Climanosco Research Articles

Welcome to Climanosco Research Articles, the open access journal of Climanosco.

We publish here the research articles of our collections. Research articles are written by scientists, reviewed scientifically, and clarified for a broad audience with the help of volunteer reviewers. Before they are published as research articles, and as they move through our peer review process from submission to revision to publication, we call them research manuscripts and publish them in our pre-print open access journal Climanosco Research Manuscripts.

For a comprehensive browsing through the research articles and, when not available, the corresponding latest stage manuscript, we recommend to go to the climate science library.

Click to learn more about our publications and peer review process.

Climanosco Research Articles: ISSN 2673-1568, DOI https://doi.org/10.37207/CRA

Collections

 

Collection 5, Entangled forests

A collection exploring forests in the context of climate change

Research articles

Articles coming soon, stay tuned.

Collection 4, Oceans on the rise

A collection exploring the oceans in the context of climate change

Collection 3, Human responses to climate change

A collection exploring human responses to climate change in the past, the present and the future

Research articles

Community membership as a driver of climate action: From rural hunters to progressive activists

Jessica Love-Nichols, Julia Coombs Fine, Delcia Orona, Forest Ophelia Stuart, Rohit Reddy Karnaty and Shawn Van Valkenburgh

In this paper we show how community membership can motivate climate activism in two very different contexts: for politically conservative hunters and fishers in the western United States, and for progressive climate activists in the US and UK. In the first context, we describe how members of the right-wing hunting community emphasize their collective identity through shared ways of communicating, and as a result, encourage climate activism and challenge the political polarization around climate action. In the second context, we…

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Human reactions to climate change: a social psychological perspective

Rusi Jaspal and Brigitte Nerlich

Climate change is a significant global challenge but also a controversial topic. In this article, we present an integrative theoretical framework and discuss the social psychological aspects of climate change, focusing on how it is communicated and understood, and how people respond to it. First, we focus on linguistic constructions of climate change and its mitigation measures, drawing on tenets of social representations theory. Second, we outline the individual and group levels of identity and their relevance to understanding how…

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Putting the brakes on climate change – it’s about more than just CO2.

Kathleen A. Mar

Climate change mitigation is about more than just CO2. Mitigating a suite of additional pollutants is important for limiting climate change: in particular, taking action on what are known as “short-lived climate-forcing pollutants” (SLCPs). Although it is common to report the effect of non-CO2 climate warmers in terms of “CO2 equivalence” they aren’t simply “equivalent” – their effects on climate and ecosystem are distinct. In the case of SLCPs, one important difference is in the time horizon: SLCPs have the…

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Collection 2, Climate change and its impacts

A collection on climate change and its impacts with an emphasis on health

Research articles

Epidemic of heat-related illnesses among workers exposed to hot working environments in the changing climate scenario

Vidhya Venugopal, PK Latha, Tord Kjellstrom, Rebekah Lucas, Kristina Jakobsson, Jason Glaser, Seichi Horie, Marvin González-Quiroz, Sandra Peraza, Ilana Weiss, David Wegman, Theo Bodin, Cathrina Wessling, Hannu Rintamaki and Sirkka Rissanen

Rising global temperatures, coupled with decreasing access to clean drinking water, may enhance the effects of heat exposure to general and working populations across the globe. People working in jobs that require moderate or heavy manual labor in hot environments are at particular risk caused by the combined effect of exposures to high environmental heat and internal heat production. Exposures to heat can lead to a range of clinical health effects such as fatigue, exhaustion, heat syncope, fainting, heat stroke…

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Sea level under climate change: Understanding the links between the past and the future

Keven Roy, Nicole S. Khan, Timothy A. Shaw, Robert E. Kopp and Benjamin P. Horton

Rising global sea level, a consequence of climate change, results from an increase in the world ocean’s water volume and mass. Recent climate warming is responsible for producing the highest rate of global average sea-level rise of the past few millennia, and this rate will accelerate through the 21st century and beyond, exposing low-lying islands and coastal regions to significant flood risks. The flood risks can be compounded or diminished locally because changes in sea level are not uniform. In…

