Volume 12 Issue 2, February 2022

Water management in the western United States is rooted in an adversarial system that is highly sensitive to climate change. Reforms are needed to ensure water management is efficient, resilient and equitable moving forward.

Improved management of water has been shown to have important benefits in both climate adaptation and mitigation. Water must be explicitly considered in climate policy, on par with its energy and land siblings.

In the context of rising climate uncertainties, there is an urgent need for greater convergence between water and climate change policies. To improve adaptation outcomes, a reorientation towards justice and rights-based frameworks is required.

Man-made ice towers provide water during the growing season in the high-elevation desert in the Himalayas to buffer effects of climate change. Local and international science partnerships are now working to develop technologies to make these ice stupas more efficient.

Climate mitigation policies are enacted in the interconnected climate, land, energy and water sectors. Now, a study shows regionally different land-use change emission pricing policies can increase competition for water in African river basins.

We find limited evidence that individual or household rebates (also called dividends) have increased public support for carbon taxes in Canada and Switzerland. In the presence of partisan and interest group conflict over climate policy, policymakers should not assume that voter support for carbon pricing will automatically increase with the inclusion of rebates.

Children and adolescents may be the age cohort most vulnerable to climate anxiety. This Review uses a social–ecological theoretical framework to outline how they are uniquely susceptible to climate anxiety and identify potential protective factors.

Carbon labelling may affect changes in both organizational and retail consumer behaviour. This Review examines the effectiveness of label programmes on the behaviour of actors throughout product supply chains, discussing current challenges, future pathways and implications for label design.

Carbon tax rebate programmes have received increasing interest with the potential to raise public support for carbon pricing. However, results of online surveys based on existing real-world policies demonstrate such programmes have had limited political impacts to date.

Exposure to extreme weather events could increase environmental concerns and support for Green parties. With high-resolution data across European countries, the authors demonstrate the existence of such effect, then further discuss the heterogeneity and possible mechanisms.

Climate change is increasing flood risk, yet models based on historical data alone cannot capture the impact. Granular mapping of national flood risk shows that losses caused by flooding in the United States will increase substantially by 2050 and disproportionately burden less advantaged communities.

The co-occurrence of drought across different regions will have far-reaching effects on global agriculture and food supply. Model projections show an increased likelihood of these compound droughts under a high-emissions scenario, with a ninefold increase of farm land and population exposure.

Changes to tropical cyclones will increase the risk to US coastlines. Under a high-emissions scenario, the joint hazards of extreme rainfall and storm tides increase, with the largest contribution being from increasing cyclone intensity and decreasing translation speed, rather than sea-level rise.

Understanding the impact of future marine heatwaves on coastal ecosystems, which account for most of global fishery catches, is limited due to low-resolution models. Use of high-resolution models shows increases in intensity, and the number of days, of marine heatwaves, endangering resident species.

Global climate change mitigation policies aim to reduce emissions, but can have unintended local consequences. Mitigation in the land sector could impact local water resources, along with food and energy in the Zambezi Watercourse and similar river basins.

The authors use central European observations of leaf unfolding date (LUD) for six tree species. They demonstrate antagonistic and heterogenous effects of winter chilling and spring thermal accumulation on leaf phenology, with the latter having greater explanation (61% versus 39%) for LUD advancement.

The authors link the effects of pCO₂ on marine invertebrates to the localized pCO₂ conditions of their coastal habitats. They show that responses depend on the deviation from the locally experienced upper pCO₂ level, highlighting the importance of small-scale variability and adaptation.