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Decadal climate variability has long received limited attention. With the slow-down in surface warming since the late 1990s, the decadal scale has rightly become a focus of attention: for assessing climate change and its impacts, it is of critical importance.

Climate change can alter when and how animals grow, breed, and migrate, but it is unclear whether this allows populations to persist. This global study shows that shifts in seasonal timing are key to helping vertebrate species maintain population growth under global warming.

This study finds that native tree extinctions and alien naturalizations are pushing forests towards fast-growing, resource-demanding species. This global shift could affect carbon storage and ecosystem stability, highlighting the need to protect slow-growing trees.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, the deep Northwest Atlantic was only about 2 °C colder than today, suggesting sustained production of relatively warm North Atlantic Deep Water during the Last Glacial Maximum.

This study finds that crowd-sensed plants as living sensors uncover climate and soil patterns in 326 European cities; extend the urban heat island effect to moisture, pH, salinity and disturbance; and show built-up areas homogenize whereas urban forests preserve environmental diversity.

Daily climate 45 million years ago is reconstructed using fossil snail shells, revealing monsoon-like conditions in Europe. The findings help predict how future warming could affect rainfall and seasons.

Analysing a global database of >40,000 tundra plant phenological observations monitored for up to 20 years, the authors show that community-level flowering has been contracting in response to recent warming, in contrast to findings from lower latitudes.

Organisms vary in their nitrogen and phosphorus content, shaping ecological and evolutionary processes. This study shows that nitrogen deposition is a consistent global factor associated with plant and animal stoichiometry.

Thermophilization is a change in species community composition towards greater abundances of species associated with warmer environments. This study provides evidence of thermophilization in understudied Afromontane forests, but with drivers that are distinct from other forest types.

The Antarctic ice sheet during the late Oligocene (26.2–25.2 million years ago) was highly dynamic, alternating between near-modern size during glacial periods and smaller volumes during interglacials, driven by orbitally-paced climate variations, according to a high-resolution multi-proxy record.

The influence of surface ponding on the interior of ice shelves is currently unknown. Here, the authors combine surface and borehole geophysics on the Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica, with remote sensing and modelling and show how pond refreezing increases ice shelf density and temperature.

This study forecasts intra-annual forest growth towards the end of the 21st century under different scenarios of climate change. It predicts that the extension of the growing season will not be sufficient to compensate for the future drought-induced summer growth limitation.

Here, the authors examine the mechanisms behind cheatgrass’s successful invasion of North American ecosystems. Their genetic analyses and common garden experiments demonstrate that multiple introductions and migrations facilitated cheatgrass local adaptation.

The temperature-sensitivity of soil dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export is widely debated but limited by the duration of observations. New data from environmental archives supports a pronounced sensitivity between soil DOC leaching and warming.

The energetic costs of seasonal bird migration are challenging to measure. Here bio-loggers paired with radio telemetry and energetic modelling show that blackbirds offset the energetic cost of migration by decreasing heart rate and body temperature 28 days before departure but do not decrease total daily energy expenditure in warmer wintering areas.

Thermal bias may predict the impact of climate change. Looking at regional warming and marine bivalves, brachiopods, and gastropods in the early Jurassic, the authors find that species with cooler temperature preferences than local conditions were more likely to become extirpated or extinct.

This study reveals the spatial and temporal patterns of temperature buffer inside the tropical forests. It provides insights into the forests’ microclimate that controls the functioning of living organisms residing under the forest canopy.

Rising atmospheric aridity may be an important driver of tree growth. Here the authors present analyse the global relationship between tree canopy height and vapour pressure deficit, and its potential shifts under future climate change.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Lake fisheries are vulnerable to environmental changes. Here, Kao et al. develop a Bayesian networks model to analyze time-series data from 31 major fisheries lake across five continents, showing that fish catches can respond either positively or negatively to climate and land-use changes.

This study investigates the effects of forestation on temperature in Europe using climate model experiments. The findings indicate that conversion from coniferous to broadleaved trees in currently forested areas can provide cooling for summer hot extremes.

Remotely sensed NDVI data and contemporary field data from 84 grasslands on 6 continents show increasing divergence in aboveground plant biomass between sites in different bioclimatic regions.

