The South Asian summer monsoon directly affects the lives of more than 1/6th of the world’s population. There is substantial variability within the monsoon season, including fluctuations between periods of heavy rainfall (wet spells) and low rainfall (dry spells). These fluctuations can cause extreme wet and dry regional conditions that adversely impact agricultural yields, water resources, infrastructure and human systems.

The timing of phenological events exerts a strong control over ecosystem function and leads to multiple feedbacks to the climate system. Phenology is inherently sensitive to temperature (although the exact sensitivity is disputed and recent warming is reported to have led to earlier spring, later autumn and increased vegetation activity. Such greening could be expected to enhance ecosystem carbon uptake, although reports also suggest decreased uptake for boreal forests.

The timing of phenological events exerts a strong control over ecosystem function and leads to multiple feedbacks to the climate system. Phenology is inherently sensitive to temperature (although the exact sensitivity is disputed) and recent warming is reported to have led to earlier spring, later autumn and increased vegetation activity. Such greening could be expected to enhance ecosystem carbon uptake, although reports also suggest decreased uptake for boreal forests.

Europe is the largest producer of wheat, the second most widely grown cereal crop after rice. The increased occurrence and magnitude of adverse and extreme agroclimatic events are considered a major threat for wheat production. We present an analysis that accounts for a range of adverse weather events that might significantly affect wheat yield in Europe. For this purpose we analysed changes in the frequency of the occurrence of 11 adverse weather events.

The global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century. This warming is spatially and temporally non-uniform, and one needs to understand its evolution to better evaluate its potential societal and economic impact. Here, the evolution of global land surface air temperature trend in the past century is diagnosed using the spatial–temporally multidimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition method. We find that the noticeable warming (>0.5 K) started sporadically over the global land and accelerated until around 1980.

Feeding a growing global population in a changing climate presents a significant challenge to society. The projected yields of crops under a range of agricultural and climatic scenarios are needed to assess food security prospects. Previous meta-analyses have summarized climate change impacts and adaptive potential as a function of temperature, but have not examined uncertainty, the timing of impacts, or the quantitative effectiveness of adaptation.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avert potentially disastrous global climate change requires substantial redevelopment of infrastructure systems. Cities are recognized as key actors for leading such climate change mitigation efforts. We have studied the greenhouse gas inventories and underlying characteristics of 22 global cities. These cities differ in terms of their climates, income, levels of industrial activity, urban form and existing carbon intensity of electricity supply.

The Greenland ice sheet has been one of the largest contributors to global sea-level rise over the past 20 years, accounting for 0.5 mm yr−1 of a total of 3.2 mm yr−1. A significant portion of this contribution is associated with the speed-up of an increased number of glaciers in southeast and northwest Greenland. Here, we show that the northeast Greenland ice stream, which extends more than 600 km into the interior of the ice sheet, is now undergoing sustained dynamic thinning, linked to regional warming, after more than a quarter of a century of stability.

Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing.

Human migration attributable to climate events has recently received significant attention from the academic and policy communities. Quantitative evidence on the relationship between individual, permanent migration and natural disasters is limited. A 21-year longitudinal survey conducted in rural Pakistan (1991–2012) provides a unique opportunity to understand the relationship between weather and long-term migration. We link individual-level information from this survey to satellite-derived measures of climate variability and control for potential confounders using a multivariate approach.