| 1. |
- Azar, Christian, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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IPCC and the effectiveness of carbon sinks
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 17:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 2. |
- Bhowmik, Avit K., et al.
(författare)
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Powers of 10 : Seeking 'sweet spots' for rapid climate and sustainability actions between individual and global scales
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 15:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and related sustainability initiatives will require halving of global greenhouse gas emissions each decade from now on through to 2050, when net zero emissions should be achieved. To reach such significant reductions requires a rapid and strategic scaling of existing and emerging technologies and practices, coupled with economic and social transformations and novel governance solutions. Here we present a new 'Powers of 10' (P10) logarithmic framework and demonstrate its potential as a practical tool for decision makers and change agents at multiple scales to inform and catalyze engagement and actions, complementing and adding nuance to existing frameworks. P10 assists in identifying the suitable cohorts and cohort ranges for rapidly deploying climate and sustainability actions between a single individual and the globally projected ~ 10 billion persons by 2050. Applying a robust dataset of climate solutions from Project Drawdown's Plausible scenario that could cumulatively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1051 gigatons (Gt) against a reference scenario (2190 Gt) between 2020 and 2050, we seek to identify a 'sweet spot' where these climate and sustainability actions are suitably scaled. We suggest that prioritizing the analyzed climate actions between community and urban scales, where global and local converge, can help catalyze and enhance individual, household and local practices, and support national and international policies and finances for rapid sustainability transformations.
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| 3. |
- Assis, Talita Oliveira, et al.
(författare)
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CO2emissions from forest degradation in Brazilian Amazon
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 15:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Forest degradation is widespread around the world, due to multiple factors such as unsustainable logging, agriculture, invasive species, fire, fuelwood gathering, and livestock grazing. In the Brazilian Amazon forest degradation from August 2006 to July 2016 reached 1,1 869 800 ha. The processes of forest degradation are still poorly understood, being a missing component in anthropogenic CO2 emission estimates in tropical forests. In this work, we analyzed temporal trajectories of forest degradation from August 2006 to July 2016 in the Brazilian Amazon and assessed their impact on the regional carbon balance. We combined the degradation process with deforestation-related processes (clear-cut deforestation and secondary vegetation dynamics), using the spatially-explicit INPE-EM carbon emission model. The trajectory analysis showed that 13% of the degraded area ended up being cleared and converted in the period and 61% of the total degraded area experienced only one event of degradation throughout the whole period. Net emissions added up to 5.4 GtCO2, considering the emissions from forest degradation and deforestation, absorption from degraded forest recovery, and secondary vegetation dynamics. The results show an increase in the contribution of forest degradation to net emissions towards the end of the period, related to the decrease in clear-cut deforestation rates, decoupled from the forest degradation rates. The analysis also indicates that the regeneration of degraded forests absorbed 1.8 GtCO2 from August 2006 and July 2016—a component typically overlooked in the regional carbon balance.
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| 4. |
- Fan, K. K., et al.
(författare)
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The scenario-based variations and causes of future surface soil moisture across China in the twenty-first century
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 16:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Surface soil moisture (SSM) is a key factor for water and heat exchanges between land surface and the atmosphere. It is also important to water resources, agriculture, and ecosystems. In the backdrop of global warming, SSM variations and potential causes are not well-known at regional scales. Based on soil moisture (SM) data from GLDAS-Noah and 16 global climate models (GCMs) selected from 25 GCMs in CMIP5, we analyzed spatial distribution and temporal changes of SSM in China and quantified fractional contributions of four meteorological factors to the SSM variations. The selected models have the same direction of historic trends in SSM during 1981-2005 as those in the GLDAS SSM data which were also further used to calibrate the trends simulated by the 16 GCMs. Based on the calibration results for the 16 GCMs, future SSMs for nine regions were analyzed in mainland China under four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenarios. No significant changes were identified in SSM across most regions of mainland China under RCP2.6 scenario. However, there is a general wetting tendency in the arid regions and drying tendency across the humid regions under all the scenarios except RCP2.6. In general, the higher the global temperature raises, the more grids with significant increase or significant decrease in SSM. These findings contradicted prevailing view that wet regions get wetter and dry regions get drier. Attribution analysis indicates that precipitation acts as the major driver for SSM variations and contributes up to 43.4% of SSM variations across China. These results provide new insights into future SSM response to climate warming and a scientific basis to mitigation and adaptation works related to SSM in the future.
