Abstract This research note focuses on the current climate change research scenario and discusses primarily what is required in the present global climate change conditions. Most of the climate change research and models predict adverse future conditions that have to be faced by humanity, with less emphasis on mitigation measures. Moreover, research ends as reports on the shelves of scientists and researchers and as publications in journals. At this juncture the major focus should be on research that helps in reducing the impact rather than on analysing future scenarios of climate change using different models. The article raises several questions and suggestions regards climate change research and lays emphasis on what we really need from climate change researchers.

Australia’s primary industries are likely to be uniquely impacted upon by climate change. In February 2011 the inaugural Climate Change Research Strategy for Primary Industries (CCRSPI) conference was held to discuss the current state of climate change research across Australia’s primary industries. Never before had policy makers, producers and scientists from all sectors of our primary industries been brought together in one event to focus on the challenges and opportunities of climate change. This conference was a unique forum to address those challenges and opportunities by sharing knowledge across the various sectors, scientific disciplines and the industry-policy-science divide. While this collection of review papers provides an excellent knowledge base for industry and government to plan and implement policy and make further research investments to address the obvious gaps there is still much to be done in terms of research and the co-ordination of research. The often unrelated research activity in the adaptation and mitigation components of climate change research have the potential to have either synergistic or antagonistic outcomes at several scales and in several sectors ranging from policy to industry and community. The significant injection of research and development funds into this area through the Carbon Farming Futures and other associated programs will provide further impetus to the need for national co-ordination of climate change research in Australia’s Primary Industries. To build on all this knowledge and experience gained at the 2011 CCRSPI Conference, CCRSPI is currently (2012) finalising the national climate change research strategy for the sector, with an associated audit of existing projects and capacity, in order to encourage and advocate the cross-sectoral RDE needs and co-ordination for the future.

The massive expansion of scientific literature on climate change1 poses challenges for global environmental assessments and our understanding of how these assessments work. Big data and machine learning can help us deal with large collections of scientific text, making the production of assessments more tractable, and giving us better insights about how past assessments have engaged with the literature. We use topic modelling to draw a topic map, or topography, of over 400,000 publications from the Web of Science on climate change. We update current knowledge on the IPCC, showing that compared with the baseline of the literature identified, the social sciences are in fact over-represented in recent assessment reports. Technical, solutions-relevant knowledge—especially in agriculture and engineering—is under-represented. We suggest a variety of other applications of such maps, and our findings have direct implications for addressing growing demands for more solution-oriented climate change assessments that are also more firmly rooted in the social sciences2,3. The perceived lack of social science knowledge in assessment reports does not necessarily imply an IPCC bias, but rather suggests a need for more social science research with a focus on technical topics on climate solutions. The rapid growth of climate change research presents challenges for IPCC assessments and their stated aim of being comprehensive, objective and transparent. Here the authors use topic modelling to map the climate change literature, and assess how well it is represented in IPCC reports.

We propose a general method for evaluating, and possibly improving, the interface between scientific research and policy-making institutions. The method considers the adequacy of both institutional structures for incorporating research, and research for addressing institutional needs. It involves both interviews (with policy makers and scientists) and formal analyses of the links between the research and the decisions described in the interviews. A case study applies the method in analyzing the usefulness of climate change research for managing salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest. It shows these policy makers to be receptive to the research, which is, in principle, relevant to them. However, they are unable to use it because the research is not currently formulated in ways compatible with current decision-making models. For their part, these models are not comprehensive enough to capture the full range of potentially relevant environmental forcers, including climate change.

The climate change research community is developing a toolkit for creating new scenarios to explore and evaluate the extensive uncertainties associated with future climate change and development pathways. Components of the toolkit include pathways for greenhouse gas emissions over this century and their associated magnitude and pattern of climate change; descriptions of a range of possible socioeconomic development pathways, including qualitative narratives and quantitative elements; and climate change policies to achieve specific levels of radiative forcing and levels of adaptive capacity. These components are combined within a matrix architecture to create a scenario. Five reference socioeconomic development pathways have been described along axes describing increasing socioeconomic and environmental challenges to adaptation and to mitigation. This paper extends these global pathways to describe their possible consequences for public health and health care, and considers the additional elements that could be added to increase the relevance of the new scenarios to address a wider range of policy relevant questions than previously possible.

