Skeptical Science New Research for Week #31 2023

Posted on 3 August 2023 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack

Torpid summer publication

It's rare these days that a New Research edition sports fewer than 100 new publications, but as with every late summer it seems a lot of folks are on holiday just now. Our listing is driven by journal article publication notices feeding our queries to the academic digital object identifier system (DOI), employing several academic article database API products for compilation. This week's edition is typical of this time of year; not only are there apparently sliightly fewer fresh publications coming through the editorial mill but also articles are not appearing in the DOI system as expeditiously as usual. Or so we hypothesize from empirical evidence, here finding 41 articles not yet recorded as DOI thus exaggerating the effect of a slightly scantier than usual raw feed. Presumably there'll be a bulge coming along; we queue articles for re-query when they fail to appear as DOI. 

Open access notables

"We can't afford to deal with climate change." This claim is a universal heavyweight appeal to procrastination in the solutions denial  and discourses of delay departments. Another way of thinking of it: the more we avoid dealing with climate change, the less we can afford to deal with climate change. In this week's government/NGO reports section is an example of costs amplified by decades of foot-dragging, typified by single relatively small region of the world: Pennsylvania’s Looming Climate Cost Crisis. The Rising Price to Protect Communities from Extreme Heat, Precipitation, and Sea Level Rise. There's a $15B  bill to pay to protect Pennsylvania citizens from our climate mess just until 2040, and this bill will rise each and every day we fail to modernize our energy systems. Multiply by an entire globe and we're talking real money. 

Speaking of money, see Total economic costs of climate change at different discount rates for market and non-market values, in Environmental Research Letters:

What will be the aggregated cost of climate change in achieving the Paris Agreement, including mitigation, adaptation, and residual impacts? Several studies estimated the aggregated cost but did not always consider the critical issues. Some do not address non-market values such as biodiversity and human health, and most do not address differentiating discount rates. In this study, we estimate the aggregated cost of climate change using an integrated assessment model linked with detailed-process-based climate impact models and different discount rates for market and non-market values. The analysis reveals that a climate policy with minimal aggregated cost is sensitive to socioeconomic scenarios and the way discount rates are applied. The results elucidate that a lower discount rate to non-market value—that is, a higher estimate of future value—makes the aggregated cost of achieving the Paris Agreement economically reasonable.

Sometimes (often?) better is less expensive, especially better engineering. Over-engineering has a legitimate purpose when employed to increase failure margins in critical applications. Under-engineering wastes more materials in place of design and implementation skills. Such under-engineering can cost our climate a lot. A case in point arrives via Near-term pathways for decarbonizing global concrete production,  in Nature Communications:

The production of concrete, more particularly the hydraulic cement that glues the material together, is one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While this is a well-studied source of emissions, the consequences of efficient structural design decisions on mitigating these emissions are not yet well known. Here, we show that a combination of manufacturing and engineering decisions have the potential to reduce over 76% of the GHG emissions from cement and concrete production, equivalent to 3.6 Gt CO2-eq lower emissions in 2100. The studied methods similarly result in more efficient utilization of resources by lowering cement demand by up to 65%, leading to an expected reduction in all other environmental burdens. 

82 articles in 46 journals by 362 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Increased Summer European Heatwaves in Recent Decades: Contributions From Greenhouse Gases-Induced Warming and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation-Like Variations, Luo et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef003701

The impact of fossil jet fuel emissions at altitude on climate change: A life cycle assessment study of a long-haul flight at different time horizons, Gaillot et al., Atmospheric Environment 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2023.119983

Weddell Sea Control of Ocean Temperature Variability on the Western Antarctic Peninsula, Morrison et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl103018

Observations of climate change, effects

Climate Change and Potential Demise of the Indian Deserts, Rajesh & Goswami, Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2022ef003459

Climate change has enhanced the positive contribution of rock weathering to the major ions in riverine transport, Gong et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2023.104203

Climate-Induced Decadal Ocean Wave Height Variability From Microseisms: 1931–2021, Bromirski, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023jc019722

Extreme precipitation driven by the rapid tropical Atlantic warming and the second developing La Niña over the Yangtze–Huaihe River Basin in August 2021, Zhao et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access 10.1007/s00382-023-06683-0

Spatiotemporal variability of the relationship between seasonal temperatures and precipitation in Spain, 1951–2019, Rodrigo, Theoretical and Applied Climatology 10.1007/s00704-023-04550-w

Weakened Sea-Land Breeze in a Coastal Megacity Driven by Urbanization and Ocean Warming, Xiao et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2022ef003341

