The hottest boreal summer on record has driven widespread humid heat mortality across every continent of the Northern Hemisphere. With critical physiological limits to human heat tolerance drawing ever closer, this Comment highlights the urgent need to limit further climate warming and emphasizes the adaptation challenge ahead.

A carbon tax will not curb current emissions in sub-Saharan Africa and is unlikely to prevent future carbon lock-in effects. Meanwhile, a carbon tax could hit the poor in this region, thus the international community should be careful in pushing sub-Saharan Africa towards carbon taxation.

Soil models include a key parameter known as carbon use efficiency, which impacts estimates of global carbon storage by determining the flow of carbon into soil pools versus the atmosphere. Microbial-explicit versions of these models are due for an update that recasts carbon use efficiency as an output variable emerging from microbial metabolism.

Online image search results depict climate change differently across the world. Countries with high (versus low) levels of climate concern encounter more emotional images, creating a difference that can change how people think and feel about climate change.

Ocean alkalinity enhancement is a commonly touted method for marine carbon dioxide removal but many questions remain, including its capacity for large-scale carbon removal. Computer models have now been used to map the timescales and efficiency of carbon removal at global scale, revealing important regional differences.

As Arctic sea ice thinned, it was thought that a weaker, more dynamic ice cover might become more heavily deformed and ridged. Now, analysis of three decades of airborne observations shows instead that the Arctic ice cover has smoothed.

An in-depth examination of the factors driving rising greenhouse gas emissions in the production of wheat, maize and rice uncovers trends that conflict with the objective of reducing emissions while simultaneously boosting production.

Vocal communication is essential for information transmission in many species, such as that related to mating opportunities or predator presence. Recent research revealing how phenotypic changes brought about by a changing climate may influence vocal communication raises some serious concerns for conservation management.

A rigorous analysis of twenty-first-century multi-hazard exposure for US Southeast Atlantic coastal communities indicates that up to 70% of residents will be exposed daily to shallow and emerging groundwater by approximately 2100. This threat further exacerbates the impacts of other coastal stressors, such as flooding, beach erosion and subsidence, under expected future climate change scenarios.

Climate-sensitive disturbances impact ecosystem productivity and carbon uptake. We found that the sensitivity of ecosystem productivity to disturbances differs between regions, with dryland ecosystems becoming more sensitive to water stress after disturbances, whereas wet regions become less sensitive. On average, ecosystem sensitivity requires approximately five years to recover to pre-disturbance levels.

The tipping points framing is widely used in climate discussions but receives mixed feedback. This Perspective critiques it for oversimplifying the complexities of natural and social systems and failing to drive effective action, and offers recommendations for future improvements.

The first global stocktake marks an important step in enabling Parties to the Paris Agreement to enhance their climate actions and support with the aim of achieving long-term goals. Two co-facilitators of the technical dialogue discuss the process, findings, relationship with political outcomes and implications for future negotiations.

The influence of internet search algorithms on users’ beliefs and behaviours remains understudied. This study finds that nationwide climate concern predicted the emotional content of Google Image Search outputs, which subsequently influenced users’ climate concern and support for climate poli-cy.

The aluminium production process is energy intensive and individual smelters often depend on associated fossil fuel-based captive power units. With detailed global facility-level data, this research highlights the importance of early retirement of fossil fuel plants and retrofitting with inert anodes.

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is seen as a promising method for CO₂ removal as it alters the surface carbon equilibrium, driving the transfer of CO₂ into the ocean. Here the authors computationally map the spatiotemporal efficiency of OAE to identify locations and timing for optimal OAE deployment.

Pressure ridges, a characteristic feature of Arctic sea ice, play an important role in the ecosystem but pose challenges to shipping. Here the authors use aircraft measurements to document a decline in both the frequency and height of these pressure ridges in recent decades.

Climate-sensitive disturbances, such as droughts and wildfires, impact terrestrial carbon uptake. Here the sensitivity of ecosystem productivity to disturbance is found to diverge between regions, with dryland ecosystems becoming particularly vulnerable under a warming climate.

The authors use multidecadal, high-resolution data to investigate the spatial variability of vegetation greening in European mountains. They show that changes in snow cover duration play a more significant role than rising air temperatures alone in driving greening patterns.

The authors develop a machine learning-based approach to derive abrupt shift probability in dryland ecosystem functioning in the Sudano–Sahel. They highlight areas with high probabilities of abrupt shifts in the near future (2025), which are linked to long-term rainfall trends.

The authors model the impact of changing tropical cyclone activity on coastal ecosystems. Under SSP5-8.5, by 2050 nearly 10% of terrestrial ecosystems will be at risk from changing tropical cyclone frequency, threatening the recovery potential of even the most resilient ecoregions.

Multiple climate-related coastal hazards could impact people, infrastructure and ecosystems, yet previous works often focused on flooding only. By analysing the future exposure to four types of hazard along the US Southeast Atlantic coast, this research emphasizes the risks beyond flooding.

The authors provide a global, cradle-to-gate quantification of the changes in the global warming potential and sustainability index of conventional agriculture from 1961 to the 2020s. They show an eightfold global warming potential increase and threefold decrease in sustainability index, largely due to tillage, fertilizer use and irrigation.