This past year in New Research we've listed 5,495 articles dealing with essentially all aspects of our accidental unleashing of harmfully rapid climate change. Due to data source limitations we do not have an exact count but at least 30,793 researchers contributed to findings covered in these publications, in some 193 separate journals. An encouraging feature is that over a very few years a key statistic has improved; of the total listings for 2021 no fewer than 3,191 are open-access by one means or another, all legal.
Much of New Research assembly is automated. That said, manual labor is required for compilation. Given a total year's visiting readership of ~128,500 persons and a reasonable estimate of weekly time committed to assembly, it required a little under 6.5 seconds to serve each reader, for a total investment of ~235 hours. That time was mostly spent sieving for relevance through machine-collected raw material comprising somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 articles over 2021's span, for ~2.5 minutes invested per final article listing. Retention of article contents in the editorial mind hovers at ~0.
Unfortunately it's the case that we're not by any means comprehensive in this effort. There is simply not enough time to be complete.
Why New Research?
One of the reasons for maintaining New Research is to maintain a broad survey of consensus on anthropogenic climate change in current peer-reviewed scientific literature, by direct examination. We don't filter on articles dependent on whether there's agreement or disagreement with the concept of anthropogenic climate change. With that in mind, it's of interest to note that there is but a single paper in this past year's listings offering an open disagreement and alternative fundamental mechanism for some of the excess energy we're accumulating on Earth. We leave it as an exercise for the reader to find that article.
More generally on the topic of consensus, the collection of disciplines contributing to papers appearing here is quite large. From competencies core to the study of the physics of climate change and extending to specialties including economics, agriculture, hydrology and more, there is no point of disagreement about the root problem we're all facing with climate change. Careful perusal of the entire collection of 2021's New Research listings will reveal a handful of articles ranging from neutral to positive regarding some few particular aspects of our changed, changing climate, but these also are predicated on facts and not wishful thinking.
Physical science of climate change, effects
Scale Sensitivity of the Gill Circulation. Part I: Equatorial Case
Reboredo & Bellon
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10501599.1
Scale Sensitivity of the Gill Circulation. Part II: Off-Equatorial Case
Bellon & Reboredo Reboredo
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10501598.1
Observations of climate change, effects
Substantial increase of compound droughts and heatwaves in wheat growing seasons worldwide
He et al. International Journal of Climatology
10.1002/joc.7518
Rapid glacier mass loss in the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau since the year 2000 from satellite observations
Zhao et al. Remote Sensing of Environment
10.1016/j.rse.2021.112853
Assessment of Indian Ocean upwelling changes and its relationship with the Indian monsoon
Lahiri & Vissa Global and Planetary Change
10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103729
The changing CO2 sink in the western Arctic Ocean from 1994 to 2019
Ouyang et al. Global Biogeochemical Cycles
10.1029/2021gb007032
Fewer troughs, not more ridges, have led to a drying trend in the western United States
Zhang et al. Geophysical Research Letters
10.1029/2021gl097089
Urbanization Aggravates Effects of Global Warming on Local Atmospheric Drying
Huang et al. Geophysical Research Letters
10.1029/2021gl095709
Warming and thawing in the Mt. Everest region: A review of climate and environmental changes
Kang et al. Earth
10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103911
Central continental boreal summer “warming holes” modulated by Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation via low-level jets
Pan et al. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
10.1029/2021jd035217
Enhanced winter, spring, and summer hydroclimate variability across California from 1940 to 2019
Zamora?Reyes et al. International Journal of Climatology
10.1002/joc.7513
The impact of climate change on global energy use
Zhang et al. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
10.1007/s11027-021-09986-x
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, contributors, effects
(provisional link) Quantifying Spread in Spatiotemporal Changes of Upper-Ocean Heat Content Estimates: An Internationally Coordinated Comparison
10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0603.1
The new Radiosounding HARMonization (RHARM) dataset of homogenized radiosounding temperature, humidity and wind profiles with uncertainties
Madonna et al. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Open Access 10.1029/2021jd035220
Determination of Climatic Conditions Related to Precipitation Anomalies in the Tropical Andes by Means of the Random Forest Algorithm and Novel Climate Indices
Córdova et al. International Journal of Climatology
10.1002/joc.7519
Testing mean air temperature trends in southern Greece: a Bayesian approach
Tsiotas et al. International Journal of Climatology
10.1002/joc.7516
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Increases in Future AR Count and Size: Overview of the ARTMIP Tier 2 CMIP5/6 Experiment
O'Brien et al.
