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A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures

• Review Article
• Published: 04 April 2022
• Volume 29 , pages 42539–42559, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Kashif Abbass 1 ,
• Muhammad Zeeshan Qasim 2 ,
• Huaming Song 1 ,
• Muntasir Murshed   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9872-8742 3 , 4 ,
• Haider Mahmood   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6474-4338 5 &
• Ijaz Younis 1  

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Climate change is a long-lasting change in the weather arrays across tropics to polls. It is a global threat that has embarked on to put stress on various sectors. This study is aimed to conceptually engineer how climate variability is deteriorating the sustainability of diverse sectors worldwide. Specifically, the agricultural sector’s vulnerability is a globally concerning scenario, as sufficient production and food supplies are threatened due to irreversible weather fluctuations. In turn, it is challenging the global feeding patterns, particularly in countries with agriculture as an integral part of their economy and total productivity. Climate change has also put the integrity and survival of many species at stake due to shifts in optimum temperature ranges, thereby accelerating biodiversity loss by progressively changing the ecosystem structures. Climate variations increase the likelihood of particular food and waterborne and vector-borne diseases, and a recent example is a coronavirus pandemic. Climate change also accelerates the enigma of antimicrobial resistance, another threat to human health due to the increasing incidence of resistant pathogenic infections. Besides, the global tourism industry is devastated as climate change impacts unfavorable tourism spots. The methodology investigates hypothetical scenarios of climate variability and attempts to describe the quality of evidence to facilitate readers’ careful, critical engagement. Secondary data is used to identify sustainability issues such as environmental, social, and economic viability. To better understand the problem, gathered the information in this report from various media outlets, research agencies, policy papers, newspapers, and other sources. This review is a sectorial assessment of climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches worldwide in the aforementioned sectors and the associated economic costs. According to the findings, government involvement is necessary for the country’s long-term development through strict accountability of resources and regulations implemented in the past to generate cutting-edge climate policy. Therefore, mitigating the impacts of climate change must be of the utmost importance, and hence, this global threat requires global commitment to address its dreadful implications to ensure global sustenance.

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Introduction

Worldwide observed and anticipated climatic changes for the twenty-first century and global warming are significant global changes that have been encountered during the past 65 years. Climate change (CC) is an inter-governmental complex challenge globally with its influence over various components of the ecological, environmental, socio-political, and socio-economic disciplines (Adger et al.  2005 ; Leal Filho et al.  2021 ; Feliciano et al.  2022 ). Climate change involves heightened temperatures across numerous worlds (Battisti and Naylor  2009 ; Schuurmans  2021 ; Weisheimer and Palmer  2005 ; Yadav et al.  2015 ). With the onset of the industrial revolution, the problem of earth climate was amplified manifold (Leppänen et al.  2014 ). It is reported that the immediate attention and due steps might increase the probability of overcoming its devastating impacts. It is not plausible to interpret the exact consequences of climate change (CC) on a sectoral basis (Izaguirre et al.  2021 ; Jurgilevich et al.  2017 ), which is evident by the emerging level of recognition plus the inclusion of climatic uncertainties at both local and national level of policymaking (Ayers et al.  2014 ).

Climate change is characterized based on the comprehensive long-haul temperature and precipitation trends and other components such as pressure and humidity level in the surrounding environment. Besides, the irregular weather patterns, retreating of global ice sheets, and the corresponding elevated sea level rise are among the most renowned international and domestic effects of climate change (Lipczynska-Kochany  2018 ; Michel et al.  2021 ; Murshed and Dao 2020 ). Before the industrial revolution, natural sources, including volcanoes, forest fires, and seismic activities, were regarded as the distinct sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, and H 2 O into the atmosphere (Murshed et al. 2020 ; Hussain et al.  2020 ; Sovacool et al.  2021 ; Usman and Balsalobre-Lorente 2022 ; Murshed 2022 ). United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) struck a major agreement to tackle climate change and accelerate and intensify the actions and investments required for a sustainable low-carbon future at Conference of the Parties (COP-21) in Paris on December 12, 2015. The Paris Agreement expands on the Convention by bringing all nations together for the first time in a single cause to undertake ambitious measures to prevent climate change and adapt to its impacts, with increased funding to assist developing countries in doing so. As so, it marks a turning point in the global climate fight. The core goal of the Paris Agreement is to improve the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 °C over pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C (Sharma et al. 2020 ; Sharif et al. 2020 ; Chien et al. 2021 .

Furthermore, the agreement aspires to strengthen nations’ ability to deal with the effects of climate change and align financing flows with low GHG emissions and climate-resilient paths (Shahbaz et al. 2019 ; Anwar et al. 2021 ; Usman et al. 2022a ). To achieve these lofty goals, adequate financial resources must be mobilized and provided, as well as a new technology framework and expanded capacity building, allowing developing countries and the most vulnerable countries to act under their respective national objectives. The agreement also establishes a more transparent action and support mechanism. All Parties are required by the Paris Agreement to do their best through “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) and to strengthen these efforts in the coming years (Balsalobre-Lorente et al. 2020 ). It includes obligations that all Parties regularly report on their emissions and implementation activities. A global stock-take will be conducted every five years to review collective progress toward the agreement’s goal and inform the Parties’ future individual actions. The Paris Agreement became available for signature on April 22, 2016, Earth Day, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. On November 4, 2016, it went into effect 30 days after the so-called double threshold was met (ratification by 55 nations accounting for at least 55% of world emissions). More countries have ratified and continue to ratify the agreement since then, bringing 125 Parties in early 2017. To fully operationalize the Paris Agreement, a work program was initiated in Paris to define mechanisms, processes, and recommendations on a wide range of concerns (Murshed et al. 2021 ). Since 2016, Parties have collaborated in subsidiary bodies (APA, SBSTA, and SBI) and numerous formed entities. The Conference of the Parties functioning as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) convened for the first time in November 2016 in Marrakesh in conjunction with COP22 and made its first two resolutions. The work plan is scheduled to be finished by 2018. Some mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce the emission in the prospective of Paris agreement are following firstly, a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, secondly, to aim to limit the rise to 1.5 °C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change, thirdly, on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible, recognizing that this will take longer for developing countries, lastly, to undertake rapid reductions after that under the best available science, to achieve a balance between emissions and removals in the second half of the century. On the other side, some adaptation strategies are; strengthening societies’ ability to deal with the effects of climate change and to continue & expand international assistance for developing nations’ adaptation.

However, anthropogenic activities are currently regarded as most accountable for CC (Murshed et al. 2022 ). Apart from the industrial revolution, other anthropogenic activities include excessive agricultural operations, which further involve the high use of fuel-based mechanization, burning of agricultural residues, burning fossil fuels, deforestation, national and domestic transportation sectors, etc. (Huang et al.  2016 ). Consequently, these anthropogenic activities lead to climatic catastrophes, damaging local and global infrastructure, human health, and total productivity. Energy consumption has mounted GHGs levels concerning warming temperatures as most of the energy production in developing countries comes from fossil fuels (Balsalobre-Lorente et al. 2022 ; Usman et al. 2022b ; Abbass et al. 2021a ; Ishikawa-Ishiwata and Furuya  2022 ).

This review aims to highlight the effects of climate change in a socio-scientific aspect by analyzing the existing literature on various sectorial pieces of evidence globally that influence the environment. Although this review provides a thorough examination of climate change and its severe affected sectors that pose a grave danger for global agriculture, biodiversity, health, economy, forestry, and tourism, and to purpose some practical prophylactic measures and mitigation strategies to be adapted as sound substitutes to survive from climate change (CC) impacts. The societal implications of irregular weather patterns and other effects of climate changes are discussed in detail. Some numerous sustainable mitigation measures and adaptation practices and techniques at the global level are discussed in this review with an in-depth focus on its economic, social, and environmental aspects. Methods of data collection section are included in the supplementary information.

Review methodology

Related study and its objectives.

Today, we live an ordinary life in the beautiful digital, globalized world where climate change has a decisive role. What happens in one country has a massive influence on geographically far apart countries, which points to the current crisis known as COVID-19 (Sarkar et al.  2021 ). The most dangerous disease like COVID-19 has affected the world’s climate changes and economic conditions (Abbass et al. 2022 ; Pirasteh-Anosheh et al.  2021 ). The purpose of the present study is to review the status of research on the subject, which is based on “Global Climate Change Impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures” by systematically reviewing past published and unpublished research work. Furthermore, the current study seeks to comment on research on the same topic and suggest future research on the same topic. Specifically, the present study aims: The first one is, organize publications to make them easy and quick to find. Secondly, to explore issues in this area, propose an outline of research for future work. The third aim of the study is to synthesize the previous literature on climate change, various sectors, and their mitigation measurement. Lastly , classify the articles according to the different methods and procedures that have been adopted.

Review methodology for reviewers

This review-based article followed systematic literature review techniques that have proved the literature review as a rigorous framework (Benita  2021 ; Tranfield et al.  2003 ). Moreover, we illustrate in Fig.  1 the search method that we have started for this research. First, finalized the research theme to search literature (Cooper et al.  2018 ). Second, used numerous research databases to search related articles and download from the database (Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus Index Journals, Emerald, Elsevier Science Direct, Springer, and Sciverse). We focused on various articles, with research articles, feedback pieces, short notes, debates, and review articles published in scholarly journals. Reports used to search for multiple keywords such as “Climate Change,” “Mitigation and Adaptation,” “Department of Agriculture and Human Health,” “Department of Biodiversity and Forestry,” etc.; in summary, keyword list and full text have been made. Initially, the search for keywords yielded a large amount of literature.

Source : constructed by authors

Methodology search for finalized articles for investigations.

Since 2020, it has been impossible to review all the articles found; some restrictions have been set for the literature exhibition. The study searched 95 articles on a different database mentioned above based on the nature of the study. It excluded 40 irrelevant papers due to copied from a previous search after readings tiles, abstract and full pieces. The criteria for inclusion were: (i) articles focused on “Global Climate Change Impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures,” and (ii) the search key terms related to study requirements. The complete procedure yielded 55 articles for our study. We repeat our search on the “Web of Science and Google Scholars” database to enhance the search results and check the referenced articles.

In this study, 55 articles are reviewed systematically and analyzed for research topics and other aspects, such as the methods, contexts, and theories used in these studies. Furthermore, this study analyzes closely related areas to provide unique research opportunities in the future. The study also discussed future direction opportunities and research questions by understanding the research findings climate changes and other affected sectors. The reviewed paper framework analysis process is outlined in Fig.  2 .

Framework of the analysis Process.

Natural disasters and climate change’s socio-economic consequences

Natural and environmental disasters can be highly variable from year to year; some years pass with very few deaths before a significant disaster event claims many lives (Symanski et al.  2021 ). Approximately 60,000 people globally died from natural disasters each year on average over the past decade (Ritchie and Roser  2014 ; Wiranata and Simbolon  2021 ). So, according to the report, around 0.1% of global deaths. Annual variability in the number and share of deaths from natural disasters in recent decades are shown in Fig.  3 . The number of fatalities can be meager—sometimes less than 10,000, and as few as 0.01% of all deaths. But shock events have a devastating impact: the 1983–1985 famine and drought in Ethiopia; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar in 2008; and the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake in Haiti and now recent example is COVID-19 pandemic (Erman et al.  2021 ). These events pushed global disaster deaths to over 200,000—more than 0.4% of deaths in these years. Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, but such high losses of human life are. Historical evidence shows that earlier disaster detection, more robust infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and response programmers have substantially reduced disaster deaths worldwide. Low-income is also the most vulnerable to disasters; improving living conditions, facilities, and response services in these areas would be critical in reducing natural disaster deaths in the coming decades.

Source EMDAT ( 2020 )

Global deaths from natural disasters, 1978 to 2020.

The interior regions of the continent are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures (Dimri et al.  2018 ; Goes et al.  2020 ; Mannig et al.  2018 ; Schuurmans  2021 ). Weather patterns change due to the shortage of natural resources (water), increase in glacier melting, and rising mercury are likely to cause extinction to many planted species (Gampe et al.  2016 ; Mihiretu et al.  2021 ; Shaffril et al.  2018 ).On the other hand, the coastal ecosystem is on the verge of devastation (Perera et al.  2018 ; Phillips  2018 ). The temperature rises, insect disease outbreaks, health-related problems, and seasonal and lifestyle changes are persistent, with a strong probability of these patterns continuing in the future (Abbass et al. 2021c ; Hussain et al.  2018 ). At the global level, a shortage of good infrastructure and insufficient adaptive capacity are hammering the most (IPCC  2013 ). In addition to the above concerns, a lack of environmental education and knowledge, outdated consumer behavior, a scarcity of incentives, a lack of legislation, and the government’s lack of commitment to climate change contribute to the general public’s concerns. By 2050, a 2 to 3% rise in mercury and a drastic shift in rainfall patterns may have serious consequences (Huang et al. 2022 ; Gorst et al.  2018 ). Natural and environmental calamities caused huge losses globally, such as decreased agriculture outputs, rehabilitation of the system, and rebuilding necessary technologies (Ali and Erenstein  2017 ; Ramankutty et al.  2018 ; Yu et al.  2021 ) (Table 1 ). Furthermore, in the last 3 or 4 years, the world has been plagued by smog-related eye and skin diseases, as well as a rise in road accidents due to poor visibility.

Climate change and agriculture

Global agriculture is the ultimate sector responsible for 30–40% of all greenhouse emissions, which makes it a leading industry predominantly contributing to climate warming and significantly impacted by it (Grieg; Mishra et al.  2021 ; Ortiz et al.  2021 ; Thornton and Lipper  2014 ). Numerous agro-environmental and climatic factors that have a dominant influence on agriculture productivity (Pautasso et al.  2012 ) are significantly impacted in response to precipitation extremes including floods, forest fires, and droughts (Huang  2004 ). Besides, the immense dependency on exhaustible resources also fuels the fire and leads global agriculture to become prone to devastation. Godfray et al. ( 2010 ) mentioned that decline in agriculture challenges the farmer’s quality of life and thus a significant factor to poverty as the food and water supplies are critically impacted by CC (Ortiz et al.  2021 ; Rosenzweig et al.  2014 ). As an essential part of the economic systems, especially in developing countries, agricultural systems affect the overall economy and potentially the well-being of households (Schlenker and Roberts  2009 ). According to the report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, i.e., CH 4, CO 2 , and N 2 O, are increased in the air to extraordinary levels over the last few centuries (Usman and Makhdum 2021 ; Stocker et al.  2013 ). Climate change is the composite outcome of two different factors. The first is the natural causes, and the second is the anthropogenic actions (Karami 2012 ). It is also forecasted that the world may experience a typical rise in temperature stretching from 1 to 3.7 °C at the end of this century (Pachauri et al. 2014 ). The world’s crop production is also highly vulnerable to these global temperature-changing trends as raised temperatures will pose severe negative impacts on crop growth (Reidsma et al. 2009 ). Some of the recent modeling about the fate of global agriculture is briefly described below.

Decline in cereal productivity

Crop productivity will also be affected dramatically in the next few decades due to variations in integral abiotic factors such as temperature, solar radiation, precipitation, and CO 2 . These all factors are included in various regulatory instruments like progress and growth, weather-tempted changes, pest invasions (Cammell and Knight 1992 ), accompanying disease snags (Fand et al. 2012 ), water supplies (Panda et al. 2003 ), high prices of agro-products in world’s agriculture industry, and preeminent quantity of fertilizer consumption. Lobell and field ( 2007 ) claimed that from 1962 to 2002, wheat crop output had condensed significantly due to rising temperatures. Therefore, during 1980–2011, the common wheat productivity trends endorsed extreme temperature events confirmed by Gourdji et al. ( 2013 ) around South Asia, South America, and Central Asia. Various other studies (Asseng, Cao, Zhang, and Ludwig 2009 ; Asseng et al. 2013 ; García et al. 2015 ; Ortiz et al. 2021 ) also proved that wheat output is negatively affected by the rising temperatures and also caused adverse effects on biomass productivity (Calderini et al. 1999 ; Sadras and Slafer 2012 ). Hereafter, the rice crop is also influenced by the high temperatures at night. These difficulties will worsen because the temperature will be rising further in the future owing to CC (Tebaldi et al. 2006 ). Another research conducted in China revealed that a 4.6% of rice production per 1 °C has happened connected with the advancement in night temperatures (Tao et al. 2006 ). Moreover, the average night temperature growth also affected rice indicia cultivar’s output pragmatically during 25 years in the Philippines (Peng et al. 2004 ). It is anticipated that the increase in world average temperature will also cause a substantial reduction in yield (Hatfield et al. 2011 ; Lobell and Gourdji 2012 ). In the southern hemisphere, Parry et al. ( 2007 ) noted a rise of 1–4 °C in average daily temperatures at the end of spring season unti the middle of summers, and this raised temperature reduced crop output by cutting down the time length for phenophases eventually reduce the yield (Hatfield and Prueger 2015 ; R. Ortiz 2008 ). Also, world climate models have recommended that humid and subtropical regions expect to be plentiful prey to the upcoming heat strokes (Battisti and Naylor 2009 ). Grain production is the amalgamation of two constituents: the average weight and the grain output/m 2 , however, in crop production. Crop output is mainly accredited to the grain quantity (Araus et al. 2008 ; Gambín and Borrás 2010 ). In the times of grain set, yield resources are mainly strewn between hitherto defined components, i.e., grain usual weight and grain output, which presents a trade-off between them (Gambín and Borrás 2010 ) beside disparities in per grain integration (B. L. Gambín et al. 2006 ). In addition to this, the maize crop is also susceptible to raised temperatures, principally in the flowering stage (Edreira and Otegui 2013 ). In reality, the lower grain number is associated with insufficient acclimatization due to intense photosynthesis and higher respiration and the high-temperature effect on the reproduction phenomena (Edreira and Otegui 2013 ). During the flowering phase, maize visible to heat (30–36 °C) seemed less anthesis-silking intermissions (Edreira et al. 2011 ). Another research by Dupuis and Dumas ( 1990 ) proved that a drop in spikelet when directly visible to high temperatures above 35 °C in vitro pollination. Abnormalities in kernel number claimed by Vega et al. ( 2001 ) is related to conceded plant development during a flowering phase that is linked with the active ear growth phase and categorized as a critical phase for approximation of kernel number during silking (Otegui and Bonhomme 1998 ).

The retort of rice output to high temperature presents disparities in flowering patterns, and seed set lessens and lessens grain weight (Qasim et al. 2020 ; Qasim, Hammad, Maqsood, Tariq, & Chawla). During the daytime, heat directly impacts flowers which lessens the thesis period and quickens the earlier peak flowering (Tao et al. 2006 ). Antagonistic effect of higher daytime temperature d on pollen sprouting proposed seed set decay, whereas, seed set was lengthily reduced than could be explicated by pollen growing at high temperatures 40◦C (Matsui et al. 2001 ).

The decline in wheat output is linked with higher temperatures, confirmed in numerous studies (Semenov 2009 ; Stone and Nicolas 1994 ). High temperatures fast-track the arrangements of plant expansion (Blum et al. 2001 ), diminution photosynthetic process (Salvucci and Crafts‐Brandner 2004 ), and also considerably affect the reproductive operations (Farooq et al. 2011 ).

The destructive impacts of CC induced weather extremes to deteriorate the integrity of crops (Chaudhary et al. 2011 ), e.g., Spartan cold and extreme fog cause falling and discoloration of betel leaves (Rosenzweig et al. 2001 ), giving them a somehow reddish appearance, squeezing of lemon leaves (Pautasso et al. 2012 ), as well as root rot of pineapple, have reported (Vedwan and Rhoades 2001 ). Henceforth, in tackling the disruptive effects of CC, several short-term and long-term management approaches are the crucial need of time (Fig.  4 ). Moreover, various studies (Chaudhary et al. 2011 ; Patz et al. 2005 ; Pautasso et al. 2012 ) have demonstrated adapting trends such as ameliorating crop diversity can yield better adaptability towards CC.

Schematic description of potential impacts of climate change on the agriculture sector and the appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures to overcome its impact.

Climate change impacts on biodiversity

Global biodiversity is among the severe victims of CC because it is the fastest emerging cause of species loss. Studies demonstrated that the massive scale species dynamics are considerably associated with diverse climatic events (Abraham and Chain 1988 ; Manes et al. 2021 ; A. M. D. Ortiz et al. 2021 ). Both the pace and magnitude of CC are altering the compatible habitat ranges for living entities of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial regions. Alterations in general climate regimes influence the integrity of ecosystems in numerous ways, such as variation in the relative abundance of species, range shifts, changes in activity timing, and microhabitat use (Bates et al. 2014 ). The geographic distribution of any species often depends upon its ability to tolerate environmental stresses, biological interactions, and dispersal constraints. Hence, instead of the CC, the local species must only accept, adapt, move, or face extinction (Berg et al. 2010 ). So, the best performer species have a better survival capacity for adjusting to new ecosystems or a decreased perseverance to survive where they are already situated (Bates et al. 2014 ). An important aspect here is the inadequate habitat connectivity and access to microclimates, also crucial in raising the exposure to climate warming and extreme heatwave episodes. For example, the carbon sequestration rates are undergoing fluctuations due to climate-driven expansion in the range of global mangroves (Cavanaugh et al. 2014 ).