Reconstruction of the Eemian interglacial from the new NEEM ice core shows that in spite of a climate warmer by eight degrees Celsius in Northern Greenland than that of the past millennium, the ice here was only a few hundred metres lower than its present level.

Tropical forest leaves are expected to absorb more of the Sun’s energy with climate warming, which could further increase global temperatures.

Many species’ life cycles have moved earlier in the year because of climate change, but we do not know the consequences for range expansions. The authors show that these advances promote range expansions in species with multiple reproductive cycles per year, but not in species with only one.

Using a globally distributed standardized aerial sampling of fungal spores, we show that the hyperdiverse kingdom of fungi follows globally highly predictable spatial and temporal dynamics, with seasonality in both species richness and community composition increasing with latitude.

The effects of climate change on the yield and aroma of beer hops remains unknown. Here the authors demonstrate a climate-induced decline in the quality and quantity of traditional aroma hops across Europe and calls for urgent adaptation measures to stabilize international market chains.

Soil biodiversity is poorly studied compared to aboveground biodiversity, but is an important driver of ecosystem functioning. This Review discusses advances in research into the relationships between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, highlighting that integrative and causal study approaches will be needed to fill the gaps in our understanding.

Reliably probing rejuvenation and memory effects in spin glasses by means of simulations is difficult. Now, a state-of-the-art numerical study shows that at least three different length scales play a crucial role in aging dynamics of spin glasses.

10,000 years of summer length changes are reconstructed. Longer summers occurred when the equator-to-pole temperature gradient weakened. A 1 °C drop added ~6 days; under high emissions, European summers could lengthen by up to 42 days by 2100.

Analyses of the relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits across the tundra and over time show that community height increased with warming across all sites, whereas other traits lagged behind predicted rates of change.

Conducting a simulated turtlegrass herbivory experiment across 650 experimental plots and 13 seagrass meadows, the authors show that the negative effects of herbivory increase with latitude, driven by low levels of light insolation at high latitudes.

Predicting species responses to climate change may be complicated by the influence of other factors. Here, the authors report that warming is linked to terrestrial and freshwater community shifts towards warm-adapted species overall, but body size, thermal niche breadth, species richness and baseline temperature modulate the trends.

Hou et al. propose, based on dinocysts, clumped isotopes and ice sheet modelling, that during Miocene cooling, the Antarctic ice sheet progressively lowered in height while expanding seawards, to maintain a relatively stable volume.

A review of Earth system changes associated with past warmer climates provides constraints on the environmental changes that could occur under warming of 2 °C or more over pre-industrial temperatures.

The authors use climate models and show that projected declining and weakening Arctic sea ice, combined with stronger winds, will enhance ocean surface stress. This increased momentum transfer will spin up surface currents, leading to a more energetic Arctic Ocean in the future.

Analysis of two-million-year-old ancient environmental DNA from the Kap København Formation in North Greenland shows there was an open boreal forest with diverse plant and animal species, of which several taxa have not previously been detected at the site, representing an ecosystem that has no present-day analogue.

Silane, which is a precursor to the sandy surfaces of rocky planets and dusty clouds on gas giants, is seen directly in another world—a low-metallicity brown dwarf in which oxidation is slow and gas mixing is fast.

Global-scale analyses of marine, terrestrial and freshwater assemblages found that temporal rates of species replacement were faster in locations with faster temperature change, including warming and cooling, and vulnerable assemblages were especially responsive.

Biodiversity time series from temperate regions reveal that marine communities in warmer places gain species but lose individuals with warming, but colder environments show weaker trends, whereas no systematic relationships between biodiversity and temperature change were detectable for terrestrial communities.

Scrutinizing the empirical evidence for bidirectional trade-offs in fine root traits, the authors show that while these are important in explaining species occurrences along broad temperature and water availability gradients, unidirectional benefits are prevalent.

Detailed mapping of the distribution of water and semiheavy water in the coma of Halley-type comet 12P implies a D/H ratio that is consistent with that of Earth’s water, indicating a common heritage.

Analysis of peatland carbon accumulation over the last millennium and its association with global-scale climate space indicates an ongoing carbon sink into the future, but with decreasing strength as conditions warm.