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10504170.1
Lengthening of summer season over the Northern Hemisphere under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming
Park et al. Environmental Research Letters
Open Access 10.1088/1748-9326/ac3f64
Emergent constraints on future expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool
Park et al. Geophysical Research Letters
10.1029/2021gl097343
Dynamical Downscaling of Near-term (2026–2035) Climate Variability and Change for the Main Hawaiian Islands
Fandrich et al. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
10.1029/2021jd035684
WRF/UCM simulations of the impacts of urban expansion and future climate change on atmospheric thermal environment in a Chinese megacity
Zhao et al. Climatic Change
10.1007/s10584-021-03287-7
Temperature extremes and their future projections in selected Indian cities along with their meteorological subdivisions and temperature homogeneous zones
Dash et al. Urban Climate
Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2021.101057
(provisional link) The Boreal Summer Zonal Wavenumber-3 Trend Pattern and Its Connection with Surface Enhanced Warming
10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0460.1
Indo-Pacific Warming Induced by a Weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Journal of Climate
10.1175/jcli-d-21-0346.1
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection GCMA
Radiocarbon in the land and ocean components of the Community Earth System Model
Frischknecht et al.
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10506821.1
Determining Spatial Scales of Soil Moisture – Cloud Coupling Pathways using Semi-Idealized Simulations
Sakaguchi et al. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
10.1029/2021jd035282
Cryosphere & climate change
Rapid glacier mass loss in the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau since the year 2000 from satellite observations
Zhao et al. Remote Sensing of Environment
10.1016/j.rse.2021.112853
Mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet until the year 3000 under a sustained late-21st-century climate
Chambers et al. Journal of Glaciology
Open Access pdf 10.1017/jog.2021.124
Paleoclimate
Anthropogenic-scale CO2 degassing from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province as a driver of the end-Triassic mass extinction
Capriolo et al. Global and Planetary Change
10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103731
Biology & climate change
Putting the Pacific marine heatwave into perspective: The response of larval fish off southern California to unprecedented warming in 2014–2016 relative to the previous 65 years
Thompson et al. Global Change Biology
10.1111/gcb.16010
Warming effects on grassland productivity depend on plant diversity
Shao et al. Global Ecology and Biogeography
Open Access pdf 10.1111/geb.13441
Coral reef benthic community changes in the Anthropocene: Biogeographic heterogeneity, overlooked configurations, and methodology
Reverter et al. Global Change Biology
Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.16034
Herbarium macroalgae specimens reveal a rapid reduction of thallus size and reproductive effort related with climate change
Alfonso et al. Marine Environmental Research
10.1016/j.marenvres.2021.105546
Greenup dates change across a temperate forest-grassland ecotone in northeastern China driven by spring temperature and tree cover
Ding et al. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108780
Not all biodiversity rich spots are climate refugia
Kocsis et al. Biogeosciences
Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-18-6567-2021
Southern hemisphere plants show more delays than advances in flowering phenology
Everingham et al. Journal of Ecology
Open Access pdf 10.1111/1365-2745.13828
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
Radiocarbon in the land and ocean components of the Community Earth System Model
Frischknecht et al.