Similarly, the loss of kelp-forest ecosystems in various regions and its occupancy by the seaweed turfs has set the track for elevated herbivory by the high influx of tropical fish populations. Not only this, the increased water temperatures have exacerbated the conditions far away from the physiological tolerance level of the kelp communities (Vergés et al. 2016 ; Wernberg et al. 2016 ). Another pertinent danger is the devastation of keystone species, which even has more pervasive effects on the entire communities in that habitat (Zarnetske et al. 2012 ). It is particularly important as CC does not specify specific populations or communities. Eventually, this CC-induced redistribution of species may deteriorate carbon storage and the net ecosystem productivity (Weed et al. 2013 ). Among the typical disruptions, the prominent ones include impacts on marine and terrestrial productivity, marine community assembly, and the extended invasion of toxic cyanobacteria bloom (Fossheim et al. 2015 ).

The CC-impacted species extinction is widely reported in the literature (Beesley et al. 2019 ; Urban 2015 ), and the predictions of demise until the twenty-first century are dreadful (Abbass et al. 2019 ; Pereira et al. 2013 ). In a few cases, northward shifting of species may not be formidable as it allows mountain-dwelling species to find optimum climates. However, the migrant species may be trapped in isolated and incompatible habitats due to losing topography and range (Dullinger et al. 2012 ). For example, a study indicated that the American pika has been extirpated or intensely diminished in some regions, primarily attributed to the CC-impacted extinction or at least local extirpation (Stewart et al. 2015 ). Besides, the anticipation of persistent responses to the impacts of CC often requires data records of several decades to rigorously analyze the critical pre and post CC patterns at species and ecosystem levels (Manes et al. 2021 ; Testa et al. 2018 ).

Nonetheless, the availability of such long-term data records is rare; hence, attempts are needed to focus on these profound aspects. Biodiversity is also vulnerable to the other associated impacts of CC, such as rising temperatures, droughts, and certain invasive pest species. For instance, a study revealed the changes in the composition of plankton communities attributed to rising temperatures. Henceforth, alterations in such aquatic producer communities, i.e., diatoms and calcareous plants, can ultimately lead to variation in the recycling of biological carbon. Moreover, such changes are characterized as a potential contributor to CO 2 differences between the Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods (Kohfeld et al. 2005 ).

Climate change implications on human health

It is an understood corporality that human health is a significant victim of CC (Costello et al. 2009 ). According to the WHO, CC might be responsible for 250,000 additional deaths per year during 2030–2050 (Watts et al. 2015 ). These deaths are attributed to extreme weather-induced mortality and morbidity and the global expansion of vector-borne diseases (Lemery et al. 2021; Yang and Usman 2021 ; Meierrieks 2021 ; UNEP 2017 ). Here, some of the emerging health issues pertinent to this global problem are briefly described.

Climate change and antimicrobial resistance with corresponding economic costs

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an up-surging complex global health challenge (Garner et al. 2019 ; Lemery et al. 2021 ). Health professionals across the globe are extremely worried due to this phenomenon that has critical potential to reverse almost all the progress that has been achieved so far in the health discipline (Gosling and Arnell 2016 ). A massive amount of antibiotics is produced by many pharmaceutical industries worldwide, and the pathogenic microorganisms are gradually developing resistance to them, which can be comprehended how strongly this aspect can shake the foundations of national and global economies (UNEP 2017 ). This statement is supported by the fact that AMR is not developing in a particular region or country. Instead, it is flourishing in every continent of the world (WHO 2018 ). This plague is heavily pushing humanity to the post-antibiotic era, in which currently antibiotic-susceptible pathogens will once again lead to certain endemics and pandemics after being resistant(WHO 2018 ). Undesirably, if this statement would become a factuality, there might emerge certain risks in undertaking sophisticated interventions such as chemotherapy, joint replacement cases, and organ transplantation (Su et al. 2018 ). Presently, the amplification of drug resistance cases has made common illnesses like pneumonia, post-surgical infections, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, etc., too difficult and costly to be treated or cure well (WHO 2018 ). From a simple example, it can be assumed how easily antibiotic-resistant strains can be transmitted from one person to another and ultimately travel across the boundaries (Berendonk et al. 2015 ). Talking about the second- and third-generation classes of antibiotics, e.g., most renowned generations of cephalosporin antibiotics that are more expensive, broad-spectrum, more toxic, and usually require more extended periods whenever prescribed to patients (Lemery et al. 2021 ; Pärnänen et al. 2019 ). This scenario has also revealed that the abundance of resistant strains of pathogens was also higher in the Southern part (WHO 2018 ). As southern parts are generally warmer than their counterparts, it is evident from this example how CC-induced global warming can augment the spread of antibiotic-resistant strains within the biosphere, eventually putting additional economic burden in the face of developing new and costlier antibiotics. The ARG exchange to susceptible bacteria through one of the potential mechanisms, transformation, transduction, and conjugation; Selection pressure can be caused by certain antibiotics, metals or pesticides, etc., as shown in Fig.  5 .

Source: Elsayed et al. ( 2021 ); Karkman et al. ( 2018 )

A typical interaction between the susceptible and resistant strains.

Certain studies highlighted that conventional urban wastewater treatment plants are typical hotspots where most bacterial strains exchange genetic material through horizontal gene transfer (Fig.  5 ). Although at present, the extent of risks associated with the antibiotic resistance found in wastewater is complicated; environmental scientists and engineers have particular concerns about the potential impacts of these antibiotic resistance genes on human health (Ashbolt 2015 ). At most undesirable and worst case, these antibiotic-resistant genes containing bacteria can make their way to enter into the environment (Pruden et al. 2013 ), irrigation water used for crops and public water supplies and ultimately become a part of food chains and food webs (Ma et al. 2019 ; D. Wu et al. 2019 ). This problem has been reported manifold in several countries (Hendriksen et al. 2019 ), where wastewater as a means of irrigated water is quite common.

Climate change and vector borne-diseases

Temperature is a fundamental factor for the sustenance of living entities regardless of an ecosystem. So, a specific living being, especially a pathogen, requires a sophisticated temperature range to exist on earth. The second essential component of CC is precipitation, which also impacts numerous infectious agents’ transport and dissemination patterns. Global rising temperature is a significant cause of many species extinction. On the one hand, this changing environmental temperature may be causing species extinction, and on the other, this warming temperature might favor the thriving of some new organisms. Here, it was evident that some pathogens may also upraise once non-evident or reported (Patz et al. 2000 ). This concept can be exemplified through certain pathogenic strains of microorganisms that how the likelihood of various diseases increases in response to climate warming-induced environmental changes (Table 2 ).

A recent example is an outburst of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Republic of China, causing pneumonia and severe acute respiratory complications (Cui et al. 2021 ; Song et al. 2021 ). The large family of viruses is harbored in numerous animals, bats, and snakes in particular (livescience.com) with the subsequent transfer into human beings. Hence, it is worth noting that the thriving of numerous vectors involved in spreading various diseases is influenced by Climate change (Ogden 2018 ; Santos et al. 2021 ).

Psychological impacts of climate change

Climate change (CC) is responsible for the rapid dissemination and exaggeration of certain epidemics and pandemics. In addition to the vast apparent impacts of climate change on health, forestry, agriculture, etc., it may also have psychological implications on vulnerable societies. It can be exemplified through the recent outburst of (COVID-19) in various countries around the world (Pal 2021 ). Besides, the victims of this viral infection have made healthy beings scarier and terrified. In the wake of such epidemics, people with common colds or fever are also frightened and must pass specific regulatory protocols. Living in such situations continuously terrifies the public and makes the stress familiar, which eventually makes them psychologically weak (npr.org).

CC boosts the extent of anxiety, distress, and other issues in public, pushing them to develop various mental-related problems. Besides, frequent exposure to extreme climatic catastrophes such as geological disasters also imprints post-traumatic disorder, and their ubiquitous occurrence paves the way to developing chronic psychological dysfunction. Moreover, repetitive listening from media also causes an increase in the person’s stress level (Association 2020 ). Similarly, communities living in flood-prone areas constantly live in extreme fear of drowning and die by floods. In addition to human lives, the flood-induced destruction of physical infrastructure is a specific reason for putting pressure on these communities (Ogden 2018 ). For instance, Ogden ( 2018 ) comprehensively denoted that Katrina’s Hurricane augmented the mental health issues in the victim communities.

Climate change impacts on the forestry sector

Forests are the global regulators of the world’s climate (FAO 2018 ) and have an indispensable role in regulating global carbon and nitrogen cycles (Rehman et al. 2021 ; Reichstein and Carvalhais 2019 ). Hence, disturbances in forest ecology affect the micro and macro-climates (Ellison et al. 2017 ). Climate warming, in return, has profound impacts on the growth and productivity of transboundary forests by influencing the temperature and precipitation patterns, etc. As CC induces specific changes in the typical structure and functions of ecosystems (Zhang et al. 2017 ) as well impacts forest health, climate change also has several devastating consequences such as forest fires, droughts, pest outbreaks (EPA 2018 ), and last but not the least is the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities. The rising frequency and intensity of another CC product, i.e., droughts, pose plenty of challenges to the well-being of global forests (Diffenbaugh et al. 2017 ), which is further projected to increase soon (Hartmann et al. 2018 ; Lehner et al. 2017 ; Rehman et al. 2021 ). Hence, CC induces storms, with more significant impacts also put extra pressure on the survival of the global forests (Martínez-Alvarado et al. 2018 ), significantly since their influences are augmented during higher winter precipitations with corresponding wetter soils causing weak root anchorage of trees (Brázdil et al. 2018 ). Surging temperature regimes causes alterations in usual precipitation patterns, which is a significant hurdle for the survival of temperate forests (Allen et al. 2010 ; Flannigan et al. 2013 ), letting them encounter severe stress and disturbances which adversely affects the local tree species (Hubbart et al. 2016 ; Millar and Stephenson 2015 ; Rehman et al. 2021 ).

Climate change impacts on forest-dependent communities

Forests are the fundamental livelihood resource for about 1.6 billion people worldwide; out of them, 350 million are distinguished with relatively higher reliance (Bank 2008 ). Agro-forestry-dependent communities comprise 1.2 billion, and 60 million indigenous people solely rely on forests and their products to sustain their lives (Sunderlin et al. 2005 ). For example, in the entire African continent, more than 2/3rd of inhabitants depend on forest resources and woodlands for their alimonies, e.g., food, fuelwood and grazing (Wasiq and Ahmad 2004 ). The livings of these people are more intensely affected by the climatic disruptions making their lives harder (Brown et al. 2014 ). On the one hand, forest communities are incredibly vulnerable to CC due to their livelihoods, cultural and spiritual ties as well as socio-ecological connections, and on the other, they are not familiar with the term “climate change.” (Rahman and Alam 2016 ). Among the destructive impacts of temperature and rainfall, disruption of the agroforestry crops with resultant downscale growth and yield (Macchi et al. 2008 ). Cruz ( 2015 ) ascribed that forest-dependent smallholder farmers in the Philippines face the enigma of delayed fruiting, more severe damages by insect and pest incidences due to unfavorable temperature regimes, and changed rainfall patterns.

Among these series of challenges to forest communities, their well-being is also distinctly vulnerable to CC. Though the detailed climate change impacts on human health have been comprehensively mentioned in the previous section, some studies have listed a few more devastating effects on the prosperity of forest-dependent communities. For instance, the Himalayan people have been experiencing frequent skin-borne diseases such as malaria and other skin diseases due to increasing mosquitoes, wild boar as well, and new wasps species, particularly in higher altitudes that were almost non-existent before last 5–10 years (Xu et al. 2008 ). Similarly, people living at high altitudes in Bangladesh have experienced frequent mosquito-borne calamities (Fardous; Sharma 2012 ). In addition, the pace of other waterborne diseases such as infectious diarrhea, cholera, pathogenic induced abdominal complications and dengue has also been boosted in other distinguished regions of Bangladesh (Cell 2009 ; Gunter et al. 2008 ).

Pest outbreak

Upscaling hotter climate may positively affect the mobile organisms with shorter generation times because they can scurry from harsh conditions than the immobile species (Fettig et al. 2013 ; Schoene and Bernier 2012 ) and are also relatively more capable of adapting to new environments (Jactel et al. 2019 ). It reveals that insects adapt quickly to global warming due to their mobility advantages. Due to past outbreaks, the trees (forests) are relatively more susceptible victims (Kurz et al. 2008 ). Before CC, the influence of factors mentioned earlier, i.e., droughts and storms, was existent and made the forests susceptible to insect pest interventions; however, the global forests remain steadfast, assiduous, and green (Jactel et al. 2019 ). The typical reasons could be the insect herbivores were regulated by several tree defenses and pressures of predation (Wilkinson and Sherratt 2016 ). As climate greatly influences these phenomena, the global forests cannot be so sedulous against such challenges (Jactel et al. 2019 ). Table 3 demonstrates some of the particular considerations with practical examples that are essential while mitigating the impacts of CC in the forestry sector.

Climate change impacts on tourism

Tourism is a commercial activity that has roots in multi-dimensions and an efficient tool with adequate job generation potential, revenue creation, earning of spectacular foreign exchange, enhancement in cross-cultural promulgation and cooperation, a business tool for entrepreneurs and eventually for the country’s national development (Arshad et al. 2018 ; Scott 2021 ). Among a plethora of other disciplines, the tourism industry is also a distinct victim of climate warming (Gössling et al. 2012 ; Hall et al. 2015 ) as the climate is among the essential resources that enable tourism in particular regions as most preferred locations. Different places at different times of the year attract tourists both within and across the countries depending upon the feasibility and compatibility of particular weather patterns. Hence, the massive variations in these weather patterns resulting from CC will eventually lead to monumental challenges to the local economy in that specific area’s particular and national economy (Bujosa et al. 2015 ). For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report demonstrated that the global tourism industry had faced a considerable decline in the duration of ski season, including the loss of some ski areas and the dramatic shifts in tourist destinations’ climate warming.

Furthermore, different studies (Neuvonen et al. 2015 ; Scott et al. 2004 ) indicated that various currently perfect tourist spots, e.g., coastal areas, splendid islands, and ski resorts, will suffer consequences of CC. It is also worth noting that the quality and potential of administrative management potential to cope with the influence of CC on the tourism industry is of crucial significance, which renders specific strengths of resiliency to numerous destinations to withstand against it (Füssel and Hildén 2014 ). Similarly, in the partial or complete absence of adequate socio-economic and socio-political capital, the high-demanding tourist sites scurry towards the verge of vulnerability. The susceptibility of tourism is based on different components such as the extent of exposure, sensitivity, life-supporting sectors, and capacity assessment factors (Füssel and Hildén 2014 ). It is obvious corporality that sectors such as health, food, ecosystems, human habitat, infrastructure, water availability, and the accessibility of a particular region are prone to CC. Henceforth, the sensitivity of these critical sectors to CC and, in return, the adaptive measures are a hallmark in determining the composite vulnerability of climate warming (Ionescu et al. 2009 ).

Moreover, the dependence on imported food items, poor hygienic conditions, and inadequate health professionals are dominant aspects affecting the local terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. Meanwhile, the greater dependency on ecosystem services and its products also makes a destination more fragile to become a prey of CC (Rizvi et al. 2015 ). Some significant non-climatic factors are important indicators of a particular ecosystem’s typical health and functioning, e.g., resource richness and abundance portray the picture of ecosystem stability. Similarly, the species abundance is also a productive tool that ensures that the ecosystem has a higher buffering capacity, which is terrific in terms of resiliency (Roscher et al. 2013 ).

Climate change impacts on the economic sector

Climate plays a significant role in overall productivity and economic growth. Due to its increasingly global existence and its effect on economic growth, CC has become one of the major concerns of both local and international environmental policymakers (Ferreira et al. 2020 ; Gleditsch 2021 ; Abbass et al. 2021b ; Lamperti et al. 2021 ). The adverse effects of CC on the overall productivity factor of the agricultural sector are therefore significant for understanding the creation of local adaptation policies and the composition of productive climate policy contracts. Previous studies on CC in the world have already forecasted its effects on the agricultural sector. Researchers have found that global CC will impact the agricultural sector in different world regions. The study of the impacts of CC on various agrarian activities in other demographic areas and the development of relative strategies to respond to effects has become a focal point for researchers (Chandioet al. 2020 ; Gleditsch 2021 ; Mosavi et al. 2020 ).

With the rapid growth of global warming since the 1980s, the temperature has started increasing globally, which resulted in the incredible transformation of rain and evaporation in the countries. The agricultural development of many countries has been reliant, delicate, and susceptible to CC for a long time, and it is on the development of agriculture total factor productivity (ATFP) influence different crops and yields of farmers (Alhassan 2021 ; Wu  2020 ).

Food security and natural disasters are increasing rapidly in the world. Several major climatic/natural disasters have impacted local crop production in the countries concerned. The effects of these natural disasters have been poorly controlled by the development of the economies and populations and may affect human life as well. One example is China, which is among the world’s most affected countries, vulnerable to natural disasters due to its large population, harsh environmental conditions, rapid CC, low environmental stability, and disaster power. According to the January 2016 statistical survey, China experienced an economic loss of 298.3 billion Yuan, and about 137 million Chinese people were severely affected by various natural disasters (Xie et al. 2018 ).

Mitigation and adaptation strategies of climate changes

Adaptation and mitigation are the crucial factors to address the response to CC (Jahanzad et al. 2020 ). Researchers define mitigation on climate changes, and on the other hand, adaptation directly impacts climate changes like floods. To some extent, mitigation reduces or moderates greenhouse gas emission, and it becomes a critical issue both economically and environmentally (Botzen et al. 2021 ; Jahanzad et al. 2020 ; Kongsager 2018 ; Smit et al. 2000 ; Vale et al. 2021 ; Usman et al. 2021 ; Verheyen 2005 ).

Researchers have deep concern about the adaptation and mitigation methodologies in sectoral and geographical contexts. Agriculture, industry, forestry, transport, and land use are the main sectors to adapt and mitigate policies(Kärkkäinen et al. 2020 ; Waheed et al. 2021 ). Adaptation and mitigation require particular concern both at the national and international levels. The world has faced a significant problem of climate change in the last decades, and adaptation to these effects is compulsory for economic and social development. To adapt and mitigate against CC, one should develop policies and strategies at the international level (Hussain et al. 2020 ). Figure  6 depicts the list of current studies on sectoral impacts of CC with adaptation and mitigation measures globally.

Sectoral impacts of climate change with adaptation and mitigation measures.

Conclusion and future perspectives

Specific socio-agricultural, socio-economic, and physical systems are the cornerstone of psychological well-being, and the alteration in these systems by CC will have disastrous impacts. Climate variability, alongside other anthropogenic and natural stressors, influences human and environmental health sustainability. Food security is another concerning scenario that may lead to compromised food quality, higher food prices, and inadequate food distribution systems. Global forests are challenged by different climatic factors such as storms, droughts, flash floods, and intense precipitation. On the other hand, their anthropogenic wiping is aggrandizing their existence. Undoubtedly, the vulnerability scale of the world’s regions differs; however, appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures can aid the decision-making bodies in developing effective policies to tackle its impacts. Presently, modern life on earth has tailored to consistent climatic patterns, and accordingly, adapting to such considerable variations is of paramount importance. Because the faster changes in climate will make it harder to survive and adjust, this globally-raising enigma calls for immediate attention at every scale ranging from elementary community level to international level. Still, much effort, research, and dedication are required, which is the most critical time. Some policy implications can help us to mitigate the consequences of climate change, especially the most affected sectors like the agriculture sector;

Seasonal variations and cultivation practices

Warming might lengthen the season in frost-prone growing regions (temperate and arctic zones), allowing for longer-maturing seasonal cultivars with better yields (Pfadenhauer 2020 ; Bonacci 2019 ). Extending the planting season may allow additional crops each year; when warming leads to frequent warmer months highs over critical thresholds, a split season with a brief summer fallow may be conceivable for short-period crops such as wheat barley, cereals, and many other vegetable crops. The capacity to prolong the planting season in tropical and subtropical places where the harvest season is constrained by precipitation or agriculture farming occurs after the year may be more limited and dependent on how precipitation patterns vary (Wu et al. 2017 ).

New varieties of crops

The genetic component is comprehensive for many yields, but it is restricted like kiwi fruit for a few. Ali et al. ( 2017 ) investigated how new crops will react to climatic changes (also stated in Mall et al. 2017 ). Hot temperature, drought, insect resistance; salt tolerance; and overall crop production and product quality increases would all be advantageous (Akkari 2016 ). Genetic mapping and engineering can introduce a greater spectrum of features. The adoption of genetically altered cultivars has been slowed, particularly in the early forecasts owing to the complexity in ensuring features are expediently expressed throughout the entire plant, customer concerns, economic profitability, and regulatory impediments (Wirehn 2018 ; Davidson et al. 2016 ).

Changes in management and other input factors

To get the full benefit of the CO 2 would certainly require additional nitrogen and other fertilizers. Nitrogen not consumed by the plants may be excreted into groundwater, discharged into water surface, or emitted from the land, soil nitrous oxide when large doses of fertilizer are sprayed. Increased nitrogen levels in groundwater sources have been related to human chronic illnesses and impact marine ecosystems. Cultivation, grain drying, and other field activities have all been examined in depth in the studies (Barua et al. 2018 ).