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Amplification of warming on the Tibetan Plateau, Hu et al., Journal of Climate Open Access 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0471.1

How persistent and hazardous will extreme temperature events become in a warming Portugal?, Cardoso et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2023.100600

Increased occurrences of consecutive La Niña events under global warming, Geng et al., Nature Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41586-023-06236-9

Projected changes in extreme climate events over Africa under 1.5 , 2.0 and 3.0 global warming levels based on CMIP6 projections, Ayugi et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106872

Regional difference in precipitation seasonality over China from CMIP6 projections, Hu et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8199

The Impact of Human-Induced Climate Change on Future Tornado Intensity as Revealed Through Multi-Scale Modeling, Woods et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl104796

Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

An Approach for Selecting Observationally-Constrained Global Climate Model Ensembles for Regional Climate Impacts and Adaptation Studies in Canada, Jeong & Cannon, Atmosphere Open Access pdf 10.1080/07055900.2023.2239194

Assessment and improvement of RegCM 4.6 coupled with CLM4.5 in simulation of land surface temperature in mainland China, Ren et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00704-023-04487-0

Implications of Warm Pool Bias in CMIP6 Models on the Northern Hemisphere Wintertime Subtropical Jet and Precipitation, Liu & Grise, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl104896

Cryosphere & climate change

Evidence of Abrupt Transitions Between Sea Ice Dynamical Regimes in the East Greenland Marginal Ice Zone, Watkins et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl103558

Subglacial-Discharge Plumes Drive Widespread Subsurface Warming in Northwest Greenland's Fjords, Cowton et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl103801

Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

A claim for a ‘next generation’ of multisite range-wide forest genetic trials built on the legacy of ecological genetics to anticipate responses to climate, Sampedro & Alía, Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.16816

Assessing the future global distribution of land ecosystems as determined by climate change and cropland incursion, Robertson et al., Climatic Change Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10584-023-03584-3

Biodiversity and stoichiometric plasticity increase pico-phytoplankton contributions to marine net primary productivity and the biological pump, Letscher et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles 10.1029/2023gb007756

Climate change-induced shrub encroachment changes soil hydraulic properties and inhibits herbaceous growth in alpine meadows, Liu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109629

Climate-driven shifts in leaf senescence are greater for boreal species than temperate species in the Acadian Forest region in contrast to leaf emergence shifts, Spafford et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.1002/ece3.10362

Forest tree species adaptation to climate across biomes: Building on the legacy of ecological genetics to anticipate responses to climate change, Leites & Benito Garzón, Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.16711

Growth form and leaf habit drive contrasting effects of Arctic amplification in long-lived woody species, Frigo et al., Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.16895

Heat stress and amphibian immunity in a time of climate change, Rollins-Smith & Le Sage, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 10.1098/rstb.2022.0132

Limited range shifting in biocrusts despite climate warming: A 25-year resurvey, Mallen?Cooper et al., Journal of Ecology Open Access pdf 10.1111/1365-2745.14169

Nematode biomass changes along an elevational gradient are trophic group dependent but independent of body size, Li et al., Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.16814

Principles for climate resilience are prevalent in marine protected area management plans, Lopazanski et al., Conservation Letters Open Access pdf 10.1111/conl.12972

The impact of climate change on endangered plants and lichen, Wrobleski et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000225

The role and risks of selective adaptation in extreme coral habitats, Scucchia et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-39651-7

Tree responses and temperature requirements in two central Italy phenological gardens, Fornaciari et al., International Journal of Biometeorology Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00484-023-02522-3

GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

Biotic and abiotic factors controlling spatial variation of mean carbon turnover time in forest soil, Wang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 10.1029/2023jg007438

Carbon stock recovery from tree regeneration following selective logging in tropical forest of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, Armenta Montero & Ellis, Carbon Management Open Access pdf 10.1080/17583004.2023.2238672

Differential temperature sensitivity of intracellular metabolic processes and extracellular soil enzyme activities, Adekanmbi et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-20-2207-2023

Greenhouse gas emissions of Delhi, India: A trend analysis of sources and sinks for 2017–2021, Arora et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101634

Mixed Archaeal Production and Nitrifier Denitrification Dominate N2O Production in the East China Sea: Insights from Isotopocule and Hydroxylamine Analyses, Gu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 10.1029/2022jc019355

Reconstructing ocean carbon storage with CMIP6 Earth system models and synthetic Argo observations, Turner et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-20-1671-2023

