Highlight articles

ESD Ideas: Arctic amplification’s contribution to breaches of the Paris Agreement

The Arctic is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet. Here, we use climate model projections to quantify for the first time how this faster warming in the Arctic impacts the timing of crossing the 1.5 °C and 2 °C thresholds defined in the Paris Agreement. We show that under plausible emissions scenarios that fail to meet the Paris 1.5 °C target, a hypothetical world without faster warming in the Arctic would breach that 1.5 °C target around 5 years later.

ESD Ideas: Translating historical extreme weather events into a warmer world

Adapting to climate change requires an understanding of how extreme weather events are changing. We propose a new approach to examine how the consequences of a particular weather pattern have been made worse by climate change, using an example of a severe windstorm that occurred in 1903. When this storm is translated into a warmer world, it produces higher wind speeds and increased rainfall, suggesting that this storm would be more damaging if it occurred today rather than 120 years ago.

Advancing the estimation of future climate impacts within the United States

This study utilizes a reduced-complexity model, Framework for Evaluating Damages and Impacts (FrEDI), to assess the impacts from climate change in the United States across 10 000 future probabilistic emission and socioeconomic projections. Climate-driven damages are largest for the health category, with the majority of damages in this category coming from the valuation estimates of premature mortality attributable to climate-driven changes in extreme temperature and air quality scenarios.

Rate-induced tipping in natural and human systems

Complex systems can undergo abrupt changes or tipping points when external forcing crosses a critical level and are of increasing concern because of their severe impacts. However, tipping points can also occur when the external forcing changes too quickly without crossing any critical levels, which is very relevant for Earth’s systems and contemporary climate. We give an intuitive explanation of such rate-induced tipping and provide illustrative examples from natural and human systems.

Quantifying gender gaps in seismology authorship

We investigate women’s representation in seismology to raise awareness of existing gender disparities.
By analysing the authorship of peer-reviewed articles, we identify lower representation of women among single authors, high-impact authors, and highly productive authors. Seismology continues to be a male-dominated field, and trends suggest that parity is decades away. These gaps are an obstacle to women’s career advancement and, if neglected, may perpetuate the leaky-pipeline problem.

Robust global detection of forced changes in mean and extreme precipitation despite observational disagreement on the magnitude of change

Precipitation change is an important consequence of climate change, but it is hard to detect and quantify. Our intuitive method yields robust and interpretable detection of forced precipitation change in three observational datasets for global mean and extreme precipitation, but the different observational datasets show different magnitudes of forced change. Assessment and reduction of uncertainties surrounding forced precipitation change are important for future projections and adaptation.

Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada in June 2021

In June 2021, the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada saw record temperatures far exceeding those previously observed. This attribution study found such a severe heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change. Assuming no nonlinear interactions, such events have become at least 150 times more common, are about 2 ℃ hotter and will become even more common as warming continues. Therefore, adaptation and mitigation are urgently needed to prepare society.

Evidence of localised Amazon rainforest dieback in CMIP6 models

Despite little evidence of regional Amazon rainforest dieback, many localised abrupt dieback events are observed in the latest state-of-the-art global climate models under anthropogenic climate change. The detected dieback events would still cause severe consequences for local communities and ecosystems. This study suggests that 7±5 % of the northern South America region would experience abrupt downward shifts in vegetation carbon for every degree of global warming past 1.5 °C.

A tectonic-rules-based mantle reference frame since 1 billion years ago – implications for supercontinent cycles and plate–mantle system evolution

Solid Earth
DOI 10.5194/se-13-1127-2022
30 September 2022

We have built a community model for the evolution of the Earth’s plate–mantle system. Created with open-source software and an open-access plate model, it covers the last billion years, including the formation, breakup, and dispersal of two supercontinents, as well as the creation and destruction of numerous ocean basins. The model allows us to “see” into the Earth in 4D and helps us unravel the connections between surface tectonics and the “beating heart” of the Earth, its convecting mantle.

Glacial runoff buffers droughts through the 21st century

Global climate models suggest that droughts could worsen over the coming century. In mountain basins with glaciers, glacial runoff can ease droughts, but glaciers are retreating worldwide. We analysed how one measure of drought conditions changes when accounting for glacial runoff that changes over time. Surprisingly, we found that glacial runoff can continue to buffer drought throughout the 21st century in most cases, even as the total amount of runoff declines.

GMPV Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology Highlight articles

Highlight articles

Information for

External links