The technological and socio-economic adaptation

The policy consequence of the causative conclusion is that as a source of alternative energy, biofuel production is one of the routes that explain oil price volatility separate from international macroeconomic factors. Even though biofuel production has just begun in a few sample nations, there is still a tremendous worldwide need for feedstock to satisfy industrial expansion in China and the USA, which explains the food price relationship to the global oil price. Essentially, oil-exporting countries may create incentives in their economies to increase food production. It may accomplish by giving farmers financing, seedlings, fertilizers, and farming equipment. Because of the declining global oil price and, as a result, their earnings from oil export, oil-producing nations may be unable to subsidize food imports even in the near term. As a result, these countries can boost the agricultural value chain for export. It may be accomplished through R&D and adding value to their food products to increase income by correcting exchange rate misalignment and adverse trade terms. These nations may also diversify their economies away from oil, as dependence on oil exports alone is no longer economically viable given the extreme volatility of global oil prices. Finally, resource-rich and oil-exporting countries can convert to non-food renewable energy sources such as solar, hydro, coal, wind, wave, and tidal energy. By doing so, both world food and oil supplies would be maintained rather than harmed.

IRENA’s modeling work shows that, if a comprehensive policy framework is in place, efforts toward decarbonizing the energy future will benefit economic activity, jobs (outweighing losses in the fossil fuel industry), and welfare. Countries with weak domestic supply chains and a large reliance on fossil fuel income, in particular, must undertake structural reforms to capitalize on the opportunities inherent in the energy transition. Governments continue to give major policy assistance to extract fossil fuels, including tax incentives, financing, direct infrastructure expenditures, exemptions from environmental regulations, and other measures. The majority of major oil and gas producing countries intend to increase output. Some countries intend to cut coal output, while others plan to maintain or expand it. While some nations are beginning to explore and execute policies aimed at a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuel production, these efforts have yet to impact major producing countries’ plans and goals. Verifiable and comparable data on fossil fuel output and assistance from governments and industries are critical to closing the production gap. Governments could increase openness by declaring their production intentions in their climate obligations under the Paris Agreement.

It is firmly believed that achieving the Paris Agreement commitments is doubtlful without undergoing renewable energy transition across the globe (Murshed 2020 ; Zhao et al. 2022 ). Policy instruments play the most important role in determining the degree of investment in renewable energy technology. This study examines the efficacy of various policy strategies in the renewable energy industry of multiple nations. Although its impact is more visible in established renewable energy markets, a renewable portfolio standard is also a useful policy instrument. The cost of producing renewable energy is still greater than other traditional energy sources. Furthermore, government incentives in the R&D sector can foster innovation in this field, resulting in cost reductions in the renewable energy industry. These nations may export their technologies and share their policy experiences by forming networks among their renewable energy-focused organizations. All policy measures aim to reduce production costs while increasing the proportion of renewables to a country’s energy system. Meanwhile, long-term contracts with renewable energy providers, government commitment and control, and the establishment of long-term goals can assist developing nations in deploying renewable energy technology in their energy sector.

Availability of data and material

Data sources and relevant links are provided in the paper to access data.

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School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, People’s Republic of China

Kashif Abbass, Huaming Song & Ijaz Younis

Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Xiaolingwei 200, Nanjing, 210094, People’s Republic of China

Muhammad Zeeshan Qasim

School of Business and Economics, North South University, Dhaka, 1229, Bangladesh

Muntasir Murshed

Department of Journalism, Media and Communications, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

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KA: Writing the original manuscript, data collection, data analysis, Study design, Formal analysis, Visualization, Revised draft, Writing-review, and editing. MZQ: Writing the original manuscript, data collection, data analysis, Writing-review, and editing. HS: Contribution to the contextualization of the theme, Conceptualization, Validation, Supervision, literature review, Revised drapt, and writing review and editing. MM: Writing review and editing, compiling the literature review, language editing. HM: Writing review and editing, compiling the literature review, language editing. IY: Contribution to the contextualization of the theme, literature review, and writing review and editing.

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Abbass, K., Qasim, M.Z., Song, H. et al. A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29 , 42539–42559 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19718-6

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Local studies provide a global perspective of the impacts of climate change on Indigenous Peoples and local communities

• Victoria Reyes-García   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2914-8055 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• David García-Del-Amo 2 ,
• Anna Porcuna-Ferrer 2 , 4 ,
• Anna Schlingmann 2 ,
• Mariam Abazeri 5 ,
• Emmanuel M. N. A. N. Attoh 6 ,
• Julia Vieira da Cunha Ávila 7 , 8 ,
• Ayansina Ayanlade 9 , 10 ,
• Daniel Babai 11 ,
• Petra Benyei 2 ,
• Laura Calvet-Mir 2 , 12 ,
• Rosario Carmona 13 ,
• Julián Caviedes 2 , 14 , 15 ,
• Jane Chah 16 ,
• Rumbidzayi Chakauya 17 ,
• Aida Cuní-Sanchez 18 , 19 ,
• Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares 2 , 20 ,
• Eranga K. Galappaththi 21 ,
• Drew Gerkey 22 ,
• Sonia Graham 23 ,
• Théo Guillerminet 24 ,
• Tomás Huanca 25 ,
• José Tomás Ibarra 14 , 15 ,
• André B. Junqueira 2 ,
• Xiaoyue Li 2 ,
• Yolanda López-Maldonado 26 ,
• Giulia Mattalia 2 ,
• Aibek Samakov 27 ,
• Christoph Schunko 28 ,
• Reinmar Seidler 29 , 30 ,
• Victoria Sharakhmatova 31 , 32 ,
• Priyatma Singh 33 ,
• Adrien Tofighi-Niaki 2 ,
• Miquel Torrents-Ticó 20 , 34 &

LICCI Consortium

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Indigenous Peoples and local communities with nature-dependent livelihoods are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts, but their experience, knowledge and needs receive inadequate attention in climate research and policy. Here, we discuss three key findings of a collaborative research consortium arising from the  Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts  project. First, reports of environmental change by Indigenous Peoples and local communities provide holistic, relational, placed-based, culturally-grounded and multi-causal understandings of change, largely focused on processes and elements that are relevant to local livelihoods and cultures. These reports demonstrate that the impacts of climate change intersect with and exacerbate historical effects of socioeconomic and political marginalization. Second, drawing on rich bodies of inter-generational knowledge, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have developed context-specific responses to environmental change grounded in local resources and strategies that often absorb the impacts of multiple drivers of change. Indigenous Peoples and local communities adjust in diverse ways to impacts on their livelihoods, but the adoption of responses often comes at a significant cost due to economic, political, and socio-cultural barriers operating at societal, community, household, and individual levels. Finally, divergent understandings of change challenge generalizations in research examining the human dimensions of climate change. Evidence from Indigenous and local knowledge systems is context-dependent and not always aligned with scientific evidence. Exploring divergent understandings of the concept of change derived from different knowledge systems can yield new insights which may help prioritize research and policy actions to address local needs and priorities.

→Place-based communities provide holistic, culturally-grounded, and multi-causal reports of change.

→Place-based communities rely on local means to adapt to change, but implementing responses incurs costs.

→Local reports of change reveal grounded needs and interests that could guide research and policy action.

→Recognize Indigenous Peoples and local communities as legitimate custodians of climate change knowledge.

→Uphold Indigenous Peoples’ rights to participate in climate change decision-making.

→Adjust research to ensure that funding, timing and data ownership align with local needs and interests.

Introduction

In scholarly and policy circles, there is growing recognition that climate change widely and directly impacts place-based communities (i.e., Indigenous Peoples (IP) and local communities (LC) with an historical relationship with their environment) [ 1 , 2 ]. Scientific research on the topic addresses three important questions: 1) How do IP and LC experience, understand, and describe climate change impacts?; 2) How do IP and LC respond and adjust to climate change impacts?; and 3) How can IP and LC experiences, understandings, and responses to climate change impacts contribute to climate action?

Drawing on LICCI Consortium research, we present novel evidence to address these three questions. The LICCI Consortium is an epistemically, culturally and geographically diverse community of practice, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars organized around the Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts (LICCI) project. This project aimed to document IP and LC reports of environmental changes attributed to climate change impacts and bring this place-based information to climate change research and policy [ 3 ]. Over five years, consortium members collaboratively reviewed literature and collected field-based data from 52 sites in 35 countries (Fig.  1 and SM 1 ), aiming to increase the transferability, integration, and scalability of Indigenous and local knowledge into climate change research and policy [ 3 ]. Collection of locally-relevant and cross-culturally comparable information following a standardized protocol [ 4 ] allowed us to identify common trends and context-specific singularities of individual sites, bringing novel insights into the three aforementioned questions.

LICCI field-sites geographical distribution by climate zones. Descriptions of the sites and references can be found in SM 1 . Climate zones adapted from the Köppen-Geiger climate classification [ 5 ]

How do Indigenous Peoples and local communities experience, understand and describe climate change impacts?

To answer this question, it is important to highlight that the human perceptibility of climate change has been often interrogated [ 6 , 7 ]. Some scholars in disciplines such as environmental psychology have argued that climate change is undetectable to the lay observer and invisible to the naked eye [ 8 , 9 ], or that local understandings of climate change are often the product of media exposure [ 10 , 11 ]. The underlying argument is that the trends of climatic variability may be beyond the threshold of human perception over the course of a lifetime – at least without instrumental records [ 12 , 13 ]. Anthropologists and ethnobiologists have fundamentally contested this idea arguing that climate change is not inherently visible or invisible, but rather made perceptible through its local impacts and/or external knowledge of it [ 14 , 15 ].

This article aligns with this view, by considering local observations of climate change impacts as part of a larger system of knowledge, developed locally, passed down through generations, and integrating with both local values and information from external sources, as well as experiential and belief systems [ 16 , 17 ]. Over the last two decades, numerous studies have provided insights into how IP and LC experience, understand, and describe climate change impacts (e.g., [ 2 , 18 ]). While most studies have focused on atmospheric and physical changes (e.g., [ 19 ]), some have described impacts on wild (e.g., [ 20 ]) and managed biodiversity (e.g., [ 21 ]), food systems (e.g., [ 22 ]), and lived experiences of change (e.g., [ 23 ]). Our research extends previous studies in three ways.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities report numerous, ongoing, tangible, and situated climate change impacts and cascading effects

Consistent with previous work, we found that IP and LC report numerous observations of environmental changes that they entirely or partially attribute to changes in climate. IP and LC reports of change are extremely diverse, providing many place-based indicators of climate change impacts. The most frequently reported observations involve changes in the atmospheric system. This includes nuanced observations of changes in precipitation patterns (e.g., Site #16, #36), temperature (e.g., Sites #4; #48), wind direction (e.g., Site #49), fog (e.g., Site #19), weather predictability (e.g., Site #10), and seasonality (e.g., Sites #17; #20), which are often interlinked with other changes. For example, Dagomba farmers in Kumbungu (Ghana) attribute temperature increase to a warmer Harmattan (i.e., dry wind blowing from the Sahara) (Site #23) and Chilote farmers in the Chiloé archipelago (Chile) associate temperature increases with decreased precipitation and streamflow (Site #8).

Documented observations emphasize cascading effects of atmospheric changes on the physical system. Agropastoralists in Sierra Nevada (Spain) report that decreasing precipitation leads to reduced river discharge, fewer natural springs, decreased soil humidity, and increased soil erosion (Site #49). Similarly, ribeirinhos in the Juruá River (Brazil) associate precipitation changes with shifts in river dynamics, including alterations in flood duration and height, and sedimentation patterns (Site #18). Decreasing rain levels are associated with cascading effects on groundwater quality and levels (e.g., Sites #14, #36, #43).

Aligned with ecological research (e.g., [ 24 , 25 ]), IP and LC emphasize cascading effects of changes in the atmospheric system on the life system. However, in contrast with ecological studies that primarily focus on modelling shifts in key species’ distribution and populations [ 26 ], IP and LC reports concentrate on ongoing impacts on culturally-significant species. These reports include changes in abundance, phenology, and distribution of culturally-important wild plants, fish, and mammals, often overlooked by scientists [ 27 , 28 ].

Our findings dovetail with research demonstrating substantial impacts of climate change on nature-based livelihood activities, like agriculture and livestock farming (e.g., [ 29 ]). We found changes in agricultural calendars (e.g., Sites #6; #10; #16) and livestock species behaviour (Site #49), decreases in crop productivity (e.g., Sites #9; #23), and increases in pest prevalence (e.g., Sites #23; #45). Bassari farmers in Southeast Senegal report reduced productivity of sorghum long-cycle landraces due to shortening of the rainy season (Site #2). Csángó farmers in Gyimes (Romania) report declining potato yield due to temperature-related pest infestations (Site #16).

Contrasting with research focusing on major crops [ 30 , 31 ], IP and LC reports of impacts on nature-based livelihood activities include many culturally-valuable species. For example, Takab farmers in Kerman (Iran) report declines in the productivity of date palms due to drought and increasing soil erosion (Site #48) and Twa foragers in Kahuzi (DRC) report a decrease in edible caterpillars which they attribute to reduced rainfall (Site #19).

LICCI Consortium findings also echo previous work highlighting cascading impacts of climate change on cultural institutions, beliefs, and practices [ 32 , 33 ]. Atmospheric changes, including warmer temperatures and unpredictable rainfall, not only impact groundwater levels and water quality in Yucatan (Mexico), but also impair ancient Mayan institutions regulating groundwater caves ( cenotes ), including the erosion of spiritual beliefs (Site #43). Climate change impacts on the ripening of grassland vegetation interrupt culturally-important communal haymaking events among Csángó farmers (Romania, Site #16). Other under-documented cascading effects of climate change on cultural institutions include changes in the use and relevance of folklore, poems, idioms, and anecdotes that forecast and inform weather patterns (e.g., Site #49).

Overall, we found IP and LC reports offer comprehensive and context-specific perspectives on change. These reports go beyond well-documented global trends, future modelling, and iconic species to provide a holistic, relational, placed-based, and culturally-grounded understanding of change, largely focusing on natural processes and elements relevant to local livelihoods and cultures.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities recognize climate change as one of several drivers of environmental change

Research increasingly recognizes that climate change not only affects IP and LC through direct impacts and cascading effects but also through synergistic interactions with other drivers of environmental change, such as land-use change or resource extraction [ 34 ]. Climate change impacts interact with historical influences of colonialism, inequality, and environmental injustices [ 35 ]. We found that IP and LC attribute environmental change to simultaneous drivers, among which climate change is only one and not necessarily the most significant [ 36 ]. Factors that exacerbate climate change impacts are context-specific, varying from extractive pressures (Sites #18; #36; #44) to economic development programs (Sites #2; #10; #23), infrastructure development (Sites #36; #45) and adverse state policies (Sites #3; #25; #40). For example, Daasanach agropastoralists in Ileret (Kenya) attribute water scarcity to the simultaneous effects of precipitation changes and the construction of large water infrastructure projects diverting water to agribusiness in Ethiopia (Site #45). Similarly, Kolla-Atacameños pastoral communities in the Dry Puna (Argentina) link the degradation of natural wetlands, essential for providing water and grazing resources ( vegas ), to precipitation reduction and economic activities associated with lithium mining (Site #36). For Koryak, Chukchi, and Even peoples in the Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia), climate change impacts are exacerbated by legacies of social transformation from the Soviet era and subsequent post-Soviet disruptions of the local economy (Site #20).

While culturally-grounded dimensions of change were not a central focus of our work, our findings dovetail with research showing that climate change impacts are often presented through cosmological explanations (e.g., [ 37 ]). We documented cosmological interpretations attributing environmental change to the destabilization of human relationships with the environment, often expressed through concerns regarding the loss of cultural and spiritual traditions and the increasing disregard for caring practices (e.g., Sites #2; #40; #43; #44; #52). Mapuche-Pehuenche spiritual authorities (Chile) report that the spirits that protect natural places (e.g., forests, trees, rivers) are leaving them, making people's spirits sick and increasingly disconnected from nature (Site #25). These perspectives align with the argument that an epistemic shift of societal paradigms and values is needed to address the ongoing environmental and climate crises [ 38 ].

Overall, LICCI Consortium research underscores IP and LC relational and multi-causal views of change combining observations of environmental change with socio-economic, cultural, and political realities in which such observations are grounded. Such views emphasize that climate change impacts intersect with and exacerbate historical legacies of socioeconomic and political marginalization. IP and LC provide social-political views of environmental and climate change.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ reports of environmental change are not uniform

IP and LC reports of change generally exhibit variations and are nuanced by their place-based, context-specific, and historically-situated nature. Beyond climate zones, our research shows that livelihood activities shape reports of impacts. In that sense, it is not surprising that, Inughuit communities from Qaanaaq (Greenland) highlight how decreased sea-ice duration affects fish species composition (Site #50), while Bassari communities (Senegal) focus on the impacts of soil erosion and flash floods on crops (Site #2). Farmers’ and herders’ reports frequently note changes in rainfall patterns (e.g., Site #41), whereas fishers report changes in winds, ocean currents, or sea-ice (e.g., Sites #14; #50). Other context-specific factors also shape reports. For example, in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains (Site #16), EU accession and out-migration of younger generations impacts landscape and vegetation. In the Eastern Himalayan mid-montane (Site #13) a rapidly expanding mountain tourism industry – partly driven by recent extreme summer temperatures in the plains – reduces villagers’ commitment to mountain agriculture.

We also found that individual characteristics (e.g., age, gender, engagement with nature-dependant activities, or family history in the area) drive variation in reports of climate change impacts (e.g., Site #21, #30, #49). Betsileo men in Namoly valley (Madagascar) report changes in livestock, game species, and cash crops, while Betsileo women focus on changes in water provisioning, home gardens, and gathering of wild edible plants (Site #30). Swahili fisherwomen in the South Coast (Kenya), who—unlike men—mostly fish during the Southeast monsoon season, report more critical changes in air and sea temperatures than Swahili fishermen (Site #21).

Overall, LICCI Consortium research underscores the importance of community-level and individual-level factors on reports of climate change impacts. A comprehensive understanding of place-based changes requires engaging with diverse actors.

How do Indigenous Peoples and local communities respond and adjust to climate change impacts?

IP and LC history of engagement with the environment provides them with experiential knowledge in dealing with climate variability [ 39 ]. Drawing on these experiences, they have developed diverse place-based responses, which constitute a first line of action against climate change impacts. LICCI Consortium research yields three significant findings.

Indigenous and local knowledge systems enable context-specific responses to climate change impacts

Numerous authors note that IP and LC draw on their rich and extensive bodies of inter-generational knowledge to respond to change (e.g., [ 37 , 39 , 40 ]). Our research expands these findings, emphasizing that local responses to climate change impacts often rely on local resources and means, draw on local governance systems, and are contingent upon cultural preferences (e.g., Site #1, #25, #34). For example, to ensure food security after climate disasters, iTaukei fishers (Fiji) prioritise resource sharing, a culturally-based response (Site #1). Most responses to climate change impacts by Mapuche-Pehuenche communities (Chile) aim to support the continued practice of livestock farming, a culturally-relevant activity (Site #25).

Not all local responses draw on local knowledge or are locally developed. Responses such as introducing chemical fertilicers and pesticides, adopting hybrid varieties, or transitioning to off-farm work are commonly documented (e.g., Sites #2; #6; #9; #15). Dagomba farmers in northern Ghana report applying chemical fertilizers and changing to introduced crop varieties in response to higher rainfall variability and increased frequency of crop pests (Site #23). To overcome unexpected weather and navigational challenges, Inuit in the Baffin Island (Canada) have adopted new technologies for fishing and hunting (e.g., GPS, VHS radios, and advanced rifles) (Site #34). Smallholder farmers in the Darjeeling Himalaya (India) explore new markets for organic and traditional food products through online marketing (Site #13). Bridging insights from different knowledge systems can result in the development of new responses, although in many cases this potential remains untapped (e.g., [ 41 ]).

Our research shows that local responses often address the combined impacts of multiple drivers of change, rather than exclusively targeting climate change. Sherpa, Rai, Gurung, and Tamang farmers in Darjeeling (India) make alternate crop choices in response to increasing crop depredation from wild animal herbivores, which may be linked to climate changes (Site #13). Participatory, bottom-up responses have proven valuable in managing multiple stressors. For example, among Inuit fishers (Canada) co-management practices respond to climate change and enhance overall resilience by improving food security, fostering social learning and co-producing knowledge (Site #34). Weaving such responses into adaptation policy could result in more locally-relevant action plans addressing multiple stressors.

Responses by Indigenous Peoples and local communities to climate change impacts are diverse, but costly

The literature notes that most adaptation strategies led by IP and LC consist of relatively subtle, incremental adjustments to existing and familiar practices [ 42 ]. Yet, the unprecedented speed, magnitude, and complex nature of climate change impacts are also leading to transformational responses, involving fundamentally new combinations of livelihood elements, or deeper changes, such as migration to urban areas.

Our work reveals that while incremental responses are most common [ 43 ], transformational responses are widespread across different geographical areas and livelihood activities [ 44 ]. Documented incremental responses include, for example, adjustments to farming system diversification (e.g., Sites #7; #10; #39). Csángó farmers (Romania) adjust their mowing, sowing, and harvesting practices to adapt to unpredictable weather (Site #16). Bassari people (Senegal) rely on different landscape uses and crop diversity to cope with drought and climate variability (Site #2). Incremental responses also extend to actions not directly linked to nature-based activities, like community networking and food sharing (Site #1). Takab women (Iran) have taken on leadership roles to strengthen traditional water infrastructure and governance and have built greater autonomy by further diversifying incomes (Site #48). Transformational responses often involve trends towards off-farm work and outmigration. In Eastern Tyrol (Austria) and in Eastern Himalaya (India), synergistic climatic and socio-economic factors pressure farmers to accept off-farm work, reducing agricultural labour force and leading to land abandonment (Sites #13; #15).

