Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021

Why New Research?

Skeptical Science exists for the purpose of improving public capacity for critical thinking about anthropogenic  climate change. Effective critical analysis requires a firm basis of competent information, and for our purpose the wellsprings of fundamental understanding are found in peer-reviewed academic literature, our best grasp of how Earth's climate operates and how we're changing its operation and thus changing a myriad of dependencies on climate behavior. New Research provides a direct, distilled and easily accessed link to ongoing progress on understanding and coping with the climate change we're causing.

Beyond its immediate functional objective, there is a big picture visible in the content of New Research, with some details captured in that image themselves helpful for assessing the worth of concern over our recently invented form of rapid climate change. 

• New Research includes all papers reasonably relevant to the topic of anthropogenic climate change appearing in our raw feeds from scientific publishers; our purpose is not to put a thumb on the scale of research output so as to cause a slant. Over the course of 2020 we listed some 4,569 articles in our weekly compilations. None of these disagree with the concept of our warming Earth due to GHG emissions. A small proportion of these publications identify selectively positive effects of global warming, notably and necessarily founded on agreement on the effect we're having on climate. We're working on a proper count of article authors, but positing the safe bet that an average of three authors are found collaborating on each paper, we can immediately conclude that those disagreeing with the possibility of anthropogenic climate change are so remote from actual scientific understanding that they must be either deeply ignorant or in a state of profoundly deep denial. Ratios are information.

• Over the course of a year we list many hundreds of articles describing observations of climate change effects visible to instrumentation now, in the present. Again, this involves a prodigious number of authors. "It's not happening" is a non-starter; when this claim is heard, it's easy to provide factual correction by referring to any given issue of New Research.

• The climate modeling and simulation section of New Research is a helpful indication that models have long been adequate as early warning indicators of what will happen to climate as we continue to add GHGs to the atmosphere. It's easy to see that model output is entirely up to the demands made on model capacity for the purpose of helping to answer big public policy questions. We also maintain a section on climate model advancement revealing where attention to model improvements is being concentrated. This ongoing work is for the most part concerned with zeroing in on smaller scale effects to refine understanding of particular aspects of climate behavior and to improve increasingly detailed regional climate modeling. "Models are unreliable" is a position of misinformation from the perspective of "do we know enough to shape policy?". 

• "CO2 is plant food" and variations on this theme are increasingly common as it becomes more obvious that old-fashioned straight-up climate science denial is past its shelf life. This is perhaps a way of building acceptance of an insidious form of pollution, or more benignly plain old wishful thinking. In the biology and agricultural sections of New Research is a fuller picture of how Earth's vegetable biome and its dependents may fare as we change our climate. More particularly to us humans the section devoted to agriculture and agronomy is informative, where the picture is cloudy with a distinctly dark tinge. "CO2 is plant food" is a gross oversimplification and in fact appears to be glossing over features unfolding as significant net negatives in our emerging future. Unfortunately, perusing relevant research to any similar dismissive and intellectually truncated summation of our accidental climate modification will yield the same general result.

Those are just a few examples of the meta-message of New Research when a week's listings are asked "what's the takeaway?. No spin is necessary. Scientifically speaking, we have our act together on climate change, and those claiming otherwise or offering unrealistically hopeful assessments have little or no grounds for their stance, just by a glance at any week's edition.  

Research on public policy replies to climate change for mitigation and adaptation purposes found in New Research paints a fairly grim picture of the monumental challenge we face in coming to grips with our problem. The tractability of this problem is as much a matter of human nature and our innate ability for certain modes of cognition as is it down to technical capacity. We won't be able to optimize our way out of the trouble we've created without doing a better job of thinking. New Research is a small part of this work. 

Housekeeping:

We're gradually incorporating more API opportunities for sourcing article metadata in our listings. Due to constraints on available labor, this is a rolling operation. Readers may notice that (in this issue, for instance) some articles are missing some or all metadata, a situation soon to be corrected as API integration is driven further. This missing information is not a reflection on the worth of a given article.