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Rising carbon dioxide is decreasing nutrition in crops and endangering health among the less wealthy

Matthew Smith and Samuel S Myers

Carbon dioxide levels are rising globally. The increasing CO2 levels reduce the concentration of nutrients in many of the crops that are consumed worldwide (wheat, rice, barley, maize, legumes, and potatoes). The larger effects for human health are concentrated in regions that heavily rely on these crops for their nutrition such as South and Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Because these effects are likely to be hidden, we should better monitor the nutritional status of populations as…

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Heat stress and inadequate toilet access at work places in India – a potential hazard to working women in a changing climate

Vidhya Venugopal, Rekha Shanmugam, Priscilla Johnson, Rebekah Ann Isabel Lucas and Kristina Jakobsson

In the past few decades, increasingly blistering heat due to climate change has created more illnesses and claimed more lives worldwide, an issue mostly ignored because it’s an invisible hazard and hard-to-document disaster. Victims are usually vulnerable populations, including workers exposed on a daily basis to heat, who not only suffer from heat illnesses but also from an exacerbation of existing health problems aggravated by heat and dehydration. Research has proved that heat is a higher risk for female workers,…

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Will climate change worsen your health?

Joan Ballester

Nearly 8% of deaths in Europe are due to ambient temperatures, and global warming represents an additional threat for public health. Despite the fact that we expect more frequent, intense and persistent heat waves during the present century, it is actually not clear whether the number of attributable deaths will also increase. Here I discuss why the role of early adaptation to temperature rise is a major ongoing research topic in science and policy-making, and how these eventual acclimatization processes…

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The impact of climate change will hit urban dwellers first – Can green infrastructure save us?

Rüdiger Grote

Two phenomena that can cause large numbers of premature human deaths have gained attention in the last years: heat waves and air pollution. These two effects have two things in common: They are closely related to climate change and they are particularly intense in urban areas. Urban areas are particular susceptible to these impacts because they can store lots of heat and have little opportunity for cooling off (also known as the urban heat island effect). In order to mitigate…

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Increasing heat creates hardship for brick kiln workers in Chennai, India and the alternative pathways reducing it

Karin Lundgren Kownacki, Siri M. Kjellberg, Pernille Goosh, Marwa Dabaieh and Vidhya Venugopal

Climate change brings new burdens to people working outdoors. Migrant populations working at brick kilns in India are one such group facing dangerously overheated working conditions. Many migrate to the kilns from rural areas under bonded labor conditions. We argue that solutions need to go beyond industry-oriented technology-based solutions and focus on the social problem and take a people focused stance. In addition to adopting more locally appropriate technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and heat in the work environment,…

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Collection 1, Launch challenge

A launch collection of accessible climate articles

Research articles

Choose you own scientific experiment: Triggering debris flows and flash floods

Thea Turkington

Landslides and flash floods result in many fatalities around the globe. Understanding what triggers these events is therefore vital, although how to approach this problem is not straight forward. After background information for the experiment and some guidelines, two options are presented to learn more about the triggers of debris flows: (A) using rainfall or (B) the atmospheric conditions. You can then choose the option that appears more useful and interesting to you (you can always go back and read…

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Surface lakes on Greenland will spread further inland as the climate warms

Amber A Leeson

Each summer, a rash of lakes forms from ponded meltwater on top of the Greenland ice sheet. These ‘supraglacial’ (on top of ice) lakes can drain through the ice sheet, delivering their contents to its base. The ice sheet slides on a thin film of water, and when extra water is added to this film (for example from a draining supraglacial lake) the sliding (‘flow’) happens a bit faster. At present, under-ice pipe-like features enable excess water to drain out…

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Could climate engineering save the Greenland Ice Sheet?