SciDAC has invested heavily in climate change research. We offer a candid opinion as to the impact of the DOE laboratories' SciDAC projects on the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, there is a crucial need for scientists in both thermal physiology and climate change research to develop the integrated approaches necessary to evaluate the health, economic, technological, social, and cultural impacts of 1.5°C warming. Our aim was to explore the fidelity of remote temperature measurements for quantitatively identifying the continuous redistribution of heat within both the Earth and the human body. Not accounting for the regional distribution of warming and heat storage patterns can undermine the results of thermal physiology and climate change research. These concepts are discussed herein using two parallel examples: the so-called slowdown of the Earth's surface temperature warming in the period 1998-2013; and the controversial results in thermal physiology, arising from relying heavily on core temperature measurements. In total, the concept of heat is of major importance for the integrity of systems, such as the Earth and human body. At present, our understanding about the interplay of key factors modulating the heat distribution on the surface of the Earth and in the human body remains incomplete. Identifying and accounting for the interconnections among these factors will be instrumental in improving the accuracy of both climate models and health guidelines.

By growing awareness for and interest in climate change, media coverage enlarges the window of opportunity by which research can engage individuals and collectives in climate actions. However, we question whether the climate change research that gets mediatized is fit for this challenge. From a survey of the 51,230 scientific articles published in 2020 on climate change, we show that the news media preferentially publicizes research outputs found in multidisciplinary journals and journals perceived as top-tier. An in-depth analysis of the content of the top-100 mediatized papers, in comparison to a random subset, reveals that news media showcases a narrow and limited facet of climate change knowledge (i.e., natural science and health). News media selectivity reduces climate change research to the role of a sentinel and whistleblower for the large-scale, observed, or end-of-century consequences of climate change for natural Earth system components. The social, economic, technological, and energy aspects of climate change are curtailed through mediatization, as well as local and short-term scales of processes and solutions. Reviewing the social psychological mechanisms that underlie behavioral change, we challenge the current criteria used to judge newsworthiness and argue that the consequent mediatization of climate change research fails to breed real society engagement in actions. A transformative agenda for the mediatization of climate change research implies aligning newsworthiness with news effectiveness, i.e., addressing the extent to which communication is effective in presenting research that is likely to produce behavioral change.

This study presents a comprehensive overview of the evolving landscape of tourism and climate change research over the past decade by leveraging bibliometric analysis and a dataset sourced from the Scopus Database. The study scrutinised over 3400 English language articles. The analysis reveals a remarkable surge in publications, signifying the growing recognition of climate change’s multifaceted impact on tourism. However, a noteworthy geographical disparity emerges, with many regions remaining underrepresented in the literature, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. This oversight is concerning, given the vulnerability of these regions to climate change and their burgeoning tourism industries. The study also highlights the pivotal role of influential scholars, funding organisations, and publication outlets in shaping the research landscape. The European Commission and the National Natural Science Foundation of China are major funders. At the same time, journals like Sustainability and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism serve as prominent platforms for disseminating research findings. The analysis uncovers thematic trends, including the growing focus on climate change modelling and its implications for destination planning. However, research gaps persist, notably in sports tourism and climate resilience within the tourism sector. In conclusion, this study offers valuable insights into the current state of tourism and climate change research, pinpointing areas that demand increased attention and inclusivity. It is a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, and stakeholders working towards a sustainable and resilient future for the global tourism industry in the face of climate change.

Research on heat waves (periods of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity) is a newly emerging research topic within the field of climate change research with high relevance for the whole of society. In this study, we analyzed the rapidly growing scientific literature dealing with heat waves. No summarizing overview has been published on this literature hitherto. We developed a suitable search query to retrieve the relevant literature covered by the Web of Science (WoS) as complete as possible and to exclude irrelevant literature (n = 8,011 papers). The time evolution of the publications shows that research dealing with heat waves is a highly dynamic research topic, doubling within about 5 years. An analysis of the thematic content reveals the most severe heat wave events within the recent decades (1995 and 2003), the cities and countries/regions affected (USA, Europe, and Australia), and the ecological and medical impacts (drought, urban heat islands, excess hospital admissions, and mortality). An alarming finding is that the limit for survivability may be reached at the end of the twenty-first century in many regions of the world due to the fatal combination of rising temperatures and humidity levels measured as “wet-bulb temperature” (WBT). Risk estimation and future strategies for adaptation to hot weather are major political issues. We identified 104 citation classics, which include fundamental early works of research on heat waves and more recent works (which are characterized by a relatively strong connection to climate change).