111 Articles

Physical science of climate change, effects

The effect of the differences in near-infrared water vapour continuum models on the absorption of solar radiation
Menang et al 2021 Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics
DOI: 10.1007/s00703-021-00781-6

Observations of climate change, effects

Current Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation weakest in last millennium
Caesar et al 2021 Nature Geoscience
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00699-z

A 30-year reconstruction of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation shows no decline
Worthington et al 2020
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/os-17-285-2021

Comment on 'On the relationship between Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown and global surface warming'

Reply to Comment on ‘On the relationship between Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown and global surface warming’

A Multidecadal-Scale Tropically Driven Global Teleconnection over the Past Millennium and Its Recent Strengthening 

Feng et al 2020 Journal of Climate
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0216.1

Three-decadal destabilization of vegetation activity on the Mongolian Plateau
Zhao et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd81d

Potential role of permafrost thaw on increasing Siberian river discharge
Wang et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abe326

Increasing tropical cyclone intensity and potential intensity in the subtropical Atlantic around Bermuda from an ocean heat content perspective 1955–2019
Hallam et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abe493

Elevation-dependent trends in extreme snowfall in the French Alps from 1959 to 2019
Le Roux et al 2021
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/tc-2021-64 (preprint)

An assessment of long-term changes in mortalities due to extreme weather events in India: A study of 50 years’ data, 1970–2019

1/4 to 1/3 of observed warming trends in China from 1980 to 2015 are attributed to land use changes
Shen & Zhao 2021 Climatic Change
DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03045-9

Climate Extremes across the North American Arctic in Modern Reanalyses
Avila-Diaz et al 2021 Journal of Climate
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0093.1

Change in mean and extreme temperature at Yingkou station in Northeast China from 1904 to 2017
Xue et al 2021 Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-02981-w

Surface air pressure–based reconstruction of tropical cyclones affecting Hong Kong since the late nineteenth century
Zhang et al 2021 Climatic Change
DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03028-w

Recent increasing frequency of compound summer drought and heatwaves in Southeast Brazil
Geirinhas et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abe0eb

Decadal-scale hotspot methane ebullition within lakes following abrupt permafrost thaw
Anthony et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abc848

Increasing rates of subalpine tree mortality linked to warmer and drier summers
Andrus et al 2020
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.13634

The implications of the recently recognized mid-20th century shift in the Earth system
Turney & Fogwill 2021 The Anthropocene Review
DOI: 10.1177/2053019621995526

Recent changes in temperature and precipitation indices in the Southern Carpathians, Romania (1961–2018)
Micu et al 2021 Theoretical and Applied Climatology
DOI: 10.1007/s00704-021-03560-w

Extreme Snow Events along the Coast of the Northeast United States: Potential Changes due to Global Warming
Chen et al 2021 Journal of Climate
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0197.1

Inventory and changes of rock glacier creep speeds in Ile Alatau and Kungöy Ala-Too, northern Tien Shan, since the 1950s
Kääb et al 2021 The Cryosphere
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/tc-15-927-2021

Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

Remote sensing of greenhouse gas emissions
Zhang et al 2019 Vietnam Journal of Science, Technology and Engineering,
Open Access DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.1010-1012.1258

The Observed Relationship between Pacific SST Variability and Hadley Cell Extent Trends in Reanalyses
Rollings & Merlis 2021 Journal of Climate
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0410.1

Spatiotemporal changes in aerosol properties by hygroscopic growth and impacts on radiative forcing and heating rates during DISCOVER-AQ 2011 (preprint)

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects MSWE

Decomposing the Drivers of Polar Amplification with a Single-Column Model

Idealized Aquaplanet Simulations of Tropical Cyclone Activity: Significance of Temperature Gradients, Hadley Circulation, and Zonal Asymmetry

Climate hazard indices projections based on CORDEX-CORE, CMIP5 and CMIP6 ensemble
Coppola 2020
DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-15001

Future extreme heat wave events using Bayesian heat wave intensity-persistence day-frequency model and their uncertainty
Lee et al 2021 Atmospheric Research
DOI: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105541

Exploring uncertainties in global crop yield projections in a large ensemble of crop models and CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate scenarios
Müller et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd8fc

Permafrost sensitivity to global warming of 1.5 °C and 2 °C in the Northern Hemisphere
Liu et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd6a8

On the statistical properties of sea-ice lead fraction and heat fluxes in the Arctic
Ólason et al 2021 The Cryosphere
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/tc-15-1053-2021

