This article warns that climate-risk assessment overlooks the roles of meat, dairy and seafood for dietary diversity and micronutrient supply, and predicts that nearly fifty countries are projected to face high climate risk for two or more micronutrients during this period, with ten countries facing high risk across all five.

Data scientist Hannah Ritchie provides a hopeful analysis by detailing historical progress related to halting climate change. This book is aimed at a general audience and strives to provide useful information that counters doomsday headlines of climate catastrophe. 

This report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reviews the evidence on climate change’s impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity and people. It finds that there is a greater than 50% chance that global warming will reach or exceed 1.5°C (above the 1850-1900 baseline) in the near term, even under very low emissions scenarios, and that human-induced climate change has already caused “widespread adverse impacts” for nature and for people.

This paper addresses recent concerns about RCP8.5, a climate scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based on an assumption of high levels of fossil fuel use. A recent commentary argues that RCP8.5 was originally intended to explore an unlikely future with no climate mitigation, but that it is now commonly referred to as a “business as usual” scenario by the media. In response, this paper argues that RCP8.5 is indeed a good match for current and stated climate policies up until 2050.

The average number of days that US farm workers spend working in dangerously hot conditions could double by mid-century and triple by the end of the century, according to this paper. Workplace adaptations such as longer rest breaks, working more slowly, switching to single-layer clothing and having cooled rest areas could tackle this problem, but would negatively affect farm productivity, worker earnings and labour costs.

This paper uses temperature and precipitation projections across the ranges of over 30,000 species on land and in water to estimate when each species will be exposed to dangerous climate conditions. It predicts that most species within a given assemblage (group of species within a habitat) will encounter inhospitable climate conditions at the same time as each other (e.g. several species might have a similar upper limit on the temperature that they are able to cope with), meaning that disruption of the overall assemblage is likely to be abrupt.

This explainer from Carbon Brief outlines nine interlinked “tipping points” where climate warming could trigger an abrupt change. They include disintegration of ice sheets, changes in ocean circulation, thawing of permafrost, and dieback of ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs.

According to the Global Risks Report 2020 by the global NGO World Economic Forum, the five risks with the greatest likelihood of happening all relate to the environment (as opposed to the economy, society, geopolitics or technology). The five risks are: extreme weather, climate action failure, natural disasters, biodiversity loss and human-made environmental disasters.

This commentary reviews the evidence on climate tipping points - i.e. irreversible (on a human timescale) and abrupt shifts from one climate state to another - and concludes that several interlinked tipping points could be already active or very near to being triggered. Cutting emissions could still slow down the rate at which the tipping points operate, the authors argue.