Our research highlights that regardless of whether responses are incremental or transformational, they imply costs that may destabilize IP and LC long-standing relations with surrounding landscapes [ 44 ]. For example, due to changes in Caribou migration driven by climatic changes, Inuit fishers (Canada) are transitioning to livelihoods less reliant on nature. This results in a decline in traditional activities, higher market dependency, and loss of culture, tradition, and social bonding (Site #34). Thus, LICCI Consortium research emphasizes that the range of livelihood adjustments made by IP and LC incur costs that should inform loss and damage compensation efforts.

Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ response adoption depends on political, economic and socio-cultural contexts

Research shows that IP and LC encounter multiple challenges in implementing adaptive responses [ 45 , 46 ], a recurrent finding in our field sites (e.g., Sites #10; #23; #25). Among farmers in Benin, gender, age, farm size and ownership, and access to labour and information are significant determinants of the adoption of climate-smart agricultural technologies [ 47 ]. Insufficient financial means prevent Dagomba farmers (Ghana) from switching to climate-resilient crop varieties or building rain-harvesting infrastructure (Site #23). These constraints are often rooted in past and present situations of discrimination and marginalisation [ 48 ]. For example, political marginalization inherited from colonial times and persistent socio-economic inequalities limit Mapuche-Pehuenche (Chile) in their access to resources and hamper community responses (Site #25). This, in turn, leads to maladaptive practices, such as selling young animals before they reach an optimal market price, that further increase their dependence on external support and globalized markets.

Response adoption is also shaped by culture. Traditional norms, protocols, and customs may boost or hinder adaptation processes [ 49 , 50 ]. Spiritual knowledge and values can promote community-based adaptation. The Ovoo offering ritual practised by Inner Mongolian herders (China) aims to protect their communities from environmental hazards and misfortunes (Site #52). In contrast, some Daasanach agropastoralists (Kenya) are unwilling to switch to unfamiliar livelihoods or change their diets towards foods that are not part of the traditional foodscape (Site #45). Traditional gender roles hamper iTaukei (Fiji) women’s participation in village governance and decision making (Site #1).

Constraints to response adoption also operate at community and household levels. At the community level, large-scale demographic changes can hamper adaptation processes. The decline in rural population due to rural out-migration in Eastern Tyrol (Austria) leads to workforce shortages, hampering the transformational adaptation needed to revive communal traditional land management practices (Site #15).

Low uptake has been observed when adaptation measures are introduced without considering the local socio-cultural context, whereas cooperation and respectful partnership between communities, governments, and the private sector are associated with higher uptake [ 40 ]. For instance, Inuit communities (Canada) report that co-management of fisheries by Indigenous Peoples, private and government institutions can enhance climate resilience through shared responsibility, knowledge, and decision-making (Site #34). In Shangri-la (China), government investments in new road infrastructure and the use of common lands for ecotourism provide Tibetan agropastoralists with new opportunities to diversify their livelihoods and income (Site #40).

Overall, LICCI Consortium findings emphasise the ways political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts steer and shape response adoption. Decision-making processes and responses will benefit from understanding how these elements interact.

How can Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ experiences, understandings and responses to climate change impacts contribute to climate action?

Indigenous knowledge (IK) and local knowledge (LK) systems are increasingly recognized for their contribution to understanding environmental change [ 1 , 51 ]. As a result, there have been multiple attempts to bring together different knowledge systems (e.g., [ 52 , 53 , 54 ]). However, not all these efforts directly serve the interests of IP and/or LC [ 55 ]. The work of the LICCI Consortium offers three novel reflections.

Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ conceptualizations of climate change often differ from scientific conceptualizations

Many authors have discussed differences and similarities among knowledge systems, with growing recognition of the profound ontological and epistemological differences in the ways climate change impacts and responses are perceived and understood [ 56 ]. In fact, most Indigenous languages lack a direct translation of terms such as ‘climate’ or ‘change’ [ 57 ]. An illustrative example is the Inuit term sila , which some researchers equate to "weather". Inuk author Rachel Qitsualik explains the complex meaning of sila , a term that connects life, climate, knowledge, and the essence of existence, proposing that it would be better translated as the "spirit of the air", the "mystic power which permeates all of existence", or "a god-like Supreme being" (in [ 58 ] p. 237). The lack of direct translations reflects deep ontological differences. Non-Western societies often perceive the world as dynamic, acknowledging long cycles of change passed down through oral tradition across generations. This has significant implications for understanding climate change [ 37 ]. Quechua farmers (Bolivia) perceive climate change as part of a larger cycle, thus incorporating notions of ancient eras and mythical references deeply rooted in the historical and cultural context of the Andean region [ 59 ].

IP and LC experiences of changes in their climate and environment are not necessarily or uniquely attributed to anthropogenic climate change. These changes may be driven by agents or objects unrecognized by scientific frameworks (e.g., [ 60 ]), as is supported by LICCI Consortium findings (e.g., Sites #2; #25; #44). The Tsimane’ people (Bolivia) report that disrespectful behaviour towards the guardian spirits of nature generates their anger and punishment, resulting in environmental change (Site #44). Bassari people (Senegal) attribute unpredictability and shortening of the rainy season to the abandonment of the rainmaking rituals (Site #2). While attributing change to divine agents or objects may be seen to shift the responsibility away from humans, it can also highlight the lack of stewardship resulting from human destruction of nature [ 61 ].

Divergent cosmologies and understandings of change highlight the challenges of conducting climate change research involving different knowledge systems (e.g., [ 62 ]). Previous work has often relied on the problematic assumption that specific aspects of Indigenous and local knowledge systems can be isolated, documented, categorized, and “integrated” into mainstream science, ignoring their own internal validation processes [ 63 ]. Critical researchers argue for the need to situate knowledge production, recognizing the existence of diverse knowledge systems, while acknowledging power inequalities within these systems [ 64 , 65 ]. By involving diverse expertise, knowledge, and actors, knowledge co-production is crucial for tackling climate change impacts and, more generally, within sustainability research. In this line, such knowledge co-production should be context-specific pluralistic -recognizing the multiplicity of knowledge and worldview, articulated around defined and shared goals through an interactive approach with all the actors involved [ 66 ]. When working with IP and LC, this requires decolonizing research processes, building respectful partnerships among knowledge systems, and radically transforming the dynamics between them, acknowledging knowledge-holders’ primary responsibilities to their communities [ 53 , 67 ].

Understandings of climate change impacts derived from different knowledge systems do not always overlap

The LICCI Consortium adopted the Multiple Evidence Based approach as a conceptual framework for connecting information derived from different knowledge systems respectfully, equitably, and transparently [ 52 ]. This approach suggests that complementarities and mismatches between different knowledge systems may provide complementary evidence, generating a nuanced picture of reality. Our research provides instances of agreements and divergences among knowledge systems. Hutsul agro-pastoralists in Bukovina (Romania) report changes in temperature and in seasonal events that mostly overlap with records from the closest meteorological station (Site #4). Koryaks, Chukchi, and Even people (Russia) report increasing frequency of “rain-on-snow” events and changes in seasonality as indicated by river ice, closely matching scientific evidence (Site #20). In contrast, reports of Mongolian herders in Bulgan soum (Mongolia) show differences from meteorological station records, arguably because the field site was located 500 m higher in elevation and over 60 km away from the closest meteorological station (Site #5). Similarly, Ghana meteorological agency weather stations report a higher number of observed rainy days over Kumbungu district than do Dagomba farmers’ reports, arguably due to the sensitivity of meteorological instruments (Site #23).

Investigating disparities in reports stemming from distinct knowledge systems can unearth fresh insights into change, potentially guiding the prioritization of research efforts aligned with local needs. IP and LC often highlight elements that directly impact their livelihoods, which might be overlooked by scientists. This divergence could explain why climatic models for the Juruá River (Brazil) present inconclusive or conflicting precipitation trends, in contrast to local knowledge that underscores a wetter summer despite unmeasurable precipitation changes (Site #18). The divergence might also stem from differences in spatial and temporal scales; global models frequently encompass broader areas and extended timeframes compared to the localized experiences and historical recollections upon which IP and LC reports rely (Sites #7, #17, #44). For instance, while seasonal activities of the Tuareg of Illizi (Algeria) are aligned with instrumental records, their recognition of climate change lacks explicit acknowledgement of multi-decadal trends, possibly affecting their adaptation efforts (Site #17).

Current research practices often fail to uphold Indigenous and local knowledge systems and overlook the environmental impacts of research

Research requires self-reflection—continuous assessment, evaluation, and learning—to avoid deviating from overarching goals and perpetuating inequalities. Research processes must constantly reorient towards the desired trajectory [ 63 , 68 ]. Within this self-reflective lens, we report three additional learnings and adjustments made by the LICCI Consortium to better serve community interests and the broader goals of social and environmental justice.

First, LICCI Consortium members noted a mismatch between the project’s research goals and its research strategies that privileged colonial norms and standards, entrenching power dynamics set by professional researchers. Such strategies could overlook local protocols and hinder the co-construction of new knowledge [ 69 , 70 ]. We consequently requested additional funding to enhance our partnership with Indigenous organizations and make our research more relevant and accessible to communities. This resulted in the creation of Oblo data collection platforms inspired by LICCI research but that ultimately placed community priorities at the centre of the tool’s design with academic research priorities in the periphery.

Second, LICCI Consortium members noted a discrepancy between the project’s goals and the adoption of standard scientific data management practices that could result in the misappropriation and misrepresentation of IK and LK systems [ 71 ]. We therefore pursued additional funding to better align LICCI research with Indigenous data sovereignty and governance principles [ 72 , 73 ]. This led to the creation of a toolkit which offers various mechanisms, including retrospectively applying Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels and Notices [ 74 ] to existing LICCI data.

Third, LICCI Consortium members identified divergence between the project’s goals and the environmental impact of research activities, which ultimately aggravate climate change impacts among IP and LC. We therefore evaluated the carbon impact of research activities conducted during the initial phase of the LICCI project [ 75 ]. Results were discussed and used to develop a strategy to minimize the carbon impact of future research activities. This formed the basis for a wider set of Responsible Travel Policies adopted by the host institute.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold extensive, complex, and rich bodies of knowledge and deep-rooted understandings of climate and environmental change. This knowledge often informs their immediate response strategies. However, such knowledge is systematically overlooked in climate research and policy, which do not acknowledge the independence and validity of Indigenous and local knowledge. LICCI Consortium findings highlight the urgent need to recognize Indigenous Peoples and local communities as legitimate custodians of critically-important knowledge regarding climate change and its impacts. They should be acknowledged as key rights-holders to participate in and contribute to climate change decision-making at local and international levels. Considering the great diversity of socio-environmental contexts in which Indigenous Peoples and local communities live, we emphasize that any policy recommendations need to be carefully contextualized and co-created with local stakeholders.

Availability of data and materials

The analysis presented here is based on multiple case studies from the LICCI project. Datasets from the LICCI project are embargoed until June 2024. After that date, datasets will be freely available at https://dataverse.csuc.cat/dataverse/licci . Before the date, the datasets are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We warmly thank all Indigenous Peoples and local communities who have contributed to frame this research with many inputs over the duration of the project. Special thanks to E. Poncela, for her unconditional help in managing the project. Members of the LICCI Consortium who collaborated in this manuscript and approved the submission: Santiago Álvarez-Fernández, Rodrigo C. Bulamah, Mouna Chambon, Ogi Chao, Zhuo Chen, Fasco Chengula, Albert Cruz-Gispert, Christophe Demichelis, Evgeniya Dudina, Sandrine Gallois, Marcos Glauser, Theo Guillerminet, Eric Hirsch, Andrea E. Izquierdo, Leneisja Junsberg, Juliette Mariel, Mohamed D. Miara, Sara Miñarro, Vincent Porcher, Uttam B. Shrestha, Alpy Sharma, Tungalag Ulambayar, Rihan Wu, Ibrahim S. Zakari, Marijn Zant. We also thank the participation in the LICCI project of Vanesse Labeyrie, Ramin Soleymani, Joao Campos-Silva, Esther Conde, Claudia Geffner-Fuenmayor, Marisa Lanker, Maedeh Salimi.

Research leading to this paper has received funding from the European Research Council under an ERC Consolidator Grant (FP7-771056-LICCI). This work contributes to the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (CEX2019-000940-M). JC and JTI acknowledge the support from ANID/FONDAP 15110006, ANID PIA/BASAL PFB210018, and ANID PIA/BASAL FB0002.

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Institució Catalana de Recerca I Estudis Avançats, 08010, Barcelona, Spain

Victoria Reyes-García

Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

Victoria Reyes-García, David García-Del-Amo, Anna Porcuna-Ferrer, Anna Schlingmann, Petra Benyei, Laura Calvet-Mir, Julián Caviedes, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, André B. Junqueira, Xiaoyue Li, Giulia Mattalia, Adrien Tofighi-Niaki & Vincent Porcher

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Anna Porcuna-Ferrer

Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, University of Miami, Miami, USA

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Department of Environment and Geography, York Institute for Tropical Ecosystems, University of York, York, UK

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Drew Gerkey

School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

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Centro Boliviano de Desarrollo Socio Integral (CBIDSI), San Borja, Beni, Bolivia

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• Santiago Álvarez-Fernández
• , Rodrigo C. Bulamah
• , Mouna Chambon
• , Zhuo Chen
• , Fasco Chengula
• , Albert Cruz-Gispert
• , Christophe Demichelis
• , Evgeniya Dudina
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Contributions

VRG conceptualized the paper, supervised the project, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. DGA, APF, and AS conducted a case study and were major contributors in writing the first draft of the manuscript. MA, EA, JA, AA, DB, PB, LCM, RC, JC, JCh, RCh, ACS, AFL, EG, DG, SG, TH, JI, AJ, XL, YLM, GM, AS, CS, RS, VS, PS, ATN, and MTT contributed data through a case study or the review of the literature, and reviewed and edited the first draft of the manuscript. VRG, SG, and RS edited the final draft of the manuscript. Members of the LICCI Consortium contributed data through a study site or the review of the literature. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Victoria Reyes-García .

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The Ethics Committee of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona approved the research protocol used in this project (CEEAH 4781). Before data collection started, we obtained permits from local authorities in each site to conduct research, as well as the Free Prior Informed Consent of all participants. Where necessary, we also obtained authorizations from national ethics committees.

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Reyes-García, V., García-Del-Amo, D., Porcuna-Ferrer, A. et al. Local studies provide a global perspective of the impacts of climate change on Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Sustain Earth Reviews 7 , 1 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-023-00063-6

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-023-00063-6

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Research Article

Understanding climate change from a global analysis of city analogues

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Crowther Lab, Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Roles Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Plant Ecology, Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Affiliation Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

• Jean-Francois Bastin, 
• Emily Clark, 
• Thomas Elliott, 
• Simon Hart, 
• Johan van den Hoogen, 
• Iris Hordijk, 
• Haozhi Ma, 
• Sabiha Majumder, 
• Gabriele Manoli, 

• Published: July 10, 2019
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592
• Reader Comments

16 Oct 2019: Bastin JF, Clark E, Elliott T, Hart S, van den Hoogen J, et al. (2019) Correction: Understanding climate change from a global analysis of city analogues. PLOS ONE 14(10): e0224120. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224120 View correction

Combating climate change requires unified action across all sectors of society. However, this collective action is precluded by the ‘consensus gap’ between scientific knowledge and public opinion. Here, we test the extent to which the iconic cities around the world are likely to shift in response to climate change. By analyzing city pairs for 520 major cities of the world, we test if their climate in 2050 will resemble more closely to their own current climate conditions or to the current conditions of other cities in different bioclimatic regions. Even under an optimistic climate scenario (RCP 4.5), we found that 77% of future cities are very likely to experience a climate that is closer to that of another existing city than to its own current climate. In addition, 22% of cities will experience climate conditions that are not currently experienced by any existing major cities. As a general trend, we found that all the cities tend to shift towards the sub-tropics, with cities from the Northern hemisphere shifting to warmer conditions, on average ~1000 km south (velocity ~20 km.year -1 ), and cities from the tropics shifting to drier conditions. We notably predict that Madrid’s climate in 2050 will resemble Marrakech’s climate today, Stockholm will resemble Budapest, London to Barcelona, Moscow to Sofia, Seattle to San Francisco, Tokyo to Changsha. Our approach illustrates how complex climate data can be packaged to provide tangible information. The global assessment of city analogues can facilitate the understanding of climate change at a global level but also help land managers and city planners to visualize the climate futures of their respective cities, which can facilitate effective decision-making in response to on-going climate change.

Citation: Bastin J-F, Clark E, Elliott T, Hart S, van den Hoogen J, Hordijk I, et al. (2019) Understanding climate change from a global analysis of city analogues. PLoS ONE 14(7): e0217592. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592

Editor: Juan A. Añel, Universidade de Vigo, SPAIN

Received: February 14, 2019; Accepted: May 8, 2019; Published: July 10, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Bastin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: Author TWC is supported by grant from DOB Ecology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The gap between the scientific and public understanding of climate change, referred to as the “Consensus Gap”, is largely attributed to failures in climate change communication[ 1 ]. Often limited to ad-hoc reporting of extreme weather events or intangible, long-term climate impacts (e.g. changes in average temperature by 2100). Despite an exhaustive list of risks associated to climate change [ 2 ] (e.g. heat stress, air and water quality, food supply, distribution of vectors of diseases, social factors), the intangible nature of reporting on climate change fails to adequately convey the urgency of this issue to a public audience on a consistent basis[ 3 ]. It is hard for most people to envision how an additional 2°C of warming might affect daily life. This ineffective communication of climate change facts, compounded by uncertainty about the extent of expected changes, has left the door open for widespread misinterpretation about the existence of this global phenomenon.

History has repeatedly shown us that data and facts alone do not inspire humans to change their beliefs or act [ 3 ]. Increased scientific literacy has no correlation with the acceptance of climate change facts [ 4 ]. A growing body of research demonstrates that visualization—the ability to create a mental image of the problem—is the most effective approach for motivating behavior change [ 5 , 6 ]. Several studies have analyzed ‘geographic shifts’ to better illustrate climate change. For example, Seidel and colleagues (2008) [ 7 , 8 ] showed that climate change has driven a widening of the tropical belt, by ~2 to 4.8 latitudinal degrees in recent decades. Similarly, the changing conditions of cities around the world provides another tangible example of shifting climate regimes. Given that over 50% of the global population exists within cities [ 9 ], these urban environments potentially valuable tool to visualize the impact of climate change at a global scale. As iconic locations, cities are associated with distinct sets of environmental conditions. As such, shifts in the climate conditions of these urban areas could provide a unique opportunity for people to visualize the impacts of climate change, and to establish effective response strategies to address the effects.

Several studies [ 10 – 15 ] and press reports [ 16 , 17 ] have shown that the use of ‘cities geographic shift’ or “city analogues” can help to understand and visualize the effects of climate change. In particular, cities can serve as useful climate analog, enabling people to visualize their own climate future via comparison with other cities that currently experience those climate conditions. However, until now, existing research have been focused on regional- or continent-scale analyses in North America or Europe [ 10 – 15 ], and we lack a unifying global perspective. These regional trends suggest that cities are likely to resemble those at lower latitudes as the climate continues to warm. However, it remains unclear if this trend holds at a global scale, as other climate drivers such as changing precipitation regimes may obscure these latitudinal trends. As such, Southern Hemisphere or tropical cities, which already exist in warm conditions and are likely to experience considerable changes in precipitation and extreme climate variation, may show independent geographic shifts under changing climate conditions. Generating a unified understanding of the shifts in the climate conditions of the world’s cities is critical if we are going to visualize the impacts of climate change in any biogeographic region. Generating this understanding requires a global perspective and the use of a full range of climate variables to represent the entire climate regime of those regions.

In this study, we evaluate the global shifts in the climate conditions of cities by taking current climate data for the world’s 520 major cities (Current Cities), and project what they will most closely resemble in 2050 (Future Cities). Rather than describing the quantitative changes in climate variables [ 18 ], we propose to quantify city climate analogs at a global scale [ 10 – 12 ], i.e. assessing which Current Cities will most closely resemble the climate conditions of Future Cities. To tackle previous limitations, we explore these patterns at a global scale using 19 bioclimatic variables, to include climate variability and seasonality in addition to climate averages.

Specifically, we aim to test three questions: (i) What proportion of the world’s major cities of the future most closely resemble their own current climate conditions vs . the climate conditions of other cities in different geographic regions? (ii) What proportion of cities will experience novel climate conditions that are outside the range experiences by cities today? (iii) If cities do shift their climate conditions, is this spatial shift uniform in direction across the planet?

Materials and methods

Selection of major cities.

We selected these “major” cities of the world from the “LandScan (2016) High Resolution global Population Data Set” created by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ 19 ]. By “major” cities, we considered cities that are an administrative capital or that account more than 1,000,000 inhabitants. In total, 520 cities were selected.

