

Understanding social and behavioral drivers and constraints of household adaptation is essential to effectively address increasing climate-induced risks. Factors shaping household adaptation are commonly treated as universal; despite an emerging understanding that adaptations are shaped by social, institutional, and cultural contexts. Using original surveys in the United States, China, Indonesia, and the Netherlands (N=3,789) - we explore variations in factors shaping households' adaptations to flooding, the costliest hazard worldwide...

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies. Here we propose a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate. Implementing the utilitarian benchmark, which we see as ethically minimal and conceptually parsimonious, in two leading climate-economy models allows for calculation of the optimal allocation of future emissions...