This study finds that the jet stream – air currents in the upper atmosphere – can synchronise extreme weather caused by climate change, resulting in crop failures in multiple countries at the same time.  

Solar radiation modification (SRM), is presented by some as an option that may help to limit global temperature rise. However, SRM cannot address the root causes of anthropogenic climate change – the continued emissions of greenhouse gases. Investing precious time and resources in this critical decade to explore SRM technologies distracts from the urgent need to step up mitigation efforts to halve emissions by 2030.  

This fourth and final ZERO IN report looks at how cutting emissions this decade can limit temperature rise and other climate impacts in the near-term. It looks back to what was set out by governments in the Glasgow Climate Pact and unpacks what “enhanced mitigation ambition …. in this critical decade” must look like, based on the latest IPCC science.  

Land cover and land management change has a critical role in mitigation scenarios for both global mitigation and local adaptation. Yet the dependence of different land cover and land management change options on the background climate, and the local vs. non-local responses are still poorly understood across different Earth system models.  

This study builds on work by Samset et al., who reported that the effects of emission mitigation will only be perceived through global temperature with a multi-decadal delay. This paper provides additional context and expresses concerns with the approach towards assessing a discernible warming response under different greenhouse gas concentration pathways.  

This study extends the framework of an existing spatially resolved, annual-scale Earth system model (ESM) emulator (MESMER) by a monthly downscaling module (MESMER-M), thus providing local monthly temperatures from local yearly temperatures. MESMER-M is able to statistically generate ESM-like, large initial-condition ensembles of spatially explicit monthly temperature fields, providing monthly temperature probability distributions which are of critical value to impact assessments.  

This study ascribes the observations in increased Atlantic tropical cyclone activity to variations in atmospheric circulation as well as sea surface temperature (SST) increase. Using a novel weather-pattern-based statistical model, the authors find that the warming trend in the Atlantic has doubled the probability of extremely active tropical cyclone seasons.