The climate database

To characterize the current climate conditions among these major cities of the world, we extracted 19 bioclimatic variables from the latest Worldclim global raster layers (Version 2; period 1970–2000) at 30 arc-seconds resolution [ 20 ]. These variables captured various climatic conditions, including yearly averages, seasonality metrics, and monthly extremes for both precipitation and temperature at every location.

Future data: GCMs, downscaling and future scenarios

For the future projections, the same 19 bioclimatic variables were averaged from the outputs of three general circulation models (GCM) commonly used in ecology [ 21 , 22 ]. Two Community Earth System Models (CESMs) were chosen as they investigate a diverse set of earth-system interactions: the CESM1 BGC (a coupled carbon–climate model accounting for carbon feedback from the land) and the CESM1 CAM5 (a community atmosphere model) [ 21 ]. Additionally, the Earth System component of the Met Office Hadley Centre HadGEM2 model family was used as the third and final model [ 22 ]. To generate the data, we chose Representative Common Pathway 4.5 (RCP 4.5) scenario from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) as the input. It is a stabilization scenario, meaning that it accounts for a stabilization of radiative forcing before 2100, anticipating the development of new technologies and strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions [ 23 ]. By using this optimistic climate change scenario, we represent conservative changes in climate conditions that are likely to occur even if substantial climate change mitigation occurs. For each output, a delta downscaling method developed by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) was applied to reach a resolution of 30 arc-seconds [ 24 ], using current conditions Worldclim 1.4 as a reference. Downscaling approach were necessary to assess climate conditions at the cities’ scale even if it induces a risk of pixel mismatch and consequently, a lower level of confidence for local scale analyses [ 25 , 26 ].

Summarizing the current climate among the major cities through a principal component analysis

The 19 current and future bioclimatic variables were extracted from the coordinates of the 520 major cities (i.e., the city centroids), meaning each city had two sets of bioclimatic metrics: the current climate data for the world’s major cities (Current Cities) and the equivalent 2050 projection (Future Cities) according to the average of the three RCP 4.5 GCMs.

A scaled principal components analysis (PCA) was performed on current bioclimatic data in order to account for correlation between climate variables and to standardize their contributions to the subsequent dissimilarity analysis [ 27 ]. As the first four principal components accounted for more than 85% of the total variation of climate data (40.2%, 26.9%, 10.5% and 7.6%, respectively), the remaining principal components were dropped from later analyses. The main contributing variables to the four components are the temperature seasonality (axis 1), the minimum temperature of the coldest month (axis 1), the maximum temperature of the warmest month (axis 2), the precipitation seasonality (axis 2), the precipitation of the driest (axis 4) and of the wettest (axis 3) month, and the temperature diurnal range (axis 4, Fig 1 ).

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

The seven major climate variables contributing to the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) are superposed on each figure. The figure at the top (a) shows the distribution of current (blue) and future (red) cities on the space defined by the first two principal components. The first two axes explain, respectively, 40.2 and 26.9% of climate variations. The first axis is mainly driven by differences in temperature seasonality and in minimum temperature of the coldest month, while the second axis is mainly driven by differences in precipitation seasonality. The figure at the bottom (b) shows the same current (green) and future (orange) cities on the space defined by the third and fourth principal components. They explain respectively 10.5 and 7.6% of climate variations. The third axis is mainly driven by changes in precipitation of the wet season, while the fourth axis is mainly driven by changes in the mean diurnal temperature range. Boxplots illustrates the distribution of the points along each of the 4 axes. The continuous line in the boxes represents the median of the distribution, the extremities of the boxes the 1 st and the 3 rd quartile and the continuous lines go up to 1.5 times the difference between the 3 st and the 1 rd quartile.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592.g001

Calculating the extent of the covered climate domain

For further interpretation of the results, a convex hull was computed from the coordinates of the Current Cities within the multivariate space defined by the first four principal components axes [ 28 ]. For reference, a convex hull of a set of N-dimensional points forms the smallest possible hypervolume (in N-dimensions) containing all points defined in that set; in this case, it defines the bounds of climatic combinations that Earth currently experiences in these 520 cities. All Future Cities falling outside the hypervolume of this convex hull represent currently non-existent bioclimatic assemblies in these cities, i.e. cities with no current climate analog [ 29 ].

Pairing cities based on the similarity between current and future climate conditions

Euclidean distances (i.e., dissimilarity indices) were calculated for every combination of Current and Future City based on their coordinates within the multivariate space defined by the first four principal components axes, creating a symmetric dissimilarity matrix with pairwise comparisons for all cities ( S1 Table ). The Euclidean distance was calculated using the vegan package on R (RCran version 3.3.2) [ 30 ]. Each Future City was then paired with its three closest Current Cities based on the dissimilarity values ( S1 Table , S2 Table ). Three cities are kept for each Future city in order to facilitate comparison between Current and Future climate, as all cities are not necessarily known by the reader. To avoid un-realistic shifts or shifts due to pixel mismatch between Current and Future climate conditions, the final analysis was performed keeping shift values between the 5 th and the 95 th percentile, i.e. keeping 477 out of the original 520 cities.

Calculating the absolute latitudinal shift

To illustrate and summarize the shifts between Current and Future Cities, we calculated the importance of absolute latitudinal shift for each city. Shifts in latitude were standardized for both hemisphere, so that a shift south in the northern hemisphere is equal to a shift north in the southern hemisphere, i.e. referred as the absolute latitudinal shift. In other words, the absolute latitudinal shift expresses a geographic shift in relation to the equatorial line (shifting away from or towards the equator).

Analyses and figures were performed using R, maps were built using Q-GIS 3.0.

Analysis of changes between current and future cities from the PCA

The future climate of each city was projected within the four principal components (using the PCA eigenvectors derived from the bioclimatic variables of the current climate) to allow for direct comparison between Current and Future Cities ( Fig 1 ). On the plane defined by the first two components of the PCA ( Fig 1A ), explaining respectively 40.2 and 26.9% of climate variations, we observe changes towards less temperature seasonality, with higher maximal and minimal temperatures during the year, as well as higher precipitation seasonality, with higher precipitation in the wettest month but lower precipitation in the driest one. While no clear trend can be observed along the third axis (10.5% of climate variation), the changes along the fourth axis (7.6% of climate variation) show higher temperature diurnal range ( Fig 1B ), i.e. the daily difference between cities’ maximum and minimum temperatures will increase. In brief, cities of the world become hotter, in particular during the winter and the summer. Wet seasons become wetter and dry season drier.

What proportion of cities will resemble their own current climate vs . other cities by 2050?

We characterized the climate of the world’s 520 major cities using 19 climatic variables that reflect the variability in temperature and precipitation regimes for current and future conditions. Future conditions are estimated using an optimistic Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP4.5), which considers a stabilization of CO 2 emissions by mid-century (see Material and Methods ). This model was chosen to show the extent of the changes we would be facing even considering the implementation of effective mitigation policies. Using a multivariate analysis, we analyzed the climate similarity of all Current and Future cities to one another ( S1 Table ). This simple analysis enables us to estimate which major cities of the world will remain relatively similar, and which will shift to reflect the climate of another city by 2050. Overall, our analysis shows that 77% of the world’s Current Cities will experience a striking change in climate conditions, making them more similar to the conditions of another existing city than they are to their own current climate conditions ( S1 Table , S2 Table ). The climate conditions of remaining 23% of cities remained most closely associated with their current climate conditions.

What proportion of cities will experience novel climate conditions?

Overall 78% of the 520 Future Cities studied present a climate within the hypervolume representing covered combinations of climate conditions. Therefore, 22% of the Future Cities’ climate conditions would disappear from this current climatic domain ( Fig 2A ). As such, 22% of the world’s cities are likely to exist in a climatic regime that does current exist on the planet today. The situation is even more pronounced in the tropics, with 30% of cities experiencing novel climate conditions essentially because the climate will get drier.

a, b, the extent of change in climate conditions. Cities predicted to have climates that no major city has experienced before are colored in red (mostly within the tropics). Cities for which future climate conditions reflect current conditions in other major cities of the world are shown in green. The size of the dots represents the magnitude of change between current and future climate conditions. b , The proportion of cities shifting away from the covered climate domain (concentrated in the tropics). c,d, The extent of latitudinal shifts in relation to the equatorial line. Cities shifting towards the equator are colored with a blue gradient (mostly outside the tropics), while cities shifting away from the equator are colored with a yellow to red gradient (mostly within the tropics). d, A summary of the shift by latitude is illustrated in a barchart, with shifts averaged by bins of 5 degrees. The background of the maps are a combination rasters available in the public domain, i.e. of USGS shaded relief only and hydro cached.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592.g002

Is this spatial shift uniform in direction across the planet?

The proportion of shifting cities varied consistently across the world. Cities in northern latitudes will experience the most dramatic shifts in extreme temperature conditions ( Fig 2C and Fig 2D ). For example, across Europe, both summers and winters will get warmer, with average increases of 3.5°C and 4.7°C, respectively. These changes would be equivalent to a city shifting ~1,000 km further south towards the subtropics, i.e. a velocity ~20 km.year -1 , under current climate conditions ( Fig 2C and Fig 2D ). Consequently, by 2050, striking changes will be observed across the northern hemisphere: Madrid’s climate in 2050 will be more similar to the current climate in Marrakech than to Madrid’s climate today; London will be more similar to Barcelona, Stockholm to Budapest; Moscow to Sofia; Portland to San Antonio, San Francisco to Lisbon, Tokyo to Changsha, etc( Fig 3 , S2 Table ).

Difference between future and current climate for four cities and an example of their similar current counterpart. Illustration of the results of the analysis for London ( a ; counterpart: Barcelona), Buenos Aires ( b ; counterpart: Sidney), Nairobi ( c ; counterpart:Beirut) and Portland ( d ; counterpart:San Antonio). The red bar represents the difference between the current climate of the city of interest (e.g. London in (a)) and the current climate of the city to which the city of interest (e.g. London in (a)) will have the most similar climate by 2050 (e.g. Barcelona in (a)). The yellow bar the difference between the current and future climate of the city of interest (e.g. current London and London 2050 in (a)). The green bar represents the difference between the future climate of the city of interest (London 2050) and the current climate of the most similar counterpart (e.g. Barcelona in (a)). Images of Barcelona and London were obtained on Pixabay, shared under common creative CC0 license.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592.g003

Cities in the tropical regions will experience smaller changes in average temperature, relative to the higher latitudes. However, shifts in rainfall regimes will dominate the tropical cities. This is characterized by both increases in extreme precipitation events (+5% rainfall wettest month) and, the severity and intensity of droughts (-14% rainfall driest month). With more severe droughts, tropical cities will move towards the subtropics, i.e. towards drier climates ( Fig 2C and Fig 2D ). However, the fate of major tropical cities remains highly uncertain because many tropical regions will experience unprecedented climate conditions. Specifically, of all 22% of cities that will experience novel climate conditions, most (64%) are located in the tropics. These include Manaus, Libreville, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Rangoon, and Singapore ( Fig 2A and Fig 2B , S2 Table ).

In summary, at a global level, we observe a global geographic shift towards the subtropics, i.e. towards ~20 degrees of latitude ( Fig 2B and Fig 4 ).

Cities below 20 degrees North/South tend to move away from the equator (positive latitudinal shift) while cities beyond 20 degrees North/South tend to move closer to the equator (negative latitudinal shift). Cities are colored according to the aggregated ecoregion of the world [ 36 ] to which they belong, with the tropical in red, the subtropical in orange, the temperate in green and the boreal in blue.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592.g004

Our analysis reveals consistent global patterns in the climate shifts of future major cities around the world over the next 30 years. Despite our use of a highly optimistic climate change scenario (i.e. RCP 4.5), we show that the climate conditions of over 77% of world’s major cities will change to such a great extent that they will resemble more closely the conditions of another major city. The projected shifts showed consistent biogeographic trends, with all city climates (both southern and northern hemisphere) generally shifting towards the conditions in warmer, low-latitude regions. The extent and consistency of these patterns provides a stark reminder of the global scale of this climate change threat and associated risks for human health. In contrast to previous analyses, our analysis also reveals that 22% of the world’s cities are likely to exist in a climatic regime that does not current exist on the planet today. These trends highlight the extreme vulnerability of tropical and sub-tropical cities, 30% of which will experience shifts into entirely novel climate regimes with no existing analogues across the world’s major cities. This lends support to the idea of novel climates, which are expected to emerge in many tropical and sub-tropical regions [ 29 ]. It should be noted that, by defining the climate envelope using a convex-hull (i.e. by defining a volume from simplices (“triangles”) that form the smallest convex simplicial complex of a set of input points in 4-dimensional space), we applied a conservative method for evaluating future change. Indeed, because it includes the smallest level of extrapolation and generating the smallest possible shapes, this approach has a low-risk of incorrectly identifying novel climate conditions, relative to a concave-hull approach [ 31 ]. However, this approach necessarily comes with the high likelihood of missing some novel climates. The 22% of cities experiencing a novel climate must therefore be seen as a highly conservative estimate.

Our findings also support previous studies conducted in Europe [ 10 , 11 ] and north America [ 13 ], stressing the current trend of north-to-south geographical shift across the northern hemisphere. Yet, using an optimistic climate change scenario, we found that the velocity (i.e. the speed of geographical shift) risks to be higher in the near future than in the second half of the 21th century [ 10 ] passing from 15 km year -1 to 20 km year -1 . Our study also allows the extension of such observations to the global scale, showing that observations for Europe can be generalized for the entire Northern Hemisphere and for a part of the southern hemisphere ( Fig 2B ). At the global scale, our study reveals that geographical shift tend to converge towards the subtropics ( Fig 4 ), going to warmer climate conditions from boreal and temperate regions and to drier conditions from tropical regions. While this lends support to previous observations of a “tropical belt widening” due to the expected warmer conditions [ 7 , 8 ], it also shows that tropical biomes tend to shrink in many areas due to drier conditions. We therefore suggest here to refer to a “sub-tropical widening” compared to the previous “tropical widening” due to climate change.

While our findings are necessarily dependent on the methodology used to identify the climatic shifts, it is widely recognized that the choice of the metric to assess the similarity-dissimilarity of the climate conditions between cities has an extremely minor effect, compared to the choice of the climate model and scenario[ 32 ]. That is, our results are unlikely to be affected whatever method we use to calculate dissimilarity, as the variation between climate projections is far greater. Nonetheless, Mahony and colleagues [ 31 ] highlighted the need to standardize the contribution of each climate variable to the dissimilarity matrix and to account for correlation between them to avoid any bias[ 31 ]. In the present study, we address this using a scaled principal component analysis to summarize the main bioclimatic variations among the 520 major cities. This approach simply follows classic dissimilarity analysis recommendations for ecological studies[ 27 ], applying an Euclidean distance matrix on the main dimensions of the principal component analysis to assess the similarity between cities. This method was preferred to the sigma-dissimilarity developed by Mahony and colleagues[ 31 ] for its simplicity and it broad use in ecological sciences.

Our analysis allows us to visualize a tangible climate future of the world’s major cities. These results enable decision makers from all sectors of society, to envision changes that are likely to occur in their own city, within their own lifetime. Londoners, for example, can start to consider how their 2050 equivalents (e.g. Barcelona today) have taken action to combat their own environmental challenges. In 2008, Barcelona experienced extreme drought conditions, which required the importation of €22m of drinking water. Since then, the municipal government has implemented a series of ‘ smart initiatives ‘ to manage the city’s water resources (including the control of park irrigation and water fountain levels). The Mayor of London has factored drought considerations into his Environment Strategy aims for 2050 [ 33 ], but this study can provide the context to facilitate the development of more targeted climate strategies. In addition, this information can also empower local citizens to evaluate proposed environmental policies. By allowing people to visualize their own climate futures, we hope that this information can facilitate efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Our study is not a novel model revealing updated climate projections or expectations by 2050. Instead, our analysis is intended to illustrate how complex climate data can be effectively summarized into tangible information that can be easily interpreted by anyone. Of course, the climate scenarios that we have used are based on predictions from a few climate models, run under a single (business as usual) climate scenario. We recognize that these models are characterized by huge amounts of uncertainty [ 34 ], and the predicted Future Cities may change as these Earth System Models are refined, in particular in light of urban climate specificities [ 35 ]. However, our results are likely to reflect the qualitative direction of climate changes within cities and so meet our primary goal, which is to communicate predicted climate changes to a non-specialist audience in order to motivate action. When model projections are updated, we would recommend communicating any new results with this goal in mind.

To our knowledge, our study represents the first global analysis of the shifts in climate conditions of the world’s major cities under climate change. Our analysis revealed that over 77% of the world’s cities are likely to experience a shift towards the climate conditions of another major city by 2050, while 22% will shift to climate conditions that are not currently present for any major cities on the planet. Across the globe, the direction of movement is generally trending towards the subtropics, providing unifying patterns that support trends observed in Europe and North America. In addition, this analysis revealed new insights for cities in equatorial regions, many of which are likely to move to entirely new climate conditions that are not currently experienced by any of the other global cities today. These city analogues, and the data we openly share, can help land managers and city planners to visualize the climate futures of their respective cities, facilitating efforts to establish targeted climate response strategies. As well as facilitating our basic understanding of climate change effects, our analysis highlights the value of using cities to visualize the tangible effects of climate change across the globe.

Supporting information

S1 table. dissimilarity between current and future climate of the major cities of the world..

The dissimilarity is expressed as the Euclidean distance matrix performed on the 4 main axes of the PCA analysis that summarizes the climate variation (19 bioclimatic variables) among the major cities of the world.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592.s001

S2 Table. Summary statistics of the global analysis of city analogues.

The table provides the three cities for which current climate is the most similar to the future climate of each city. It also provides the associated latitudinal shift for the most similar city and the expected changes in climate conditions by 2050 for the mean annual temperature, the annual precipitations, the temperature of the warmest month, the temperature of the coldest month and the precipitation of the wettest month.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217592.s002

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants to T.W.C. from DOB Ecology, Plant-for-the-Planet and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Images of cities were obtained on Pixabay, and openly shared under CC0 common creative license.

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It’s true: 97% of research papers say climate change is happening

Climate Communication Research Fellow, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland

Disclosure statement

John Cook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Today, the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate research to date was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Our analysis found that among papers expressing a position on human-caused global warming, over 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. Overwhelming agreement among scientists had already formed in the early 1990s. And the consensus is getting stronger.

In a previous Conversation article , I argued that climate denial is essentially consensus denial. For over two decades, attacking the scientific consensus has been a central part of the movement to prevent meaningful climate action.

As early as 1991, Western Fuels Association spent $510,000 on a campaign to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”. Their strategy was to construct the impression of active scientific debate using dissenting scientists as spokesmen. This approach was concisely articulated in a memo to Republicans by political strategist Frank Luntz, leaked in 2002:

Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming in the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.

Using Skeptical Science’s taxonomy of climate myths , a recent analysis tracked climate misinformation published in opinion editorials from 2007 to 2010 by syndicated conservative columnists. The most popular myth was “ there is no consensus ”. More recently, a variation of the “no consensus” myth has emerged – the notion that the consensus is “ on the verge of collapse ”.

Our analysis examined the status of the scientific consensus over 21 years of published climate research, from 1991 to 2011. We searched for any papers matching the search “global warming” or “global climate change” in the Web of Science , a database of scientific peer-reviewed research. We rated the level of endorsement of human-caused global warming in each abstract, a short summary at the start of each paper.

In 2007, Naomi Oreskes predicted that as a consensus forms, fewer papers should explicitly endorse the consensus position. For example, you don’t expect to see geography research papers endorsing the fact that the earth is round. Our analysis confirmed this prediction, finding most abstracts didn’t state a position on whether humans were causing global warming.

However, we did identify over 4,000 abstracts that did state a position on human-caused global warming. Among those 4,000 abstracts, 97.1% endorsed the consensus. There was overwhelming agreement on human-caused global warming in every year since 1991.

To independently check our results, we also invited the thousands of scientists who authored the climate papers to rate the level of endorsement of their own papers. We received 1,200 responses with over 2,000 papers receiving a “self-rating”. Interestingly, most of the abstracts that we rated as “No Position” turned out to endorse the consensus in the full paper, according to the papers’ authors. Among all the papers that were self-rated as expressing a position on human-caused global warming, 97.2% endorsed the consensus.

Our results are strikingly consistent with other measurements of consensus. The seminal work on consensus was conducted by Naomi Oreskes who in 2004 analysed 928 climate papers. She found zero papers rejecting the consensus. We analysed the same papers as Oreskes and similarly found zero rejections in the papers matching her search parameters.

Two more recent studies have sought to measure the level of consensus in the scientific community. A survey of Earth scientists found that among actively publishing climate scientists, 97% agreed that humans were significantly changing global temperature. A compilation of scientists making public statements on climate change found that for the scientists who had published peer-reviewed climate research, there was 97% agreement.

While a number of studies have independently established overwhelming agreement among climate scientists, two decades of sustained attack on the consensus has been effective. There is a gaping chasm between the public perception and the actual 97% consensus. When a US representative sample was asked how many climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming, the average answer was around 50%.

Why is climate denial synonymous with consensus denial? Social scientists are just starting to figure out what climate deniers have understood for decades. A 2011 study found that when people correctly understand that climate scientists agree, they are more likely to support policy to mitigate climate change. This is why a political operative hired by fossil fuel interests to undermine climate policy focused on attacking the consensus, arguing “ If we win the science argument, it’s game, set, and match .”

