Perspectives

Sea-level rise poses a substantial risk to coastal communities and economies, thus accurate predictions are needed to enable planning and adaptation. This Perspective provides an overview of uncertainties in model projections of sea-level rise, and how observations can be used to reduce these.

The implementation gap between national climate targets and actual policies has been seen as a main barrier for decarbonization. Here researchers show it is rooted in the structural limitation of states and discuss future research directions to promote the emergence of transformative states.

Climate change assessment reports are increasing in complexity as the knowledge base grows exponentially. In this Perspective, the authors advocate, and provide recommendations, for knowledge synthesis to become more common as a way to better inform such assessments.

Mitigation actions can have large-scale health co-benefits, which, however, are not effectively incorporated into policy design and implementation. This Perspective overviews the health co-benefits and cost-effectiveness of climate policies and discusses ways to improve their policy relevance.

In this Perspective, the authors discuss how to robustly consider climate change impacts in ecosystem risk assessments. They highlight challenges in defining impacts, indicators and thresholds, in collating data, and in estimating and reporting risk, and propose solutions to inform conservation.

It has been argued that parts of the climate system can experience rapid changes and that such tipping can be anticipated by early warning signals. Here the authors discuss the limitations of such indicators and common pitfalls in their application.

Children will bear considerable burdens of climate change, particularly where impacts intersect with pre-existing vulnerabilities. In this Perspective, the authors highlight how climate factors and socio-political stratifiers increase children’s risks in Africa and propose action to break vulnerability cycles.

Rising wealth inequality is a major challenge for this century, and climate change could further exacerbate it. Based on an overview of existing studies, this Perspective proposes a framework to advance understanding of wealth inequality in relation to climate change and climate policies.

This Perspective highlights links between gender inequality and climate change adaptation and mitigation, and proposes a roadmap for incorporating gender issues into the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. These scenarios could help understand challenges under diverse trajectories of gender equality.

The first global stocktake marks an important step in enabling Parties to the Paris Agreement to enhance their climate actions and support with the aim of achieving long-term goals. Two co-facilitators of the technical dialogue discuss the process, findings, relationship with political outcomes and implications for future negotiations.

The tipping points framing is widely used in climate discussions but receives mixed feedback. This Perspective critiques it for oversimplifying the complexities of natural and social systems and failing to drive effective action, and offers recommendations for future improvements.

In this Perspective, the authors discuss the current status of ecological forecasting research, its role in helping to address the climate and biodiversity crises facing society and potential future directions, with a central focus on how to scale up ecological forecasting capabilities.

Machine learning methods allow for advances in many aspects of climate research. In this Perspective, the authors give an overview of recent progress and remaining challenges to harvest the full potential of machine learning methods.

The decarbonization of energy systems needs to be integrated with electric grid infrastructure, yet combined climate–grid studies are lacking. This Perspective discusses electric grid research that should be prioritized, and how researchers from different communities could better collaborate.

Both extreme weather events and long-term gradual changes drive human migration, which could aggravate the burden of infectious diseases. This Perspective examines the complex interplay between climate change, migration and infectious diseases then advocates for context-specific adaptations.

Urban areas are an important focus for effective climate action in the coming decade. This Perspective proposes transformational strategies to accelerate and upscale the impact of the planned Special Report on Climate Change and Cities in the IPCC seventh assessment cycle.

The material-intensive transition to low-carbon energy will impose environmental and social burdens on local and regional communities. Demand-side strategies can help to achieve higher well-being at lower levels of energy or material use, and an interdisciplinary approach in future research is essential.

It has been postulated that there is a threshold temperature above which permafrost will reach a global tipping point, causing accelerated thaw and global collapse. Here it is argued that permafrost-thaw feedbacks are dominated by local- to regional-scale processes, but this also means there is no safety margin.

In this Perspective, the authors develop a risk assessment framework for forest microbiomes under climate change that unites microbial and forest ecology. They define processes that amplify or buffer microbial sensitivity and exposure risk and feedbacks that mediate impacts on microbial communities.

In this Perspective, the authors develop an integrated framework to understand and predict the joint impacts of climate change and urbanization on biodiversity and ecosystems. They review examples of interacting impacts and present opportunities for future research.