Spatially resolved emulated annual temperature projections for overshoot pathways.

Due to insufficient climate action over the past decade, it is increasingly likely that 1.5 °C of global warming will be exceeded - at least temporarily - in the 21 century. Such a temporary temperature overshoot carries additional climate risks which are poorly understood.

Increasingly negative tropical water-interannual CO growth rate coupling.

Terrestrial ecosystems have taken up about 32% of the total anthropogenic CO emissions in the past six decades. Large uncertainties in terrestrial carbon-climate feedbacks, however, make it difficult to predict how the land carbon sink will respond to future climate change. Interannual variations in the atmospheric CO growth rate (CGR) are dominated by land-atmosphere carbon fluxes in the tropics, providing an opportunity to explore land carbon-climate interactions.

The role of urban trees in reducing land surface temperatures in European cities.

Urban trees influence temperatures in cities. However, their effectiveness at mitigating urban heat in different climatic contexts and in comparison to treeless urban green spaces has not yet been sufficiently explored. Here, we use high-resolution satellite land surface temperatures (LSTs) and land-cover data from 293 European cities to infer the potential of urban trees to reduce LSTs.

Moving towards integrating soil into spatial planning: No net loss of soil-based ecosystem services.

Degradation of ecosystems and the related loss of ecosystem services have called for new policies to achieve no net loss (NNL) of or even net gain between detrimental environmental impacts and restoration or preservation measures. While biodiversity offsetting has a long tradition, soils have rarely been considered in the accounting. Considering the crucial role of soil for ecosystem functioning and biodiversity and the increasing pressure on soil resources, we investigate how a NNL strategy building on a soil-based ecosystem services index can help steer sustainable spatial development.

Increasing the broad-leaved tree fraction in European forests mitigates hot temperature extremes.

Forests influence climate through a myriad of chemical, physical and biological processes and are an essential lever in the efforts to counter climate change. The majority of studies investigating potential climate benefits from forests have focused on forest area changes, while changes to forest management, in particular those affecting species composition, have received much less attention. Using a statistical model based on remote sensing observations over Europe, we show that broad-leaved tree species locally reduce land surface temperatures in summer compared to needle-leaved species.