This underscores the importance of correcting the mis-perception that scientists are still debating whether humans are causing global warming. An important step towards stronger public support for meaningful climate action is closing the consensus gap.

The results of the paper Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature are summarised in a simple, user-friendly manner at theconsensusproject.com .

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• v.33(2); Fall 2010

Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options

Glaciers serve as early indicators of climate change. Over the last 35 years, our research team has recovered ice-core records of climatic and environmental variations from the polar regions and from low-latitude high-elevation ice fields from 16 countries. The ongoing widespread melting of high-elevation glaciers and ice caps, particularly in low to middle latitudes, provides some of the strongest evidence to date that a large-scale, pervasive, and, in some cases, rapid change in Earth's climate system is underway. This paper highlights observations of 20th and 21st century glacier shrinkage in the Andes, the Himalayas, and on Mount Kilimanjaro. Ice cores retrieved from shrinking glaciers around the world confirm their continuous existence for periods ranging from hundreds of years to multiple millennia, suggesting that climatological conditions that dominate those regions today are different from those under which these ice fields originally accumulated and have been sustained. The current warming is therefore unusual when viewed from the millennial perspective provided by multiple lines of proxy evidence and the 160-year record of direct temperature measurements. Despite all this evidence, plus the well-documented continual increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, societies have taken little action to address this global-scale problem. Hence, the rate of global carbon dioxide emissions continues to accelerate. As a result of our inaction, we have three options: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.

Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. Why then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization ( “Climate Change,” 2010 ).

That bold statement may seem like hyperbole, but there is now a very clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the earth is warming, that warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes in climate, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are very possible. This pattern emerges not, as is so often suggested, simply from computer simulations, but from the weight and balance of the empirical evidence as well.

THE EVIDENCE

Figure 1 shows northern hemisphere temperature profiles for the last 1,000 years from a variety of high-resolution climate recorders such as glacier lengths ( Oerlemans, 2005 ), tree rings ( Briffa, Jones, Schwerngruber, Shiyatov, & Cook, 2002 ; Esper, Cook, & Schweingruber, 2002 ), and combined sources that include some or all of the following: tree rings, sediment cores, ice cores, corals, and historical records ( Crowley & Lowery, 2000 ; Jones, Briffa, Barnett, & Tett, 1998 ; Mann, Bradley, & Hughes, 1999 ; Moberg, Sonechkin, Holmgrem, Datsenko, & Karlen, 2005 ). The heavy gray line is a composite of all these temperatures ( Mann & Jones, 2003 ), and the heavy black line depicts actual thermometer readings back to 1850 (see National Research Council, 2006 , for a review of surface temperature reconstructions). Although the various curves differ from one another, their general shapes are similar. Each data source shows that average northern hemisphere temperatures remained relatively stable until the late 20th century. It is the agreement of these diverse data sets and the pattern that make climatologists confident that the warming trend is real.

A variety of temperature records over the last 1,000 years, based on a variety of proxy recorders such as tree rings, ice cores, historical records, instrumental data, etc., shows the extent of the recent warming. The range of temperature projected by Meehl et al. (2007) to 2100 AD is shown by the shaded region, and the average of the range is depicted by the filled circle.

Because these temperature numbers are based on northern hemisphere averages, they do not reflect regional, seasonal, and altitudinal variations. For example, the average temperature in the western United States is rising more rapidly than in the eastern part of the country, and on average winters are warming faster than summers ( Meehl, Arblaster, & Tebaldi, 2007 ). The most severe temperature increases appear to be concentrated in the Arctic and over the Antarctic Peninsula as well as within the interior of the large continents. This variability complicates matters, and adds to the difficulty of convincing the public, and even scientists in other fields, that global warming is occurring. Because of this, it may be useful to examine another kind of evidence: melting ice.

Retreat of Mountain Glaciers

The world's mountain glaciers and ice caps contain less than 4% of the world's ice cover, but they provide invaluable information about changes in climate. Because glaciers are smaller and thinner than the polar ice sheets, their ratio of surface area to volume is much greater; thus, they respond more quickly to temperature changes. In addition, warming trends are amplified at higher altitudes where most glaciers are located ( Bradley, Keimig, Diaz, & Hardy, 2009 ; Bradley, Vuille, Diaz, & Vergara, 2006 ). Thus, glaciers provide an early warning system of climate change; they are our “canaries in the coal mine.”

Consider the glaciers of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro ( Figure 2 ). Using a combination of terrestrial photogrammetric maps, satellite images, and aerial photographs, we have determined that the ice fields on Kibo, the highest crater on Kilimanjaro, have lost 85% of their coverage since 1912 ( Thompson, Brecher, Mosley-Thompson, Hardy, & Mark, 2009 ).

The retreat of glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro can be seen in the photographs from 1912, 1970, 2000, and 2006; from 1912 to 2006, 85% of the ice has disappeared.

Figure 3 shows a series of aerial photographs of Furtwängler glacier, in the center of Kibo crater, taken between 2000 and 2007, when the glacier split into two sections. As Furtwängler recedes, it is also thinning rapidly, from 9.5 m in 2000 to 4.7 m in 2009 (for more images of Furtwängler's retreat, see http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-10722-Orlando-Science-Policy-Examiner∼y2009m11d2-Mt-Kilimanjaros-Furtwängler-Glacier-in-retreat ). If you connect the dots on the changes seen to date and assume the same rate of loss in the future, within the next decade many of the glaciers of Kilimanjaro, a Swahili word meaning “shining mountain,” will have disappeared.

Deterioration of the Furtwängler glacier in the center of Kibo crater on Mount Kilimanjaro. Since 2000 the ice field has decreased in size and thickness and has divided in two.

The Quelccaya ice cap, which is located in southern Peru adjacent to the Amazon Basin, is the largest tropical ice field on Earth. Quelccaya has several outlet glaciers, glaciers that extend from the edges of an ice cap like fingers from a hand. The retreat of one of these, Qori Kalis, has been studied and photographed since 1963. At the beginning of this study, Qori Kalis extended 1,200 m out from the ice cap, and there was no melt water at the end ( Figure 4 , map top left). By the summer of 2008, Qori Kalis had retreated to the very edge of Quelccaya, leaving behind an 84-acre lake, 60 m deep. Over the years, a boulder near the base camp has served as a benchmark against which to record the changes in the position of the edge of the ice. In 1977 the ice was actually pushing against the boulder ( Figure 5 , top), but by 2006 a substantial gap had appeared and been filled by a lake ( Figure 5 , bottom). Thus, the loss of Quelccaya's ice is not only on the Qori Kalis glacier but also on the margin of the ice cap itself. Since 1978, about 25% of this tropical ice cap has disappeared.

Retreat of the Qori Kalis outlet glacier on the Quelccaya ice cap. Each line shows the extent of the ice. The photos along the bottom provide a pictorial history of the melting of the Qori Kalis outlet glacier and the formation of a lake. The retreat of Qori Kalis is similar to the loss of several Peruvian glaciers, as shown in the graph insert.

Top: photo taken in 1978 shows a margin of the Quelccaya ice cap pushing against a boulder. Bottom: the same margin is shown in a 2005 photo. The ice has receded and has been replaced by a small lake. The boulder shown in the top photo is located in the center of the white circle to the right.

The Himalayan Mountains are home to more than 15,000 glaciers. Unfortunately, only a few of these glaciers have been monitored over an extended period, so reliable ground observations that are crucial for determining regional retreat rates do not yet exist. However, a recent study of an ice core from the Naimona'nyi glacier in the southwestern Himalayas ( Kehrwald et al., 2008 ) shows that ice is disappearing from the top of the glacier, as shown by the lack of the radioactive bomb layers from the 1950s and early 1960s that appear in all Tibetan and Himalayan ice core records ( Thompson, 2000 ; Thompson et al., 1990 , 1997 , 2006 ).

Glaciologists at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing have been monitoring 612 glaciers across the High Asian region since 1980. These scientists found that from 1980 to 1990, 90% of these glaciers were retreating; from 1990 to 2005, the proportion of retreating glaciers increased to 95% ( Yao, Pu, Lu, Wang, & Yu, 2007 ).

A study of 67 glaciers in Alaska from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s shows that all are thinning ( Arendt, Echelmeyer, Harrison, Lingle, & Valentine, 2002 ). In northern Alaska's Brooks Range, 100% of the glaciers are in retreat, and in southeastern Alaska 98% are shrinking ( Molnia, 2007 ). Glacier National Park in Montana contained more than 100 glaciers when it was established in 1910. Today, just 26 remain, and at the current rate of decrease it is estimated that by 2030 there will be no glaciers in Glacier National Park ( Hall & Fagre, 2003 ). The oldest glacier photos come from the Alps. Ninety-nine percent of the glaciers in the Alps are retreating, and 92% of Chile's Andean glaciers are retreating ( Vince, 2010 ).

The pattern described here is repeated around the world. Mountain glaciers nearly everywhere are retreating.

Loss of Polar Ice

Satellite documentation of the area covered by sea ice in the Arctic Ocean extends back three decades. This area, measured each September, decreased at a rate of about 8.6% per decade from 1979 to 2007. In 2007 alone, 24% of the ice disappeared. In 2006 the Northwest Passage was ice free for the first time in recorded history.

As noted earlier, polar ice sheets are slower to respond to temperature rise than the smaller mountain glaciers, but they, too, are melting. The Greenland ice sheet has also experienced dramatic ice melt in recent years. There has been an increase in both the number and the size of lakes in the southern part of the ice sheet, and crevices can serve as conduits (called moulins) that transport meltwater rapidly into the glacier. Water has been observed flowing through these moulins down to the bottom of the ice sheet where it acts as a lubricant that speeds the flow of ice to the sea ( Das et al., 2008 ; Zwally et al., 2002 ).

The ice in Antarctica is also melting. The late John Mercer, a glacial geologist at The Ohio State University, long ago concluded that the first evidence of global warming due to increasing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) would be the breakup of the Antarctic ice shelves ( Mercer, 1978 ). Mean temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen 2.5° C (4.5° F) in the last 50 years, resulting in the breakup of the ice shelves in just the way Mercer predicted. One of the most rapid of these shelf deteriorations occurred in 2002, when the Larsen B, a body of ice over 200 m deep that covered an area the size of Rhode Island, collapsed in just 31 days (see images http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id = 2351). An ice shelf is essentially an iceberg attached to land ice. Just as an ice cube does not raise the water level in a glass when it melts, so a melting ice shelf leaves sea levels unchanged. But ice shelves serve as buttresses to glaciers on land, and when those ice shelves collapse it speeds the flow of the glaciers they were holding back into the ocean, which causes sea level to rise rapidly.

Just days before this paper went to press, a giant ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off the Petermann glacier in Greenland. This event alone does not prove global climate change, because half of the ice loss from Greenland each year comes from icebergs calving from the margins. It is the fact that this event is part of a long-term trend of increasing rates of ice loss, coupled with the fact that temperature is increasing in this region at the rate of 2° C (3.6° F) per decade, that indicates that larger scale global climate change is underway.

The loss of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is especially troubling because these are the locations of the largest ice sheets in the world. Of the land ice on the planet, 96% is found on Greenland and Antarctica. Should all this ice melt, sea level would rise over 64 m ( Church et al., 2001 ; Lemke et al., 2007 ), and of course the actual sea level would be much higher due to thermal expansion of the world's oceans as they warm.

Although research shows some variability in the rate of ice loss, it is clear that mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets are melting, and there is no plausible explanation for this but global warming. Add to this the laboratory evidence and the meteorological measurements, and the case for global warming cannot be denied. So what causes global temperatures to rise?

CAUSES OF GLOBAL WARMING

Climatologists strive to reconstruct past climate variations on regional and global scales, but they also try to determine the mechanisms, called forcers , that drive climate change. Climatologists recognize two basic categories of forcers. Natural forcers are recurring processes that have been around for millions of years; anthropogenic forcers are more recent processes caused by human activity.

One familiar natural forcer is the earth's orbit around the sun, which gives us our seasons. In the northern hemisphere, June is warm because the sun's rays fall more directly on it, and the sun appears high in the sky; in the southern hemisphere, June is cool because the sun's rays hit the earth at a deep angle, and the sun appears low in the sky.

Less obvious natural forcers include short- and long-term changes in the atmosphere and ocean. For example, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed millions of tons of sulfuric gases and ash particles high into the atmosphere, blocking the sun's rays. This lowered global temperatures for the next few years. Another natural forcer is the linked oceanic and atmospheric system in the equatorial Pacific Ocean known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO occurs every 3 to 7 years in the tropical Pacific and brings warm, wet weather to some regions and cool, dry weather to other areas.

Other natural forcers include periodic changes in energy from the sun. These include the 11- to 12-year sunspot cycle and the 70- to 90-year Wolf-Gleissberg cycle, a modulation of the amplitude of the 11-year solar cycle. These changes in solar energy can affect atmospheric temperature across large regions for hundreds of years and may have caused the “medieval climate anomaly” in the northern hemisphere that lasted from about 1100 AD to 1300 AD. Solar cycles may also have played a role in the cause of the “little ice age” in North America and Europe during the 16th to 19th centuries. These changes in climate, which are often cited by those who dismiss global warming as a normal, cyclical event, affected large areas, but not the Earth as a whole. The medieval climate anomaly showed warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but it fell well below recent levels globally ( Mann et al., 2009 ).

The most powerful natural forcers are variations in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, which last from 22,000 to 100,000 years. These “orbital forcings” are partly responsible for both the ice ages (the glacial periods during which large regions at high and midddle latitudes are covered by thick ice sheets), and for the warm interglacial periods such as the present Holocene epoch which began about 10,000 years ago.

There is consensus among climatologists that the warming trend we have been experiencing for the past 100 years or so cannot be accounted for by any of the known natural forcers. Sunspot cycles, for example, can increase the sun's output, raising temperatures in our atmosphere. We are seeing a temperature increase in the troposphere, the lower level of our atmosphere, and a temperature decrease in the stratosphere, the upper level. But this is the exact opposite of what we would get if increased solar energy were responsible. Similarly, global temperatures have increased more at night than during the day, again the opposite of what would occur if the sun were driving global warming. In addition, temperatures have risen more in winter than in summer. This, too, is the opposite of what would be expected if the sun were responsible for the planet's warming. High latitudes have warmed more than low latitudes, and because we get more radiation from the sun at low latitudes, we again would expect the opposite if the sun were driving these changes. Thus, changes in solar output cannot account for the current period of global warming ( Meehl et al., 2007 ). ENSO and other natural forcers also fail to explain the steady, rapid rise in the earth's temperature. The inescapable conclusion is that the rise in temperature is due to anthropogenic forces, that is, human behavior.

The relatively mild temperatures of the past 10,000 years have been maintained by the greenhouse effect, a natural phenomenon. As orbital forcing brought the last ice age to an end, the oceans warmed, releasing CO 2 into the atmosphere, where it trapped infrared energy reflected from the earth's surface. This warmed the planet. The greenhouse effect is a natural, self-regulating process that is absolutely essential to sustain life on the planet. However, it is not immutable. Change the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the planet heats up or cools down.

Greenhouse gases are captured in ice, so ice cores allow us to see the levels of greenhouse gases in ages past. The longest ice core ever recovered (from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) takes us 800,000 years back in time, and includes a history of CO 2 and methane levels preserved in bubbles in the ice ( Loulergue et al., 2008 ; Lüthi et al., 2008 ). The CO 2 and methane curves illustrated in Figure 6 show that the modern levels of these gases are unprecedented in the last 800 millennia.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ) over the last 800,000 years (eight glacial cycles) from East Antarctic ice cores. Data from Loulergue et al. (2008) and Lüthi et al. (2008) . The current concentrations of CO 2 and CH 4 are also shown ( Forster et al., 2007 ).

Globally, CO 2 concentrations have varied between 180 and 190 parts per million per volume (ppmv) during glacial (cold) periods and between 270 and 290 ppmv during interglacial (warm) periods. However, since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when fossil fuel use (chiefly coal and oil) began to burgeon, CO 2 concentration has increased about 38% over the natural interglacial levels ( Forster et al., 2007 ). Between 1975 and 2005, CO 2 emissions increased 70%, and between 1999 and 2005 global emissions increased 3% per year ( Marland, Boden, & Andres, 2006 ). As of this writing, the CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere is 391 ppmv (Mauna Loa CO 2 annual mean data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2010 ), a level not seen at any time in 800,000 years. Climatologists have identified no natural forcers that could account for this rapid and previously unseen rise in CO 2 .

Methane raises temperature even more than CO 2 , and the amount of methane in the atmosphere, like that of CO 2 , is also at a level not seen in 800 millennia. Two thirds of current emissions of methane are by-products of human activity, things like the production of oil and natural gas, deforestation, decomposition of garbage and sewage, and raising farm animals.

Many people find it difficult to believe that human activity can affect a system as large as Earth's climate. After all, we are so tiny compared to the planet. But every day we tiny human beings drive cars; watch television; turn on lamps; heat or cool our houses and offices; eat food transported to us by planes, ships, and trucks; clear or burn forests; and behave in countless other ways that directly or indirectly release greenhouse gases into the air. Together, we humans emitted eight billion metric tons of carbon to our planet's atmosphere in 2007 alone ( Boden, Marland, & Andres, 2009 ). (CO 2 weighs 3.66 times more than carbon; that means we released 29.3 billion metric tons of CO 2 .) The evidence is overwhelming that human activity is responsible for the rise in CO 2 , methane, and other greenhouse gas levels, and that the increase in these gases is fueling the rise in mean global temperature.

A global temperature rise of a few degrees may not seem such a bad thing, especially to people living in harsh, cold climates. But global warming does not mean merely that we will trade parkas for T-shirts or turn up the air conditioning. A warming planet is a changing planet, and the changes will have profound consequences for all species that live on it, including humans. Those changes are not just something our children and grandchildren will have to deal with in the future; they are taking place now, and are affecting millions of people.

EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

One effect of global warming that everyone has heard about is a rise in sea levels. About half of this rise is due to thermal expansion: Ocean temperatures are rising, and as water warms it expands. Put a nearly full cup of water in a microwave and heat it, and the water will spill over the cup.

In addition to thermal expansion, the oceans are rising because ice is melting, and most of that water inevitably finds its way to the sea. So far, most of that water has come from mountain glaciers and ice caps ( Meier et al., 2007 ). As global temperatures increase, sea level rise will mainly reflect polar ice melt. So far, ocean rise has been measured in millimeters, but there is enough water in the Greenland ice sheet alone to raise sea levels by about 7 m, West Antarctica over 5 m, and East Antarctica about 50 m ( Lemke et al., 2007 ). If the Earth were to lose just 8% of its ice, the consequences for some coastal regions would be dramatic. The lower part of the Florida peninsula and much of Louisiana, including New Orleans, would be submerged, and low-lying cities, including London, New York, and Shanghai, would be endangered (to see the effects of various magnitudes of sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay area, go to http://cascade.wr.usgs.gov/data/Task2b-SFBay/data.shtm ).

Low-lying continental countries such as the Netherlands and much of Bangladesh already find themselves battling flooding more than ever before. Many small island nations in the western Pacific (e.g., Vanuatu) are facing imminent destruction as they are gradually overrun by the rising ocean. Indonesia is an island nation, and many of its 17,000 islands are just above sea level. At the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesian environmental minister Rachmat Witoelar stated that 2,000 of his country's islands could be lost to sea level rise by 2030. At current rates of sea level rise, another island nation, the Republic of Maldives, will become uninhabitable by the end of the century ( http://unfcc.int/resource/docs/napa/mdv01.pdf ). In 2008, the president of that country, Mohamed Nasheed, announced that he was contemplating moving his people to India, Sri Lanka, and Australia ( Schmidle, 2009 ). One of the major effects of continued sea level rise will be the displacement of millions of people. Where millions of climate refugees will find welcome is unclear. The migration of large numbers of people to new territories with different languages and cultures will be disruptive, to say the least.

In addition to the danger of inundation, rising sea levels bring salt water into rivers, spoil drinking wells, and turn fertile farmland into useless fields of salty soil. These effects of global warming are occurring now in places like the lowlands of Bangladesh ( Church et al., 2001 ).

People on dry land need the fresh water that is running into the sea. In the spring, melting ice from mountain glaciers, ice caps, and snowfields furnish wells and rivers that provide fresh water for drinking, agriculture, and hydroelectric power. For example, in the dry season, people in large areas of India, Nepal, and southern China depend on rivers fed by Himalayan glaciers. The retreat of these glaciers threatens the water supply of millions of people in this part of the world. Peru relies on hydroelectric power for 80% of its energy ( Vergara et al., 2007 ), a significant portion of which comes from mountain streams that are fed by mountain glaciers and ice fields. In Tanzania, the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro's fabled ice cover would likely have a negative impact on tourism, which is the country's primary source of foreign currency. The glaciers and snow packs in the Rocky Mountains are essential for farming in California, one of the world's most productive agricultural areas.

Global warming is expanding arid areas of the Earth. Warming at the equator drives a climate system called the Hadley Cell. Warm, moist air rises from the equator, loses its moisture through rainfall, moves north and south, and then falls to the Earth at 30° north and south latitude, creating deserts and arid regions. There is evidence that over the last 20 years the Hadley Cell has expanded north and south by about 2° latitude, which may broaden the desert zones ( Seidel, Fu, Randel, & Reichler, 2008 ; Seidel & Randel, 2007 ). If so, droughts may become more persistent in the American Southwest, the Mediterranean, Australia, South America, and Africa.

