University of Lleida

The changes caused by the climate crisis—such as its impact on rainfall and rising temperatures—are stressful for plants in both wild and agricultural environments. A special issue of the journal Science brings together five articles reviewing this issue, including the adaptations that plants can adopt and that could be applied to combat it.

An international team has analyzed the sudden changes in temperature that occurred in the world between 1961 and 2023. Their conclusions are that more than 60% of the regions included in the analysis - including Western Europe - have experienced an increase in the frequency and intensity of these sudden changes, which can endanger health, agriculture or infrastructures. Moreover, the trend will continue to rise as a result of climate change. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.

The year 2024 was the warmest year in Europe, with record temperatures in almost half of the continent, according to the European State of the Climate 2024, published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report highlights 2024 as one of the ten wettest years since 1950 and estimates that storms and floods affected 413,000 people in Europe and at least 335 people lost their lives.

A study reveals that most of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) absorbed by ecosystems has been stored in dead plant material, soils and sediments, and not in living biomass. These data, which suggest that terrestrial carbon reserves are more resistant and stable than previously believed, are crucial for designing future climate change mitigation strategies and optimising carbon sequestration efforts. The findings are published in the journal Science.

An international team has analysed temperature and mortality data from 854 urban areas in Europe, and estimated that temperature-related deaths could increase by 50 % by the end of the century - which would mean up to 2.3 million more deaths - if no climate change mitigation measures are taken. This percentage is even higher in southern parts of the continent, such as Spain. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

The year 2024 was the warmest year on record globally and the first calendar year in which the global average temperature exceeded its pre-industrial level by 1.5 °C, the Copernicus Climate Change Service has confirmed.  

Private flights are used by approximately 0.003 % of the world's population, but the CO₂ emissions they released in 2023 were equivalent to 1.8 % of those of all commercial aviation. These are the conclusions of a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, which estimates that emissions from private flights increased by 46 % between 2019 and 2023. Almost half of them covered a distance of less than 500 kilometers.

Research published in Nature analyses future scenarios in which the 1.5°C temperature limit set in the Paris Agreement would be temporarily exceeded, assuming that temperatures could be lowered in the long term by reducing carbon dioxide emissions using different techniques. The authors stress that exceeding this threshold would have irreversible consequences for the Earth system in key areas such as biodiversity, sea level and carbon stocks. ‘Only rapid, short-term emission reductions are effective in reducing climate risks,’ they stress in the paper.

The surface of tree bark plays an important role in the elimination of methane gas from the atmosphere thanks to the microorganisms that live on it, according to a study published today in Nature in which CREAF participates. Methane is one of the gases responsible for the greenhouse effect. The authors estimate that this process, unknown until now, makes trees 10% more beneficial to the climate than previously thought.

Carbon stored globally by plants is shorter-lived and more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, according to a study published in Science. This has implications for nature's role in climate change mitigation, including the potential for carbon removal projects such as mass tree planting. The research reveals that existing climate models underestimate the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) that vegetation absorbs globally each year, but overestimate how long that carbon stays there.