Spatial and temporal variations of gross primary production simulated by land surface model BCC&AVIM2.0, Li et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2023.02.001

Understory ferns removal downregulates microbial carbon use efficiency and carbon accrual in previously degraded lands, Deng et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109631

Decarbonization

Direct synthesis of urea from carbon dioxide and ammonia, Ding et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-40351-5

Economic comparison of floating photovoltaic systems with tracking systems and active cooling in a Mediterranean water basin, Tina et al., Energy for Sustainable Development Open Access 10.1016/j.esd.2023.101283

From natural gas to green hydrogen: Developing and repurposing transnational energy infrastructure connecting North Africa to Europe, Cardinale, Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113623

Leveraging rail-based mobile energy storage to increase grid reliability in the face of climate uncertainty, Moraski et al., Nature Energy Open Access 10.1038/s41560-023-01276-x

Near-term pathways for decarbonizing global concrete production, Olsson et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-40302-0

Water-power scenarios to 2033: A mixed model, Hafezi et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103555

Climate change communications & cognition

Climate-change worry among two cohorts of late adolescents: Exploring macro and micro worries, coping, and relations to climate engagement, pessimism, and well-being, Wullenkord & Ojala, Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102093

Determining social-psychological drivers of Texas Gulf Coast homeowners’ intention to implement private green infrastructure practices, Le et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102090

Does consideration for future consequences matter in consumer decision to rent electric vehicles?, Srivastava et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113726

“So many things have changed”: Situated understandings of climate change impacts among the Bassari, south-eastern Senegal, Porcuna-Ferrer et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103552

Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Climate warming extends the effective growth period of winter wheat and increases grain protein content, Kong et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109477

Effect of climate smart agriculture technologies on crop yields: evidence from potato production in kenya, Andati et al., Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100539

Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

A drier than expected future, supported by near-surface relative humidity observations, Douville & Willett, Science Advances Open Access pdf 10.1126/sciadv.ade6253

Future Projections of Extreme Integrated Water Vapor Transport and Population Exposure Over the Asian Monsoon Region, Guo et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef003583

Increased southerly and easterly water vapor transport contributed to the dry-to-wet transition of summer precipitation over the Three-River Headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau, LIU et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2023.07.005

MOPREDAS&century database and precipitation trends in mainland Spain, 1916–2020, Gonzalez?Hidalgo et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1002/joc.8060

Projections of precipitation extremes over the Volta Basin: insight from CanESM2 regional climate model under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 forcing scenarios, Gyamfi et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-023-03666-3

Response of extreme rainfall to atmospheric warming and wetting: Implications for hydrologic designs under a changing climate, Zhang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 10.1029/2022jd038430

Climate change economics

Do climate risks influence foreign direct investment inflows to emerging and developing economies?, Gopalan et al., Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2023.2237479

Investor compensation for oil and gas phase out decisions: aligning valuation methods to decarbonization, Boute, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2023.2230938

Total economic costs of climate change at different discount rates for market and non-market values, Oda et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/accdee

Climate change mitigation public policy research

A “greenhouse gas balance” for aviation in line with the Paris Agreement, Fuglestvedt et al., WIREs Climate Change 10.1002/wcc.839

Can gain motivation induce Indians to adopt electric vehicles? Application of an extended theory of Planned Behavior to map EV adoption intention, Deka et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113724

Climate action information disclosure in Colombian companies: A regional and sectorial analysis, Linares-Rodríguez et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101626

Digital technologies – the missing link between climate action transparency and accountability?, Hsu & Schletz, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2023.2237937

Effects of basin-scale climate modes and upwelling on nearshore marine heatwaves and cold spells in the California Current, Dalsin et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-023-39193-4

Formal local government coordination to mitigate climate change, Armstrong, Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101636

Heterogeneous responses to climate: evidence from residential electricity consumption, Da et al., Climatic Change 10.1007/s10584-023-03590-5

How can Chinese cities escape from carbon lock-in? The role of low-carbon city policy, Zhao et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101629

Network analysis of scientific advisory committee integration in climate change policy: A comparison of Germany and Japan, Nagel et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222

Subsidy allocation strategies for power industry’s clean transition under Bayesian Nash equilibrium, He et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113729

The characteristics and drivers of China’s city-level urban-rural activity sectors’ carbon intensity gap during urban land expansion, Gao et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113725

The effects of different forms of FDI on the carbon emissions of multinational enterprises: A complex network approach, Ma et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113731

The pending commitment and ongoing political divide on carbon pricing in Japan, Li, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2023.2237491