A Multivariate Assessment of Climate Change Projections over South America using CMIP5
Thaler et al 2020
Open Access DOI: 10.1002/joc.7072

Nonlinear Response of Atmospheric Blocking to Early Winter Barents–Kara Seas Warming: An Idealized Model Study
Chen et al 2021 Journal of Climate
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-19-0720.1

Ensemble projection of city-level temperature extremes with stepwise cluster analysis
Lu et al 2021 Climate Dynamics
DOI: 10.1007/s00382-021-05644-9

Advances in climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

Evaluation of the performance of bias-corrected CORDEX regional climate models in reproducing Baro–Akobo basin climate
Mengistu et al 2021 Theoretical and Applied Climatology
DOI: 10.1007/s00704-021-03552-w

An observational equatorial Atlantic Ocean constraint on Indian monsoon precipitation projections
Shamal & Sanjay 2021 Climate Dynamics
DOI: 10.1007/s00382-021-05703-1

On the uncertainty of future projections of Marine Heatwave events in the North Atlantic Ocean
Plecha et al 2021 Climate Dynamics
DOI: 10.1007/s00382-020-05529-3

Understanding the model representation of clouds based on visible and infrared satellite observations
Geiss et al 2021
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/acp-2021-5 (preprint)

Cryosphere & climate change

On the Role of the Antarctic Slope Front on the Occurrence of the Weddell Sea Polynya under Climate Change
Lockwood et al 2021 Journal of Climate
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0069.1

The distribution and evolution of supraglacial lakes on the 79° N Glacier (northeast Greenland) and interannual climatic controls (preprint)

SAR-derived flow velocity and its link to glacier surface elevation change and mass balance

A mechanism for regional variations in snowpack melt under rising temperature

On the Generation of Weddell Sea Polynyas in a High-Resolution Earth System Model
Kurtakoti et al 2021 Journal of Climate
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0229.1

Permafrost sensitivity to global warming of 1.5 °C and 2 °C in the Northern Hemisphere
Liu et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd6a8

Changes in precipitation and air temperature contribute comparably to permafrost degradation in a warmer climate
Mekonnen et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abc444

The 32-year record-high surface melt in 2019/2020 on the northern George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula
Banwell et al 2021 The Cryosphere
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/tc-15-909-2021

Paleoclimate

A reassessment of the impact of temperature change on European conflict during the second millennium CE using a bespoke Bayesian time-series model

Eddy permitting simulations of freshwater injection from major Northern Hemisphere outlets during the last deglacial
Love et al 2021
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/cp-2021-15 (preprint)

Biology & climate change

Three-decadal destabilization of vegetation activity on the Mongolian Plateau
Zhao et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd81d

Impact of climate change on sensitive marine and extreme terrestrial ecosystems: Recent progresses and future challenges
Chen 2021 Ambio
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s13280-020-01446-1

Global warming triggers coral reef bleaching tipping point
Goreau & Hayes 2021 Ambio
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s13280-021-01512-2

Climate change reshapes the eco?evolutionary dynamics of a Neotropical seed dispersal system
Sales et al 2021 Global Ecology and Biogeography
DOI: 10.1111/geb.13271

Reduced seawater pH alters marine biofilms with impacts for marine polychaete larval settlement
Espinel-Velasco et al 2021 Marine Environmental Research
DOI: 10.1016/j.marenvres.2021.105291

Species-specific climate–growth interactions determine tree species dynamics in mixed Central European mountain forests
Kašpar et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd8fb

Climate warming extends growing season but not reproductive phase of terrestrial plants
Liu et al 2021 Global Ecology and Biogeography
DOI: 10.1111/geb.13269

Risk and vulnerability of Mongolian grasslands under climate change
Nandintsetseg et al 2020
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abdb5b

Increasing rates of subalpine tree mortality linked to warmer and drier summers
Andrus et al 2020
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.13634

Warming matters: alpine plant responses to experimental warming
Fazlioglu & Wan 2021 Climatic Change
DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-02996-3

Physiological responses of Skeletonema costatum to the interactions of seawater acidification and the combination of photoperiod and temperature
Li et al 2020
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/bg-18-1439-2021

GHG sources & sinks, flux

Drivers of change in US residential energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, 1990–2015

African burned area and fire carbon emissions are strongly impacted by small fires undetected by coarse resolution satellite data
Ramo et al 2021 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2011160118

Estimates of methane emissions from Chinese rice fields using the DNDC model

Are there memory effects on greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, N2O and CH4) following grassland restoration?