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| 5. |
- Gordon, Line J., et al.
(författare)
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Rewiring food systems to enhance human health and biosphere stewardship
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 12:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Food lies at the heart of both health and sustainability challenges. We use a social-ecological framework to illustrate how major changes to the volume, nutrition and safety of food systems between 1961 and today impact health and sustainability. These changes have almost halved undernutrition while doubling the proportion who are overweight. They have also resulted in reduced resilience of the biosphere, pushing four out of six analysed planetary boundaries across the safe operating space of the biosphere. Our analysis further illustrates that consumers and producers have become more distant from one another, with substantial power consolidated within a small group of key actors. Solutions include a shift from a volume-focused production system to focus on quality, nutrition, resource use efficiency, and reduced antimicrobial use. To achieve this, we need to rewire food systems in ways that enhance transparency between producers and consumers, mobilize key actors to become biosphere stewards, and re-connect people to the biosphere.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Seekell, David, et al.
(författare)
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Food, trade, and the environment
- 2018
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing Ltd. - 1748-9326. ; 13:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 8. |
- Singh, Chandrakant, et al.
(författare)
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Rootzone storage capacity reveals drought coping strategies along rainforest-savanna transitions
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 15:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Climate change and deforestation have increased the risk of drought-induced forest-to-savanna transitions across the tropics and subtropics. However, the present understanding of forest-savanna transitions is generally focused on the influence of rainfall and fire regime changes, but does not take into account the adaptability of vegetation to droughts by utilizing subsoil moisture in a quantifiable metric. Using rootzone storage capacity (Sr), which is a novel metric to represent the vegetation's ability to utilize subsoil moisture storage and tree cover (TC), we analyze and quantify the occurrence of these forest-savanna transitions along transects in South America and Africa. We found forest-savanna transition thresholds to occur around a Sr of 550–750 mm for South America and 400–600 mm for Africa in the range of 30%–40% TC. Analysis of empirical and statistical patterns allowed us to classify the ecosystem's adaptability to droughts into four classes of drought coping strategies: lowly water-stressed forest (shallow roots, high TC), moderately water-stressed forest (investing in Sr, high TC), highly water-stressed forest (trade-off between investments in Sr and TC) and savanna-grassland regime (competitive rooting strategy, low TC). The insights from this study are useful for improved understanding of tropical eco-hydrological adaptation, drought coping strategies, and forest ecosystem regime shifts under future climate change.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Zhu, Y., et al.
(författare)
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Effects of the South Asian summer monsoon anomaly on interannual variations in precipitation over the South-Central Tibetan Plateau
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 15:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An anomalous South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) system could generate a large anomaly in precipitation and hydrological disasters in the SASM-prevailing area, as widely reported for the Indian Peninsula. However, how the SASM system influences the precipitation anomaly over the South-Central Tibetan Plateau (SCTP) is largely unknown. In this study, we (a) analyze the influences of the early and late onset (demise) of the SASM on the interannual variations in precipitation over the SCTP during 1979–2015; and (b) illuminate the underlying mechanisms and asymmetric effects with regard to the onset and demise of the SASM by analyzing the characteristics of water vapor transport and moisture budgets in this region. Results indicate that the precipitation anomaly over the SCTP is dominated by the cyclonic and anticyclonic water vapor transport associated with the anomalous SASM activities, causing moisture convergence and divergence in this region. The topographic effect in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau (SETP) and southwestern Tibetan Plateau (SWTP) further strengthens the anomaly in water vapor transport in vertical direction and contributes to the precipitation anomaly through moisture convergence and divergence. The anomalous SASM and topography exhibit asymmetric effects between the onset and demise as well as between the early and late onset (demise) of the SASM. They cause 23.41%, 15.91%, and 1.96% difference in precipitation between the early and late SASM-onset years, and 13.05%, 21.50%, and 29.86% difference in precipitation between the early and late SASM-demise years in the SETP, central Tibetan Plateau (CETP), and SWTP, by regulating the horizontal and vertical thermodynamic and dynamic processes. The results help improve our understanding of the SASM-precipitation relationship over the SCTP and guide the prediction of precipitation and alleviation of water-related disasters in the region and its surroundings that are home to billions of people in Asia.
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