Climate change impacts on human health

Exploring the nexus between bedroom design and sleep quality in a warming climate, Emmitt, Urban Climate Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101635

Impact of climate change on human health concerning climate-induced natural disaster: evidence from an eastern Indian state, Purohit & Rout, Climatic Change 10.1007/s10584-023-03578-1

Climate change impacts on human culture

Challenging the values of the polluter elite: A global consequentialist response to Evensen and Graham's (2022) ‘The irreplaceable virtues of in-person conferences’, Whitmarsh & Kreil, Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101881

Climate change, air conditioning, and urbanization—evidence from daily household electricity consumption data in China, Cui et al., Climatic Change 10.1007/s10584-023-03589-y

Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

The Arctic Ocean’s Changing Beaufort Gyre System: An Assessment of Current Understanding, Open Questions and Future Research Directions, Timmermans & Pickart, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-23-0129.1

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Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

Enhancing Resilience in Buildings Through Energy Efficiency, Franconi et al., Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

The authors examine the ability of existing and new residential buildings to withstand extreme temperatures and the associated effects on occupants and property. Assessment attributes include geographic location, building type, building baseline condition, and improved efficiency condition. The authors developed methods to quantify the resilience benefits of building energy efficiency. Their intention is to more fully value efficiency by capturing traditional benefits, such as reduced annual operating energy costs and the associated greenhouse gas emissions, as well as diverse aspects of resilience.

Pennsylvania’s Looming Climate Cost Crisis. The Rising Price to Protect Communities from Extreme Heat, Precipitation, and Sea Level Rise, The Center for Climate Integrity

The authors present the first-ever attempt to calculate the true costs of the climate crisis on municipal governments across Pennsylvania. They estimate that Pennsylvania’s municipal governments will need to spend at least $15.47 billion by 2040, or nearly $1 billion a year, to protect residents from extreme heat, heavy precipitation events, and rising sea levels.

Water Resilience in the Face of Climate Change: From Droughts to Flooding, Food & Water Watch

Climate change is already affecting water quality and availability. Rising temperatures and sea levels, and an increase in extreme weather events, lead to more droughts and floods, which threaten everything from public health to food and energy production. Some regions like California, where drought has ravaged the state for the last few years, are now facing life-threatening floods. Yet California is also an example of how reliance on fossil fuels and factory farms contribute to these climate change events. Achieving water resilience requires implementing water management strategies that include moving away from fossil fuels and factory farms.

Birds and Transmission, Bateman et al., National Audubon Society

To achieve climate change stabilization, the U.S. needs to rapidly build out transmission and clean energy infrastructure. The current U.S. electric grid was not designed for a clean energy future and does not have sufficient capacity for a transition to 100% clean and renewable energy production. Furthermore, the current process for developing transmission takes too long and does not always provide adequate environmental and cultural protections. Conservation organizations and clean energy project developers will need to work together towards this mutual goal. This means collaborative planning efforts to minimize the risks of transmission construction and operation to biodiversity and to speed the deployment of needed capacity additions that will enable clean power.

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Obtaining articles without journal subscriptions

We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light"  but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance. 

• Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.

• Unpaywall offers a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that automatically indicates when an article is freely accessible and provides immediate access without further trouble. Unpaywall is also unscammy, works well, is itself offered free to use. The organizers (a legitimate nonprofit) report about a 50% success rate

• The weekly New Research catch is checked against the Unpaywall database with accessible items being flagged. Especially for just-published articles this mechansim may fail. If you're interested in an article title and it is not listed here as "open access," be sure to check the link anyway. 

How is New Research assembled?

Most articles appearing here are found via  RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance. 

Relevant articles are then queried against the Unpaywall database, to identify open access articles and expose useful metadata for articles appearing in the database. 

The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:

• Was an article deemed of sufficient merit by a team of journal editors and peer reviewers? The fact of journal RSS output assigns a "yes" to this automatically. 
• Is an article relevant to the topic of anthropogenic climate change? Due to filter overlap with other publication topics of inquiry, of a typical week's 550 or so input articles about 1/4 of RSS output makes the cut.

A few journals offer public access to "preprint" versions of articles for which the review process is not yet complete. For some key journals this all the mention we'll see in RSS feeds, so we include such items in New Research. These are flagged as "preprint."

The section "Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives" includes some items that are not scientific research per se but fall instead into the category of "perspectives," observations of implications of research findings, areas needing attention, etc.

Suggestions

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Journals covered

A list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.

Previous edition

The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.