Urban-focused satellite CO2 observations from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3: A first look at the Los Angeles megacity
Kiel et al 2021 Remote Sensing of Environment
Open Access DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2021.112314

Decoupling of urban CO2 and air pollutant emission reductions during the European SARS-CoV-2 lockdown

Future carbon emissions from global mangrove forest loss
Adame et al 2021 Global Change Biology
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1101/2020.08.27.271189

Prediction of CO 2 emission from greenhouse to atmosphere with artificial neural networks and deep learning neural networks

The influence of atmospheric intraseasonal oscillations on terrestrial biospheric CO 2 fluxes in Southeast China Forest

Decadal-scale hotspot methane ebullition within lakes following abrupt permafrost thaw
Anthony et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abc848

Climate implications on forest above- and belowground carbon allocation patterns along a tropical elevation gradient on Mt. Kilimanjaro (Tanzania)
Sierra Cornejo et al 2021 Oecologia
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s00442-021-04860-8

High-resolution forest carbon mapping for climate mitigation baselines over the RGGI region, USA
Tang et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd2ef

Trends and drivers of African fossil fuel CO 2 emissions 1990–2017

CO2 removal & mitigation science & engineering

Carbon prospecting in tropical forests for climate change mitigation
Koh et al 2021 Nature Communications
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21560-2

Geoengineering climate

Estimating the potential cooling effect of cirrus thinning achieved via the seeding approach
Liu & Shi 2021
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.5194/acp-2021-148 (preprint)

Decarbonization

Demand-side decarbonization and electrification: EMF 35 JMIP study

Demand response and energy justice: A critical overview of ethical risks and opportunities within digital, decentralised, and decarbonised futures
Calver & Simcock 2021 Energy Policy
DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112198

Climate change communications & cognition

Considering attitudinal uncertainty in the climate change skepticism continuum
Haltinner & Sarathchandra 2021 Global Environmental Change
DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102243

Barriers, emotions, and motivational levers for lifestyle transformation in Norwegian household decarbonization pathways
Moberg et al 2021 Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03018-y

Agenda-Setting Effects of Climate Change Litigation: Interrelations Across Issue Levels, Media, and Politics in the Case of Urgenda Against the Dutch Government
Wonneberger & Vliegenthart 2021 Environmental Communication
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2021.1889633

Media Framing of Climate Change Action in Carbon Locked-in Developing Countries: Adaptation or Mitigation?
Cochelin et al 2019 International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology
Open Access DOI: 10.1007/978-3-7091-1791-0_8

News Media Framing of Grassroots Innovations in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden
Magnusson et al 2021 Environmental Communication
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2021.1880460

Reviewing the scope and thematic focus of 100 000 publications on energy consumption, services and social aspects of climate change: a big data approach to demand-side mitigation
Creutzig et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd78b

Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Understanding the combined impacts of weeds and climate change on crops
Vilà et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abe14b

Guidelines for co-creating climate adaptation plans for fisheries and aquaculture
Pham et al 2021 Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03041-z

Exploring uncertainties in global crop yield projections in a large ensemble of crop models and CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate scenarios
Müller et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd8fc

Do integrated landscape approaches moderate climate impacts on livelihoods? A review of the evidence from agricultural landscapes
Duncan et al 2021 Regional Environmental Change
DOI: 10.1007/s10113-021-01754-6

Participatory modelling for climate change adaptation: the poultry sector in Nigeria
Olabisi et al 2021 Climate Policy
Open Access DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2021.1891019

The role of crop diversity in climate change adaptation: insights from local observations to inform decision making in agriculture
Labeyrie et al 2021 Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2021.01.006

Economics & finance of climate change & mitigation

Power sector investment implications of climate impacts on renewable resources in Latin America and the Caribbean
Santos da Silva et al 2021 Nature Communications
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21502-y

Climate change mitigation public policy research

The technological and social timelines of climate mitigation: Lessons from 12 past transitions

Reducing vehicle cold start emissions through carbon pricing: evidence from Germany
Frondel et al 2021 SSRN Electronic Journal
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abde06