Global warming can also have effects that seem paradoxical. Continued warming may change ocean currents that now bring warm water to the North Atlantic region, giving it a temperate climate. If this happens, Europe could experience a cooling even as other areas of the world become warmer.

Accelerating Change

It is difficult to assess the full effects of global warming, and harder still to predict future effects. Climate predictions are made with computer models, but these models have assumed a slow, steady rate of change. Our best models predict a temperature rise in this century of between 2.4° and 4.5° C (4.3° and 8.1° F), with an average of about 3° C (5.4° F; Meehl et al., 2007 ; Figure 1 ). But these models assume a linear rise in temperature. Increasingly, computer models have underestimated the trends because, in fact, the rate of global temperature rise is accelerating. The average rise in global temperature was 0.11° F per decade over the last century ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2009 ). Since the late 1970s, however, this rate has increased to 0.29° F per decade, and 11 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last 12 years. May, 2010, was the 303rd consecutive month with a global temperature warmer than its 20th-century average ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2010 ).

The acceleration of global temperature is reflected in increases in the rate of ice melt. From 1963 to 1978, the rate of ice loss on Quelccaya was about 6 m per year. From 1991 to 2006, it averaged 60 m per year, 10 times faster than the initial rate ( Thompson et al., 2006 ). A recent paper by Matsuo and Heki (2010) reports uneven ice loss from the high Asian ice fields, as measured by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite observations between 2003 and 2009. Ice retreat in the Himalayas slowed slightly during this period, and loss in the mountains to the northwest increased markedly over the last few years. Nevertheless, the average rate of ice melt in the region was twice the rate of four decades before. In the last decade, many of the glaciers that drain Greenland and Antarctica have accelerated their discharge into the world's oceans from 20% to 100% ( Lemke et al., 2007 ).

Increasing rates of ice melt should mean an increasing rate of sea level rise, and this is in fact the case. Over most of the 20th century, sea level rose about 2 mm per year. Since 1990, the rate has been about 3 mm per year.

So, not only is Earth's temperature rising, but the rate of this change is accelerating. This means that our future may not be a steady, gradual change in the world's climate, but an abrupt and devastating deterioration from which we cannot recover.

Abrupt Climate Change Possible

We know that very rapid change in climate is possible because it has occurred in the past. One of the most remarkable examples was a sudden cold, wet event that occurred about 5,200 years ago, and left its mark in many paleoclimate records around the world.

The most famous evidence of this abrupt weather change comes from Otzi, the “Tyrolean ice man” whose remarkably preserved body was discovered in the Eastern Alps in 1991 after it was exposed by a melting glacier. Forensic evidence suggests that Otzi was shot in the back with an arrow, escaped his enemies, then sat down behind a boulder and bled to death. We know that within days of Otzi's dying there must have been a climate event large enough to entomb him in snow; otherwise, his body would have decayed or been eaten by scavengers. Radiocarbon dating of Otzi's remains revealed that he died around 5,200 years ago ( Baroni & Orombelli, 1996 ).

The event that preserved Otzi could have been local, but other evidence points to a global event of abrupt cooling. Around the world organic material is being exposed for the first time in 5,200 years as glaciers recede. In 2002, when we studied the Quelccaya ice cap in southern Peru, we found a perfectly preserved wetland plant. It was identified as Distichia muscoides , which today grows in the valleys below the ice cap. Our specimen was radiocarbon dated at 5,200 years before present ( Thompson et al., 2006 ). As the glacier continues to retreat, more plants have been collected and radiocarbon dated, almost all of which confirm the original findings ( Buffen, Thompson, Mosley-Thompson, & Huh, 2009 ).

Another record of this event comes from the ice fields on Mount Kilimanjaro. The ice dating back 5,200 years shows a very intense, very sudden decrease in the concentration of heavy oxygen atoms, or isotopes, in the water molecules that compose the ice ( Thompson et al., 2002 ). Such a decrease is indicative of colder temperatures, more intense snowfall, or both.

The Soreq Cave in Israel contains speleothems that have produced continuous climate records spanning tens of thousands of years. The record shows that an abrupt cooling also occurred in the Middle East about 5,200 years ago, and that it was the most extreme climatic event in the last 13,000 years ( Bar-Matthews, Ayalon, Kaufman, & Wasserburg, 1999 ).

One way that rapid climate change can occur is through positive feedback. In the physical sciences, positive feedback means that an event has an effect which, in turn, produces more of the initial event. The best way to understand this phenomenon as it relates to climate change is through some very plausible examples:

Higher global temperatures mean dryer forests in some areas, which means more forest fires, which means more CO 2 and ash in the air, which raises global temperature, which means more forest fires, which means …

Higher global temperatures mean melting ice, which exposes darker areas (dirt, rock, water) that reflect less solar energy than ice, which means higher global temperatures, which means more melting ice, which means …

Higher global temperatures mean tundra permafrost melts, releasing CO 2 and methane from rotted organic material, which means higher global temperature, which means more permafrost melting, which means …

Positive feedback increases the rate of change. Eventually a tipping point may be reached, after which it could be impossible to restore normal conditions. Think of a very large boulder rolling down a hill: When it first starts to move, we might stop it by pushing against it or wedging chocks under it or building a barrier, but once it has reached a certain velocity, there is no stopping it. We do not know if there is a tipping point for global warming, but the possibility cannot be dismissed, and it has ominous implications. Global warming is a very, very large boulder.

Even if there is no tipping point (or we manage to avoid it), the acceleration of warming means serious trouble. In fact, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere tomorrow, temperatures would continue to rise for 20 to 30 years because of what is already in the atmosphere. Once methane is injected into the troposphere, it remains for about 8 to 12 years ( Prinn et al., 1987 ). Carbon dioxide has a much longer residence: 70 to 120 years. Twenty percent of the CO 2 being emitted today will still affect the earth's climate 1,000 years from now ( Archer & Brovkin, 2008 ).

If, as predicted, global temperature rises another 3° C (5.4° F) by the end of the century, the earth will be warmer than it has been in about 3 million years ( Dowsett et al., 1994 ; Rahmstorf, 2007 ). Oceans were then about 25 m higher than they are today. We are already seeing important effects from global warming; the effects of another 3° C (5.4° F) increase are hard to predict. However, such a drastic change would, at the very least, put severe pressure on civilization as we know it.

OUR OPTIONS

Global warming is here and is already affecting our climate, so prevention is no longer an option. Three options remain for dealing with the crisis: mitigate, adapt, and suffer.

Mitigation is proactive, and in the case of anthropogenic climate change it involves doing things to reduce the pace and magnitude of the changes by altering the underlying causes. The obvious, and most hotly debated, remedies include those that reduce the volume of greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO 2 and methane. Examples include not only using compact fluorescent lightbulbs, adding insulation to our homes, and driving less, but societal changes such as shutting down coal-fired power plants, establishing a federal carbon tax (as was recently recommended by the National Academy of Sciences), and substantially raising minimum mileage standards on cars ( National Research Council, 2010 ). Another approach to mitigation that has received widespread attention recently is to enhance the natural carbon sinks (storage systems) through expansion of forests. Some have suggested various geo-engineering procedures (e.g., Govindasamy & Caldeira, 2000 ; Wigley, 2006 ). One example is burying carbon in the ocean or under land surfaces ( Brewer, Friederich, Peltzer, & Orr, 1999 ). Geo-engineering ideas are intriguing, but some are considered radical and may lead to unintended negative consequences ( Parkinson, 2010 ).

Adaptation is reactive. It involves reducing the potential adverse impacts resulting from the by-products of climate change. This might include constructing sea barriers such as dikes and tidal barriers (similar to those on the Thames River in London and in New Orleans), relocating coastal towns and cities inland, changing agricultural practices to counteract shifting weather patterns, and strengthening human and animal immunity to climate-related diseases.

Our third option, suffering, means enduring the adverse impacts that cannot be staved off by mitigation or adaptation. Everyone will be affected by global warming, but those with the fewest resources for adapting will suffer most. It is a cruel irony that so many of these people live in or near ecologically sensitive areas, such as grasslands (Outer Mongolia), dry lands (Sudan and Ethiopia), mountain glaciers (the Quechua of the Peruvian Andes), and coastal lowlands (Bangledesh and the South Sea island region). Humans will not be the only species to suffer.

Clearly mitigation is our best option, but so far most societies around the world, including the United States and the other largest emitters of greenhouse gases, have done little more than talk about the importance of mitigation. Many Americans do not even accept the reality of global warming. The fossil fuel industry has spent millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign to delude the public about the threat, and the campaign has been amazingly successful. (This effort is reminiscent of the tobacco industry's effort to convince Americans that smoking poses no serious health hazards.) As the evidence for human-caused climate change has increased, the number of Americans who believe it has decreased. The latest Pew Research Center (2010) poll in October, 2009, shows that only 57% of Americans believe global warming is real, down from 71% in April, 2008.

There are currently no technological quick fixes for global warming. Our only hope is to change our behavior in ways that significantly slow the rate of global warming, thereby giving the engineers time to devise, develop, and deploy technological solutions where possible. Unless large numbers of people take appropriate steps, including supporting governmental regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, our only options will be adaptation and suffering. And the longer we delay, the more unpleasant the adaptations and the greater the suffering will be.

Sooner or later, we will all deal with global warming. The only question is how much we will mitigate, adapt, and suffer.

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on the Presidential Scholar's Address given at the 35th annual meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, Phoenix, Arizona. I am grateful to Bill Heward for inviting me to give the address. I thank Mary Davis for her help editing the text and figures. I wish to thank all the field and laboratory team members from the Byrd Polar Research Center who have worked so diligently over the years. I am especially indebted to the hard work of our current research team: Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Henry Brecher, Mary Davis, Paolo Gabrielli, Ping-Nan Lin, Matt Makou, Victor Zagorodnov, and all of our graduate students. Funding for our research over the years has been provided by the National Science Foundation's Paleoclimate Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Paleoclimatology and Polar Programs, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, Gary Comer Foundation, and The Ohio State University's Climate, Water and Carbon Program. This is Byrd Polar Research Center Publication 1402.

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• 05 January 2022

How researchers can help fight climate change in 2022 and beyond

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Devastating floods that hit Germany last July were made more likely by the warming climate. Credit: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty

Late last year, the major climate summit in Glasgow, UK — the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations climate convention (COP26) — injected much-needed momentum into the political and business community in the fight to stop climate change. The year ahead represents an opportunity for scientists of all stripes to offer up expertise and ensure that they have a voice in this monumental effort.

Science is already baked into the UN’s formal climate agenda for 2022. In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is scheduled to release its assessment of the latest research into how climate warming is affecting people and ecosystems; a month later, the panel is set to provide an analysis of the options for curbing emissions and halting global warming. Combined with last year’s report on climate science , the governments of the world will have a solid review of the state-of-the-art of research on climate change. But the research community’s work stretches far beyond the IPCC.

At the top of governments’ climate agenda is innovation. Existing technologies such as wind and solar power, whose price has plummeted over the past decade, and more-efficient lighting, buildings and vehicles will help to reduce emissions. But if green energy is to push out fossil fuels and fulfil the rising demand for reliable power in low-income countries, scientists and engineers will be needed to solve a range of problems. These include finding ways to cut the price of grid-scale electricity storage and to address technical challenges that arise when integrating massive amounts of intermittent renewable energy. Research will also be required to provide a new generation of affordable vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen, and low-carbon fuels for those that are harder to electrify, such as aircraft.

Even in the most optimistic scenarios, such clean-energy deployments are unlikely to be enough to enable countries to keep their climate commitments. More innovation will also be needed — for example, in the form of technologies that can pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These have yet to be tested and demonstrated at any significant scale. Governments and funders also need to support scientists in efforts to understand the safety and efficacy of various controversial geoengineering technologies — methods for artificially cooling the planet, such as the addition of particles to the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space — if only to determine whether there is sense in even contemplating such alternatives.

Give research into solar geoengineering a chance

There are signs of renewed support for research and innovation in helping to address climate change. In Glasgow, 22 countries, as well as the European Commission (EC), announced plans to cooperate on innovation focused on greening cities, curbing industrial emissions, promoting CO 2 capture and developing renewable fuels, chemicals and materials. The EC has also announced efforts to drive new funds into demonstration projects to help commercialize low-carbon technologies. And China, currently the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is creating a vast research infrastructure focused on technologies that will help to eliminate carbon emissions.

China creates vast research infrastructure to support ambitious climate goals

In the United States, under President Joe Biden, the Democrats have also made innovation a linchpin of efforts to address climate change. A bipartisan bill enacted in November will expand green-infrastructure investments, as well as providing nearly US$42 billion for clean-energy research and development at the US Department of Energy over the next 5 years, roughly doubling the current budget, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank in Washington DC. Another $550 billion for climate and clean-energy programmes is included in a larger budget bill that Democrats hope to pass this year. Economic modelling suggests that the spending surge could help to lower emissions in the coming decade while teeing up technologies that will be crucial to eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions in the latter half of the century.

In addition to enabling green innovation, scientists have an important part to play in evaluating climate policies and tracking commitments made by governments and businesses. Many of the initiatives that gained traction at COP26 need science to succeed. That includes evaluating how climate finance — money that wealthy nations have committed to help low-income nations to curb emissions and cope with climate change — is spent. Research is also needed to understand the impacts of carbon offsets and carbon trading, for which new rules were agreed at COP26.

COP26 climate pledges: What scientists think so far

Climate science, too, must continue apace, helping governments and the public to understand the impact of climate change. From floods in Germany to fires in Australia, the evolving field of climate attribution has already made it clear that global warming is partly to blame for numerous tragedies. Attribution science will also feed into an ongoing geopolitical debate about who should pay for the rising costs of climate-related natural disasters, as many low-income countries seek compensation from wealthy countries that are responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse-gas emissions so far.

These and other issues will be discussed again in November at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where it will be crucial to make sure that everyone has a voice and that research supports climate monitoring and innovation everywhere, not just in richer nations.

A new agreement made at COP26 that requires governments to report annually on their climate progress should help to maintain pressure on them to act on climate change. But science and innovation will be equally important to driving ever-bolder climate policies.

Nature 601 , 7 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03817-4

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Optimal climate policy under exogenous and endogenous technical change: making sense of the different approaches

How does technical change affect economically optimal emission trajectories? Many low-carbon technologies, such as photovoltaic (PV) cells, wind energy and batteries, have become much cheaper in recent decades. Technical change can be an argument to postpone emission abatement, to wait for technology to become cheaper. Conversely, it can be an argument for earlier abatement, when abatement itself is the driver of future cost reductions. Whether technical change means prioritising or postponing emission abatement also depends on the economic objective. This can be either cost-benefit analysis, where the goal is to find a welfare-maximising balance between abatement costs and avoided climate damages (benefits); or it can be cost-effectiveness analysis, where the objective is to minimise abatement costs to stay below a given temperature.

In this paper, the authors assess, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the effect of technical change on optimal climate policy in integrated assessment models (IAMs), which provide key inputs to decision-makers for economically efficient climate policies. They also develop a transparent model to represent the key features of technical change and reproduce how costs differ between scenarios with early vs. later abatement.

Key messages for decision-makers

• Technical change is one of the key assumptions in any IAM that estimates mitigation costs. By conducting a systematic survey of how technical change is currently represented in the main IAMs, the authors find that a diversity of approaches continues to exist. This makes it important to conduct an up-to-date assessment of what difference technical change can make to IAM results.
• Deployment of abatement technologies brings down their cost and is referred to as endogenous technical change because the process does not happen without climate policy, such as the declining cost of PV cells. This can be through learning-by-doing, economies of scale, R&D that requires feedback from deployment, etc.
• When cost reductions are unrelated to the deployment of a technology, the process is called exogenous, resulting in the technology improving through the passage of time; for example, the development of lithium-ion batteries for smartphones, which was helpful for the development of electric cars.
• Under cost-benefit analysis, technical change reduces optimal long-term emissions and temperature substantially.
• Under cost-effectiveness analysis, technical change has a small effect on transient emissions and temperatures, but it has a large, negative impact on carbon prices almost irrespective of the policy instruments available.
• Fast exogenous technological change creates an incentive to abate later, with less initial abatement, as the reduced abatement costs in the future are anticipated.
• By contrast, fast endogenous technological change has almost no effect on initial abatement because cheap future abatement depends crucially on early abatement – and the policymaker anticipates this. Each tonne of abated emissions will make future abatement even cheaper, referred to as the ‘endogenous future gain effect’.
• This endogenous future gain effect is excluded in 18 of the 22 models studied in our survey. Adding the endogenous future gain incentive in these models would lead to earlier optimal abatement.
• Early-stage R&D into green technologies, for which deployment is not yet required, theoretically has the same dynamic properties as exogenous technical change, even though it is developed in anticipation of future abatement.

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No sign of greenhouse gases increases slowing in 2023

• April 5, 2024

Levels of the three most important human-caused greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane and nitrous oxide – continued their steady climb during 2023, according to NOAA scientists. 

While the rise in the three heat-trapping gases recorded in the air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) in 2023 was not quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years, they were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade. 

“NOAA’s long-term air sampling program is essential for tracking causes of climate change and for supporting the U.S. efforts to establish an integrated national greenhouse gas measuring, monitoring and information system,” said GML Director Vanda Grubišić. “As these numbers show, we still have a lot of work to do to make meaningful progress in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere.” 

The global surface concentration of CO 2 , averaged across all 12 months of 2023, was 419.3 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 2.8 ppm during the year. This was the 12th consecutive year CO 2 increased by more than 2 ppm, extending the highest sustained rate of CO 2 increases during the 65-year monitoring record. Three consecutive years of CO 2  growth of 2 ppm or more had not been seen in NOAA’s monitoring records prior to 2014. Atmospheric CO 2 is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels.

This graph shows the globally averaged monthly mean carbon dioxide abundance measured at the Global Monitoring Laboratory’s global network of air sampling sites since 1980. Data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. Credit: NOAA GML

“The 2023 increase is the third-largest in the past decade, likely a result of an ongoing increase of fossil fuel CO 2 emissions, coupled with increased fire emissions possibly as a result of the transition from La Nina to El Nino,” said Xin Lan, a CIRES scientist who leads GML’s effort to synthesize data from the NOAA Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network for tracking global greenhouse gas trends .

Atmospheric methane, less abundant than CO 2 but more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere, rose to an average of 1922.6 parts per billion (ppb). The 2023 methane increase over 2022 was 10.9 ppb, lower than the record growth rates seen in 2020 (15.2 ppb), 2021(18 ppb)  and 2022 (13.2 ppb), but still the 5th highest since renewed methane growth started in 2007. Methane levels in the atmosphere are now more than 160% higher than their pre-industrial level.

This graph shows globally-averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance determined from marine surface sites for the full NOAA time-series starting in 1983. Values for the last year are preliminary, pending recalibrations of standard gases and other quality control steps. Credit: NOAA GM

In 2023, levels of nitrous oxide, the third-most significant human-caused greenhouse gas, climbed by 1 ppb to 336.7 ppb. The two years of highest growth since 2000 occurred in 2020 (1.3 ppb) and 2021 (1.3 ppb). Increases in atmospheric nitrous oxide during recent decades are mainly from use of nitrogen fertilizer and manure from the expansion and intensification of agriculture. Nitrous oxide concentrations are 25% higher than the pre-industrial level of 270 ppb.

Taking the pulse of the planet one sample at a time NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory collected more than 15,000 air samples from monitoring stations around the world in 2023 and analyzed them in its state-of-the-art laboratory in Boulder,

Colorado. Each spring, NOAA scientists release preliminary calculations of the global average levels of these three primary long-lived greenhouse gases observed during the previous year to track their abundance, determine emissions and sinks, and understand carbon cycle feedbacks.

Measurements are obtained from air samples collected from sites in NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network , which includes about 53 cooperative sampling sites around the world, 20 tall tower sites, and routine aircraft operation sites from North America. 

Carbon dioxide emissions remain the biggest problem 

By far the most important contributor to climate change is CO 2 , which is primarily emitted by burning of fossil fuels. Human-caused CO 2 pollution increased from 10.9 billion tons per year in the 1960s – which is when the measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii began – to about 36.8 billion tons per year in 2023. This sets a new record, according to the Global Carbon Project , which uses NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network measurements to define the net impact of global carbon emissions and sinks.

The amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere today is comparable to where it was around 4.3 million years ago during the mid- Pliocene epoch , when sea level was about 75 feet higher than today, the average temperature was 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in pre-industrial times, and large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra. 

About half of the CO 2 emissions from fossil fuels to date have been absorbed at the Earth’s surface, divided roughly equally between oceans and land ecosystems, including grasslands and forests. The CO 2 absorbed by the world’s oceans contributes to ocean acidification, which is causing a fundamental change in the chemistry of the ocean, with impacts to marine life and the people who depend on them. The oceans have also absorbed an estimated 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. 

Research continues to point to microbial sources for rising methane

NOAA’s measurements show that atmospheric methane increased rapidly during the 1980s, nearly stabilized in the late-1990s and early 2000s, then resumed a rapid rise in 2007. 