Patrick J. Applegate and K. Keller

Engineering the climate through albedo modification (AM) could slow, but probably would not stop, melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Albedo modification is a technology that could reduce surface air temperatures through putting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. AM has never been tested, but it might reduce surface air temperatures faster and more cheaply than reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some scientists claim that AM would also prevent or reverse sea-level rise. But, are these claims true? The Greenland Ice…

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The impact of climate change on Australian Aboriginal hunter-gatherers and their response over the last 35,000 years.

Alan N Williams

In a recent article, I (and my colleagues) present models of population change for key regions across Australia over the last 35,000 years. We use these models to test an archaeological method (the use of numbers of radiocarbon dates as an indicator of human behaviour), explore the relationship of Aboriginal people and climate change, and to provide a status update for Australian archaeological research. We find that the archaeological technique is reliable, albeit with well-documented caveats that the user needs…

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Are humans to blame for the heat experienced in Geneva in the summer of 2015?

Oliver Angelil

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humans have been changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere by burning fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These gases are known to scientists as “greenhouse-gases”. Greenhouse-gases are vital to sustain life on Earth, but rapidly increasing concentrations of them can have catastrophic consequences. The word ‘catastrophic’ is perfectly fitting here, because, as will be demonstrated in this article, it is now believed our greenhouse-gas emissions play a large role in…

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What do historical temperature records tell us about natural variability in global temperature?

Patrick T Brown

Global average surface air temperature can change when it is either ‘forced’ to change by factors such as increasing greenhouse gasses, or it can change on its own through ‘unforced’ natural cycles like El-Niño/La-Niña. In this paper we estimated the magnitude of unforced temperature variability using historical datasets rather than the more commonly used computer climate models. We used data recorded by thermometers back to the year 1880 as well as data from “nature’s thermometers” – things like tree rings,…

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Can somebody clear the air? How air quality and climate change are connected.

Erika von Schneidemesser

Air pollution and climate change are different phenomena, but are connected in a number of ways. The same sources emit both air pollutants and greenhouse gases, many air pollutants affect the Earth’s energy balance and thereby affect climate change, and a changing climate will affect air quality. Policy options to address either air quality or climate change cannot be formulated and applied in isolation, as most will often affect emissions of both greenhouse gases and air pollutants. This article outlines…

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Global warming might be on hold, but it’s not cancelled

Iselin Medhaug

Instrumental measurements of surface temperatures are available back to around 1850. Based on these, we can estimate the annual mean global temperature. Global temperatures are clearly rising, mainly because of increasing amounts of greenhouse gases, like for example CO2 and methane, from use of coal, oil and gas and deforestation. Since 1998, a paradox seems to have appeared, where the global temperature has stopped rising even with a steady increase in release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This period…

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A new way to quickly estimate climate change impacts on rivers and streams

Julie A. Vano and Meghan M. Dalton

We outline a new method that offers quick insights into how the amount of water in rivers and streams will be impacted by warmer temperatures and future precipitation change. This method yields comparable results to more conventional model-intense climate change impact studies and is faster and cheaper to implement, making it a practical alternative for those exploring future water supply changes in places with limited computational access. Using rivers and streams in the Pacific Northwest of North America as an…

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El Niño dynamics and long lead climate forecasts

Joan Ballester, S. Bordoni, D. Petrova and X. Rodó

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climatic phenomenon in the tropical Pacific arising from interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere on timescales ranging from months to years. ENSO generates the most prominent climate alterations known worldwide, even very far from where it forms. It affects weather extremes, landslides, wildfires or entire ecosystems, and it has major impacts on human health, agriculture and the global economy. Reliable forecasts of ENSO with long lead times would represent a major achievement in…

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Limitations in our knowledge of the Sun’s variability and impact on stratospheric ozone

William Thomas Ball

Changes in the Sun over the 11-year solar cycle modify the amount of ozone in the atmosphere over the tropics above 20 km. It is thought that the temperature change resulting from the induced variations of ozone may lead to an impact on the surface climate. Knowing by how much the solar ultraviolet light changes over the cycle is key to understanding the size of that influence. We provide a new model dataset of solar irradiance variability and compare it…

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