Dynamic interactive effect and co-design of SO₂ emission tax and CO₂ emission trading scheme

Increasing the ambition of mitigation action in small emitters: the case of Mauritius
Deenapanray 2021 Climate Policy
DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2021.1886898

The economic and environmental costs and benefits of the renewable fuel standard
Chen et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd7af

Spatial planning factors that influence CO₂ emissions: A systematic literature review

Managing the mitigation: Analysis of the effectiveness of target-based policies on China's provincial carbon emission and transfer
Li et al 2021 Energy Policy
DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112189

Introduction to the special feature on energy scenarios for long-term climate change mitigation in Japan
Sugiyama et al 2021 Sustainability Science
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s11625-021-00931-0

Climate change impacts on human health

An assessment of long-term changes in mortalities due to extreme weather events in India: A study of 50 years’ data, 1970–2019

Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Spatial planning for water sustainability projects under climate uncertainty: balancing human and environmental water needs
Fovargue et al 2021 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abdd58

Systemic criticality—a new assessment concept improving the evidence basis for CI protection
Kruse et al 2021 Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03019-x

Navigating the Anthropocene’s rivers of risk—climatic change and science-policy dilemmas in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin
Alexandra 2021 Climatic Change
DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03036-w

Guidelines for co-creating climate adaptation plans for fisheries and aquaculture
Pham et al 2021 Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03041-z

Assessing urban heat-related adaptation strategies under multiple futures for a major U.S. city
Rohat et al 2021 Climatic Change
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-02990-9

The Florida Water and Climate Alliance (FloridaWCA): Developing a Stakeholder–Scientist Partnership to Create Actionable Science in Climate Adaptation and Water Resource Management
Misra et al 2020 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1175/bams-d-19-0302.1

Responses of the Tharu to climate change-related hazards in the water sector: Indigenous perceptions, vulnerability and adaptations in the western Tarai of Nepal

When adaptation increases energy demand: A systematic map of the literature
Viguie et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abc044

Mapping the evolution and current trends in climate change adaptation science
Nalau & Verrall 2021 Climate Risk Management
Open Access DOI: 10.1016/j.crm.2021.100290

Climate characteristics and the adaptation level to formulate mitigation strategies for a climate-resilient archaeological park
Binarti et al 2021 Urban Climate
DOI: 10.1016/j.uclim.2021.100811

Climate change impacts on human culture

Responding to the climate emergency: how are UK universities establishing sustainable workplace routines for flying and food?
Hoolohan et al 2021 Climate Policy
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2021.1881426

Gender, ethnicity and vulnerability to climate change: The case of matrilineal and patrilineal societies in Bamenda Highlands Region, Cameroon
Azong & Kelso 2021 Global Environmental Change
DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102241

Other

Understanding compound hazards from a weather system perspective
Catto & Dowdy 2021 Weather and Climate Extremes
Open Access DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2021.100313

Quantifying the Uncertainty of the Future Hydrological Impacts of Climate Change: Comparative Analysis of an Advanced Hierarchical Sensitivity in Humid and Semiarid Basins
Ju et al 2021 Journal of Hydrometeorology
DOI: 10.1175/jhm-d-20-0016.1

Rethinking extreme heat in a cool climate: a New Zealand case study
Harrington 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abbd61

Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

Core Concept: Integrated assessment climate policy models have proven useful, with caveats
Vaidyanathan 2021 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2101899118

At the frontier of climate change: Red alert from the European Alps, the Arctic and coral reefs
Wulff 2021 Ambio
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s13280-021-01514-0

Icy mountains in a warming world: Revisiting science from the end of the 1990s in the early 2020s
Haeberli & Beniston 2021 Ambio
Open Access pdf DOI: 10.1007/s13280-021-01513-1

The climate, land, energy, and water systems (CLEWs) framework: a retrospective of activities and advances to 2019
Ramos et al 2020 Environmental Research Letters
Open Access DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abd34f

Obtaining articles wihout 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. As it is the journal's decision to do so, we respect that and 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.

Articles are presented with a title link via the original publisher URL so as to preserve provenance information, and when (usually) available, a more permanent DOI link. When a publicly accessible PDF version of an article is found, a direct link is provided.

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.

Posted by Doug Bostrom on Wednesday, 3 March, 2021

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