A 2022 study by NOAA and NASA scientists and additional NOAA research in 2023 suggests that more than 85% of the increase from 2006 to 2021 was due to increased microbial emissions generated by livestock, agriculture, human and agricultural waste, wetlands and other aquatic sources. The rest of the increase was attributed to increased fossil fuel emissions. 

“In addition to the record high methane growth in 2020-2022, we also observed sharp changes in the isotope composition of the methane that indicates an even more dominant role of microbial emission increase,” said Lan. The exact causes of the recent increase in methane are not yet fully known. 

NOAA scientists are investigating the possibility that climate change is causing wetlands to give off increasing methane emissions in a feedback loop. 

To learn more about the Global Monitoring Laboratory’s greenhouse gas monitoring, visit: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/.

Media Contact: Theo Stein, [email protected] , 303-819-7409

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‘Garbage Lasagna’: Dumps Are a Big Driver of Warming, Study Says

Decades of buried trash is releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, at higher rates than previously estimated, the researchers said.

By Hiroko Tabuchi

They’re vast expanses that can be as big as towns: open landfills where household waste ends up, whether it’s vegetable scraps or old appliances.

These landfills also belch methane, a powerful, planet-warming gas, on average at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

The study measured methane emissions at roughly 20 percent of 1,200 or so large, operating landfills in the United States. It adds to a growing body of evidence that landfills are a significant driver of climate change, said Riley Duren, founder of the public-private partnership Carbon Mapper, who took part in the study.

“We’ve largely been in the dark, as a society, about actual emissions from landfills,” said Mr. Duren, a former NASA engineer and scientist. “This study pinpoints the gaps.”

Methane emissions from oil and gas production , as well as from livestock, have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Like carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that’s warming the world, methane acts like a blanket in the sky, trapping the sun’s heat.

And though methane lasts for a shorter time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is more potent. Its warming effect is more than 80 times as powerful as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that landfills are the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions in the United States, emitting as much greenhouse gas as 23 million gasoline cars driven for a year.

But those estimates have been largely based on computer modeling, rather than direct measurements. A big reason: It can be difficult and even dangerous for workers with methane “sniffers” to measure emissions on-site, walking up steep slopes or near active dump sites.

Organic waste like food scraps can emit copious amounts of methane when they decompose under conditions lacking oxygen, which can happen deep in landfills. Composting, on the other hand, generally doesn’t produce methane, which is why experts say it can be effective in reducing methane emissions.

For the new study, scientists gathered data from airplane flyovers using a technology called imaging spectrometers designed to measure concentrations of methane in the air. Between 2018 and 2022, they flew planes over 250 sites across 18 states, about 20 percent of the nation’s open landfills.

At more than half the landfills they surveyed, researchers detected emissions hot spots, or sizable methane plumes that sometimes lasted months or years. That suggested something had gone awry at the site, like a big leak of trapped methane from layers of long-buried, decomposing trash, the researchers said.

“You can sometimes get decades of trash that’s sitting under the landfill,” said Daniel H. Cusworth, a climate scientist at Carbon Mapper and the University of Arizona, who led the study. “We call it a garbage lasagna.”

Many landfills are fitted with specialized wells and pipes that collect the methane gas that seeps out of rotting garbage in order to either burn it off or sometimes to use it to generate electricity or heat. But those wells and pipes can leak.

The researchers said pinpointing leaks doesn’t just help scientists get a better picture of emissions, it also helps landfill operators fix leaks.

Overseas, the picture can be less clear, particularly in countries where landfills aren’t strictly regulated. Previous surveys using satellite technology have estimated that globally, landfill methane makes up nearly 20 percent of human-linked methane emissions.

“The waste sector clearly is going to be a critical part of society’s ambition to slash methane emissions,” said Mr. Duren of Carbon Mapper. “We’re not going to meet the global methane pledge targets just by slashing oil and gas emissions.”

A growing constellation of methane-detecting satellites could provide a fuller picture. Last month, another nonprofit, the Environmental Defense Fund, launched MethaneSat , a satellite dedicated to tracking methane emissions around the world.

Carbon Mapper, with partners including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Rocky Mountain Institute, and the University of Arizona, intends to launch the first of its own methane-tracking satellites later this year.

Hiroko Tabuchi covers the intersection of business and climate for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York. More about Hiroko Tabuchi

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Scientist helps link climate change to Madagascar's megadrought

The finding may help policymakers respond to the crisis.

A University of California, Irvine-led team reveals a clear link between human-driven climate change and the years-long drought currently gripping southern Madagascar. Their study appears in the Nature journal Climate and Atmospheric Science .

"Using remotely sensed observations and climate models, we could see evidence that climate change is affecting the hydrological cycle in southern Madagascar, and it's likely going to have big implications for the people that live there and how they grow their food," said Angela Rigden, assistant professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine and study lead author. "Their rainy season is getting shorter, with a delayed onset of those seasons."

What helped the Rigden team make the connection between the drought and climate change was a multi-year satellite record of vegetation greenness which shows shifts in southern Madagascar that indicate changes in water availability. "We've taken satellite-based remote sensing data of plants and related it to how much water is available in the soils," she said.

The team then compared the shift in the rainy season window to what some climate models report would happen in the absence of human-driven climate change, and that is when they noticed the narrowing rainy season window. "That's the fingerprint of climate change, the change in seasonality," Rigden said.

Another key was the multi-year nature of the satellite record, which stretches back to the early 1980s. Such long observational records, especially for less developed and poverty-stricken places like southern Madagascar, are only available from satellites.

"We finally have a record long enough that we can see changes that are attributable to climate change," Rigden said. "And there's clear agreement between these observations and climate models that point to changes in seasonality."

Christopher Golden, an associate professor of nutrition and planetary health at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a study co-author, has been doing fieldwork in Madagascar for the past 25 years. He explained how southern Madagascar is an arid part of the world even without drought conditions, and that local people have borne witness to changes in rainfall patterns over the decades.

Colleagues at Catholic Relief Services and the USAID Mission to Madagascar, who are key stakeholders in the study, alerted Golden to the issues facing the country. For Rigden, the road to the study came after the United Nations announced that southern Madagascar was in a state of famine as a result of climate change in 2021. She wanted to see what satellite data might reveal about the situation.

"Our study shows that this phenomenon is entirely driven by climate change," said Golden, who added that the study will help scientists provide more confident recommendations to policymakers who make decisions about where to send relief aid in the world. "The picture is that this is going to be recurrent into the future," Golden said, which is information that can help officials justify the financing of relief efforts.

If populations know that events like droughts are not anomalies but part of a new normal, they can better prepare for the future. "We can come up with strategies to adapt," Rigden said.

Funding came from Catholic Relief Services (Madagascar) through their partnership and funding arrangements with USAID.

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More than half a million global stroke deaths may be tied to climate change

by American Academy of Neurology

A changing climate may be linked to growing death and disability from stroke in regions around the world, according to a study published in the April 10, 2024, online issue of Neurology .

Researchers found over three decades that non-optimal temperatures, those above or below temperatures associated with the lowest death rates, were increasingly linked to death and disability due to stroke. The study does not prove that climate change causes stroke. It only shows an association. The study also did not examine other risk factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels .

Researchers found that the majority of these strokes were due to lower than optimal temperatures, however they also found an increase in strokes tied to higher than optimal temperatures. With lower temperatures , a person's blood vessels can constrict, increasing blood pressure. High blood pressure is a risk factor for stroke. Higher temperatures may cause dehydration, affecting cholesterol levels and resulting in slower blood flow, factors that can also lead to stroke.

"Dramatic temperature changes in recent years have affected human health and caused widespread concern," said study author Quan Cheng, Ph.D., of Xiangya Hospital Central South University in Changsha, China. "Our study found that these changing temperatures may increase the burden of stroke worldwide, especially in older populations and areas with more health care disparities."

For the study, researchers looked at 30 years of health records for more than 200 countries and territories. They examined the number of stroke deaths and burden of stroke-related disability due to non-optimal temperatures.

They then divided the data to look at different regions, countries and territories. They also looked at age groups and genders.

In 2019, there were 521,031 stroke deaths linked to non-optimal temperatures. There were also 9.4 million disability-adjusted life years due to stroke linked to non-optimal temperatures. Disability-adjusted life years are the number of years of life lost due to premature death and years lived with illness.

When looking at low temperatures compared to high temperatures, they found that 474,002 of the total deaths were linked to low temperatures.

Researchers found that the rate of death from stroke from temperature changes for male participants was 7.7 per 100,000 compared to 5.9 per 100,000 for female participants.

When looking at regions, central Asia had the highest death rate for stroke linked to non-optimal temperatures with 18 per 100,000. At the national level, North Macedonia had the highest death rate with 33 per 100,000.

"More research is needed to determine the impact of temperature change on stroke and to target solutions to address health inequalities," Cheng said. "Future research should aim to reduce this threat by finding effective health policies that address potential causes of climate change, such as the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and industrial processes."

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‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe

An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem

O n 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.

This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey. “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”

This amazement was shared by glaciologist Prof Martin Siegert, of the University of Exeter. “No one in our community thought that anything like this could ever happen. It is extraordinary and a real concern,” he told the Observer . “We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.”

Poleward winds, which previously made few inroads into the atmosphere above Antarctica , are now carrying more and more warm, moist air from lower latitudes – including Australia – deep into the continent, say scientists, and these have been blamed for the dramatic polar “heatwave” that hit Concordia. Exactly why these currents are now able to plunge so deep into the continent’s air space is not yet clear, however.

Nor has this huge temperature hike turned out to be an isolated event, scientists have discovered. For the past two years they have been inundated with rising numbers of reports of disturbing meteorological anomalies on the continent. Glaciers bordering the west Antarctic ice-sheet are losing mass to the ocean at an increasing rate, while levels of sea ice, which float on the oceans around the continent, have plunged dramatically, having remained stable for more than a century.

These events have raised fears that the Antarctic, once thought to be too cold to experience the early impacts of global warming, is now succumbing dramatically and rapidly to the swelling levels of greenhouse gases that humans continue to pump into the atmosphere.

These dangers were highlighted by a team of scientists, led by Will Hobbs of the University of Tasmania, in a paper that was published last week in the Journal of Climate . After examining recent changes in sea ice coverage in Antarctica, the group concluded there had been an “abrupt critical transition” in the continent’s climate that could have repercussions for both local Antarctic ecosystems and the global climate system.

“The extreme lows in Antarctic sea ice have led researchers to suggest that a regime shift is under way in the Southern Ocean, and we found multiple lines of evidence that support such a shift to a new sea ice state,” said Hobbs.

The dramatic nature of this transformation was emphasised by Meredith. “Antarctic sea ice coverage actually increased slightly in the late 20th and early 21st century. However, in the middle of the last decade it fell off a cliff. It is a harbinger of the new ground with the Antarctic climate system, and that could be very troubling for the region and for the rest of the planet.”

The continent is now catching up with the Arctic, where the impacts of global warming have, until now, been the most intense experienced across the planet, added Siegert. “The Arctic is currently warming at four times the rate experienced by the rest of the planet. But the Antarctic has started to catch up, so that it is already warming twice as quickly as the planet overall.”

A key reason for the Arctic and Antarctic to be taking disproportionate hits from global warming is because the Earth’s oceans – warmed by fossil-fuel burning – are losing their sea ice at their polar extremities. The dark waters that used to lie below the ice are being exposed and solar radiation is no longer reflected back into space. Instead, it is being absorbed by the sea, further heating the oceans there.

“Essentially, it is a vicious circle of warming oceans and melting of sea ice, though the root cause is humanity and its continuing burning of fossil fuels and its production of greenhouse gases,” said Meredith. “This whole business has to be laid at our door.”

As to the consequences of this meteorological metamorphosis, these could be devastating, researchers warn. If all the ice on Antarctica were to melt, this would raise sea levels around the globe by more than 60 metres. Islands and coastal zones where much of the world’s population now have homes would be inundated.

Such an apocalypse is unlikely to occur for some time, however. Antarctica’s ice sheet covers 14m square kilometres (about 5.4m square miles), roughly the area of the United States and Mexico combined, and contains about 30m cubic kilometres (7.2m cubic miles) of ice – about 60% of the world’s fresh water. This vast covering hides a mountain range that is nearly as high as the Alps, so it will take a very long time for that to melt completely, say scientists.

Nevertheless, there is now a real danger that some significant sea level rises will occur in the next few decades as the ice sheets and glaciers of west Antarctica continue to shrink. These are being eroded at their bases by warming ocean water and could disintegrate in a few decades. If they disappear entirely, that would raise sea levels by 5m – sufficient to cause damage to coastal populations around the world. How quickly that will happen is difficult to assess. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that sea levels are likely to rise between 0.3m to 1.1m by the end of the century. Many experts now fear this is a dangerous underestimate. In the past, climate change deniers accused scientists of exaggerating the threat of global warming. However, the evidence that is now emerging from Antarctica and other parts of the world makes it very clear that scientists did not exaggerate. Indeed, they very probably underrated by a considerable degree the threat that now faces humanity.

“The picture is further confused in Antarctica because, historically, we have had problems getting data,” added Meredith. “We have never had the information about weather and ecosystem, compared with the data we get from the rest of the world, because the continent is so remote and so hostile. Our records are comparatively short and that means that the climate models we have created, although very capable, are based on sparse data. They cannot capture all of the physics, chemistry and biology. They can make predictions that are coherent but they cannot capture the sort of extremes that we’re now beginning to observe.”

The woes facing Antarctica are not merely of human concern, however. “We are already seeing serious ecological impacts that threaten to spread through the food chain,” said Prof Kate Hendry, a chemical oceanographer based at the British Antarctic Survey.

A critical example is provided by the algae which grow under and around sea ice in west Antarctica. This is starting to disappear, with very serious implications, added Hendry. Algae is eaten by krill, the tiny marine crustaceans that are one of the most abundant animals on Earth and which provide food for predators that include fish, penguins, seals and whales. “If krill starts to disappear in the wake of algae, then all sorts of disruption to the food chain will occur,” said Hendry.

The threat posed by the disappearance of krill goes deeper, however. They play a key role in limiting global warming. Algae absorb carbon dioxide. Krill then eat them and excrete it, the faeces sinking to the seabed and staying there. Decreased levels of algae and krill would then mean less carbon from the atmosphere would be deposited on the ocean floor and would instead remain near the sea surface, where it would return to the atmosphere.

“They act like a conveyor belt that takes carbon out of the atmosphere and carries it down to the deep ocean floor where it can be locked away. So if we start messing with that system, there could be all sorts of other knock-on effects for our attempts to cope with the impact of global warming,” added Hendry. “It is a scary scenario. Nevertheless that, unfortunately, is what we are now facing.”

Another victim of the sudden, catastrophic warming that has gripped the continent is its most famous resident: the emperor penguin. Last year the species, which is found only in Antarctica, suffered a catastrophic breeding failure because the platforms of sea ice on which they are born started to break up long before the young penguins could grow waterproof feathers.

“We have never seen emperor penguins fail to breed, at this scale, in a single season,” said Peter Fretwell, of the British Antarctic Survey. “The loss of sea ice in this region during the Antarctic summer made it very unlikely that displaced chicks would survive.”

Researchers say that the discovery of the loss of emperor penguins suggests that more than 90% of colonies will be wiped out by the end of the century, if global warming trends continue at their current disastrous rate. “The chicks cannot live on sea ice until they have fledged,” said Meredith. “After that, they can look after themselves. But the sea ice is breaking up before they reach that stage and mass drowning events are now happening. Colonies of penguins are being wiped out. And that’s a tragedy. This is an iconic species, one that is emblematic of Antarctica and the new vulnerability of its ecosystems.”

The crisis facing the continent has widespread implications. More than 40 nations are signatories of the Antarctic Treaty’s environmental protocol, which is supposed to shield it from a host of different threats, with habitat degradation being one of the most important. The fact that the continent is now undergoing alarming shifts in its ice covering, eco-systems and climate is a clear sign that this protection is no longer being provided.

“The cause of this ecological and meteorological change lies outside the continent,” added Siegert. “It is being caused because the rest of the world is continuing to emit vast amounts carbon dioxide.

“Nevertheless, there is a good case for arguing that if countries are knowingly polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and Antarctica is being affected as a consequence, then the treaty protocol is being breached by its signatories and their behaviour could be challenged on legal and political grounds. It should certainly make for some challenging meetings at the UN in the coming years.”

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Protecting Our Planet: 5 Strategies for Reducing Plastic Waste

Olga Rukovets

Plastics are ubiquitous in our world, and given that plastic waste can take thousands of years to break down , there’s more of it to be found on Earth every single day. Worse yet is the fact that the stuff doesn’t easily decompose —it mostly just disintegrates into smaller and smaller pieces.

These tiny particles, called microplastics , have found their way to all parts of our globe , no matter how remote. They’re also increasingly detected in our food and drinking water. A recent study by Columbia researchers found that water bottles contain even more—10 to 100 times more—of these minute plastic bits (dubbed “nanoplastics”) than we previously believed. The health effects and downstream repercussions of microplastics are not fully understood, but researchers are concerned about the long-term impacts of ingesting all this plastic.

Meaningful change to clean up this mess will undoubtedly need to happen on a very large scale. Accordingly, Earthday.org , an organization that originates from the first Earth Day back in 1970, has designated this year’s theme as Planet vs. Plastics , with a goal of achieving a 60% reduction in plastics production by 2040. Organizations like Ocean Cleanup have been working on technologies to clean up the plastic floating in our oceans and polluting our waterways. And in 2022, 175 UN member nations signed on to a global agreement that promises to produce a binding treaty to overcome the scourge of plastic by the end of this year (though it has not been without setbacks ).

What are some actions individuals can take on a regular basis to reduce plastics consumption?

1. Embrace the circular economy

Increasingly, advocates are calling for a circular approach to production and consumption as one important way to reduce the burden of plastic waste. Sandra Goldmark , senior assistant dean of interdisciplinary engagement at the Columbia Climate School, reminds us that circularity is very much in use in the modern world—we have public libraries, neighborhood swaps and traditional and regenerative agricultural practices that demonstrate the success of the concept. But it does need to be harnessed on a global scale for the benefits to be palpable. “Currently [our economy] is just 8.6% circular,” Goldmark said. “Over 90% of the resources extracted from the earth are manufactured into goods that are used, usually once, and then sent to landfill or incinerated, often within a year.” By encouraging greater reuse, repurposing and exchange of these goods, we can keep more plastic out of our oceans and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions substantively.

Fast fashion, for example, may be appealing for its convenience and low prices—but what are the true costs? With 100 billion garments being produced every year, 87% end up as waste ( 40 million tons ) in a landfill or incinerator. The average person is now buying 60 percent more clothing than they did 15 years ago, but they’re only keeping them for  half as long as they used to, according to EarthDay.org . 

Instead, the UN Environment Programme recommends re-wearing clothes more frequently and washing them less often. Look for neighborhood swaps and Buy Nothing groups, where you can trade items with your local community. Consider repairing items before trading them in for new ones. See additional tips for healthier consumption of “stuff” here .

2. Reduce your reliance on single-use plastics

Considering the fact that Americans currently purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, switching to a reusable water bottle could save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually. Start bringing reusable shopping bags and containers when you go to the grocery store or coffee shop.

Many cities and states have already implemented plastic bag bans as one step toward decreasing our use of these plastics. Some local businesses even offer discounts for bringing your own coffee cup or bags with you.

3. If all else fails, recycle (responsibly)

When it can’t be avoided, recycle your plastic correctly . If you try to recycle the wrong items—sometimes called “ wishcycling ”—it can slow down an already constrained sorting process. One rule to remember, Keefe Harrison, CEO of the Recycling Partnership , told NPR: “When in doubt, leave it out.”

Recycling programs vary between communities and states, so it’s important to get to know your symbols and research what they mean in your own zip code . For example , plastic bags and plastic wrap or film cannot be placed in your household recycling bin, but some stores have special collections for those items. The symbol on the bottom of a plastic container can tell you what the plastic is made from, which can help guide your decision to recycle it or not, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it can be picked up by your local recycling program. Local websites, like New York City’s 311 , can provide a more detailed breakdown of the types of items that can and cannot be recycled—e.g., rigid plastic packaging including “clamshells”: yes; tubes from cosmetics and toothpaste: no.

Still, reports of how much (or how little) of our plastic waste is actually recycled are alarming—with some estimates ranging from 10% to as low as 5% —so it is still best to opt for other alternatives whenever possible.

4. Get involved with local actions and clean-ups

There are many local movements doing their part to mitigate the environmental contamination caused by plastics pollution. Take a look at what’s happening locally in your neighborhood and globally. Check with your parks department for organized community efforts or consider starting your own . As part of EarthDay.org, you can register your initiative with the Great Global Cleanup , where you can find helpful tips on all stages of this process and connect with a worldwide community.

5. Stay informed about new legislation

As the world grapples with the growing plastics crisis, some states are trying to take matters into their own hands. In California, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (known as SB 54 ), mandates the switch to compostable packaging for all single-use utensils, containers and other receptacles by 2032, with steep fines for companies that don’t comply. New York is currently moving ahead with a bill called Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act , with the goal of cutting down plastic packaging by 50% in the next 12 years; if it is signed into law, this legislation would also mandate charging fees for noncompliant brands.

Pay attention to what’s happening in your own county, state or country and get involved with efforts to advocate for causes you support. Send messages to your representatives, educate your neighbors and friends, and join a larger contingent of people trying to make the world a better and more sustainable place for current and future generations.

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