Research Briefing

A three-round survey of climate change adaptation experts — researchers and practitioners from across the globe — reveals that there is broad agreement on 13 elements that are foundational for defining transformational adaptation to climate risks. Nevertheless, there are differences between response groups on which aspects of transformational adaptation matter the most.

A spatial assessment of global decarbonization scenarios reveals that land allocated for carbon dioxide removal substantially overlaps with areas of high biodiversity importance. The implications of such overlap depend on location and mode of implementation and demonstrate that careful assessment will be required when implementing decarbonization pathways to safeguard biodiversity.

A Europe-wide probabilistic assessment of coastal flood risk to road and rail infrastructure, at different levels of global warming, shows that each increment of warming amplifies flood damage. Smaller economies face the greatest relative economic impacts, and several countries will need to increase and potentially realign transport investments towards climate resilience.

Climate change threatens biodiversity, but the transfer of genes between species via hybridization can enhance climate resilience. This research demonstrates that hybrid mountain birds show reduced climate vulnerability, highlighting how maintaining natural gene flow can mitigate extinction risks and is crucial for conserving species with narrow environmental tolerances.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation describes the most important pattern of low-frequency climate variability in the North Pacific. An analysis of sea surface temperatures reveals that, since 2014, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation’s influence has been superseded by that of basin-wide warming, producing novel expressions of ocean variability and unexpected ecological impacts.

Antarctic ice shelves affect the mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet and are vulnerable to damage from crevasses and rifts. Decades of satellite observations link this damage to past thinning and retreat of ice shelves. Damage is projected to intensify under future high-emission climate scenarios, further weakening ice shelves and accelerating ice loss.

A human-driven increase in upwelling of carbon-rich deep waters threatens the efficiency of the Southern Ocean carbon sink, which substantially mitigates global warming. Long-term observations reveal that surface freshening since the 1990s has acted as a barrier, preventing CO₂ release to the atmosphere and, temporarily, preserving the Southern Ocean’s role in slowing down climate change.

Bridging traditional disciplinary silos, a study has mapped cascading climate risks to the European Union through stakeholder-co-produced impact chains and network analysis. It provides country-specific risk profiles by identifying critical intervention points — such as water, livelihoods or violent conflict — to support policy coherence in addressing interconnected vulnerabilities and guiding targeted adaptation.

Glacier microclimates can decouple glacier temperatures from ongoing climatic warming, slowing down melting. However, these microclimates will decay as glaciers retreat. A statistical model indicates that by the latter half of the twenty-first century, the temperature of glaciers will be increasingly sensitive to fluctuations in atmospheric temperature.

Across five coastal regions over a four-year period, nearly 300,000 businesses invested a total of €8.7 billion in climate adaptation. An econometric analysis of these data shows that this private sector investment in adaptation modestly boosts regional economic performance, although the extent of the boost varies across sectors and geographies.

Wildland fires in snow-dominated regions such as the Arctic can have profound effects on snowpack characteristics. Satellite observations reveal a delay in snow cover formation in the Arctic following major wildland fires. Machine learning and causal analyses suggest that this delay is linked to fire-induced reductions in albedo and increases in surface temperature.

Natural disturbances, such as windthrows, pest outbreaks and wildfires, pose a major economic threat for the forestry sector. By coupling spatially explicit ecological and economic forest models, this study assesses the costs of natural disturbances under current and future climate conditions for all of Europe.

Terrestrial and marine photosynthetic production are typically studied separately. Now, an integrated analysis of land and ocean net primary production for 2003–2021 reveals that land and ocean net primary production show contrasting trends. Enhanced biospheric primary production is predominantly driven by an increase over land, partially offset by an oceanic decrease.

Selective migration patterns emerge in flood-prone regions in the USA. The sociodemographic profiles of individuals who were more inclined to move in or out of flood-prone areas were strikingly different. Media sentiment aggravates population replacement in these regions, leading to short-term structure changes in the housing market and long-term socioeconomic decline.

The adoption of natural climate solutions in crop-lands, such as cover crops, no tillage and residue retention, is widely assumed to provide both climate change mitigation and crop yield benefits. We find important spatially variable trade-offs between these outcomes and demonstrate that safeguarding crop yields will substantially lower the mitigation potential of natural climate solutions.

Urban heat islands are known to increase heat-related mortality, but a global analysis of more than 3,000 cities reveals that urban heat islands also substantially reduce cold-related mortality — a more than fourfold offset, globally. Although commonly used cooling strategies benefit some tropical cities, they harm others at higher latitudes, and instead a seasonally adaptive approach to heat mitigation is needed.

In the past decades, the duration and rate of carbon uptake have increased, enhancing ecosystem productivity. The uptake rate has a larger effect than the duration has on the temporal changes in productivity. Changes in productivity during the early and the late growing seasons are asymmetric, owing to inconsistent changes in the duration of carbon uptake over time.

An Earth system model including Antarctic ice-shelf cavities is used to explore the response and feedback of Antarctic basal melt in various climate scenarios. The inclusion of ice-shelf cavities provides more comprehensive insight into Southern Ocean dynamics and could improve future climate models.

Analysis of satellite observations and in situ phenology records revealed a delayed onset of spring after drought in northern ecosystems. These delays are regulated by both endogenous memory within plants and exogenous memory of the environment, with the latter having a dominant role.

Under climate warming, increased microbial carbon emissions could diminish the vast carbon stores held in northern peatlands. This large-scale experimental study reveals that warming amplifies carbon uptake by peatland microalgae and partially offsets warming-related increases in microbial carbon emissions.