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10506821.1
The changing CO2 sink in the western Arctic Ocean from 1994 to 2019
Ouyang et al. Global Biogeochemical Cycles
10.1029/2021gb007032
Fire effects on the persistence of soil organic matter and long-term carbon storage
Pellegrini et al. Nature Geoscience
10.1038/s41561-021-00867-1
Quantification of urban forest and grassland carbon fluxes using field measurements and a satellite-based model in Washington DC/Baltimore area
Winbourne et al. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
10.1029/2021jg006568
Effects of reversal of water flow in an Arctic floodplain river on fluvial emissions of CO2 and CH4
Castro?Morales et al. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
Open Access pdf 10.1029/2021jg006485
Century-long changes and drivers of soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions across the contiguous United States
Lu et al. Global Change Biology
10.1111/gcb.16061
Gross primary productivity and water use efficiency are increasing in a high rainfall tropical savanna
Hutley et al. Global Change Biology
10.1111/gcb.16012
(provisional link) Global to local impacts on atmospheric CO 2 from the COVID-19 lockdown, biosphere and weather variabilities
CH4 and CO2 observations from a melting high mountain glacier, Laohugou Glacier No. 12
Zhi-Heng et al. Advances in Climate Change Research
Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2021.11.007
Contrasting patterns of carbon cycling and dissolved organic matter processing in two phytoplankton–bacteria communities
Elovaara et al. Biogeosciences
Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-18-6589-2021
A gridded inventory of Canada’s anthropogenic methane emissions
Scarpelli et al. Environmental Research Letters
Open Access 10.1088/1748-9326/ac40b1
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Where should China practice forestry in a warming world?
Zhang et al. Global Change Biology
10.1111/gcb.16065
Contrasting responses of soil inorganic carbon to afforestation in acidic versus alkaline soils
Hong & Chen Chen
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10506833.1
Nature-based framework for sustainable afforestation in global drylands under changing climate
Liu et al. Global Change Biology
10.1111/gcb.16059
(provisional link) Ecological restoration and rising CO 2 enhance the carbon sink, counteracting climate change in northeastern China
Decarbonization
Technology pathways could help drive the U.S. West Coast grid’s exposure to hydrometeorological uncertainty
Wessel et al. Earth's Future
Open Access pdf 10.1029/2021ef002187
Equitable, effective, and feasible approaches for a prospective fossil fuel transition
Rempel & Gupta WIREs Climate Change
Open Access pdf 10.1002/wcc.756
The economic impact of a deep decarbonisation pathway for China: a hybrid model analysis through bottom-up and top-down linking
Su et al. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11027-021-09979-w
Deep Transitions: Towards a comprehensive framework for mapping major continuities and ruptures in industrial modernity
Kanger et al. Global Environmental Change
10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102447
Disgust sensitivity and public opinion on nuclear energy
Hacquin et al. Journal of Environmental Psychology
10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101749
Geoengineering climate Black carbon
Transport of black carbon from Central and West Asia to the Tibetan Plateau: Seasonality and climate effect
Hu et al. Atmospheric Research
10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105987
Aerosols
Evaluation of surface solar radiation trends over China since the 1960s in the CMIP6 models and potential impact of aerosol emissions
Wang et al. Atmospheric Research
10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105991
Climate change communications & cognition
Young Adults’ Willingness to Engage in Climate Change Activism: An Application of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior
Gonzalez et al. Environmental Communication
10.1080/17524032.2021.2011368
Deep Transitions: Towards a comprehensive framework for mapping major continuities and ruptures in industrial modernity
Kanger et al. Global Environmental Change
10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102447
Evaluating the computational (“Big Data”) turn in studies of media coverage of climate change
Lahsen WIREs Climate Change
Open Access pdf 10.1002/wcc.752
Are climate change, urbanisation and political views correlated? Empirical evidence from South East Queensland
Mortoja & Yigitcanlar Urban Climate
Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2021.101061
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
Prioritizing climate-smart agriculture: An organizational and temporal review
Gardezi et al. WIREs Climate Change
Open Access pdf 10.1002/wcc.755
Land Use Effects on Climate: Current State, Recent Progress, and Emerging Topics
Pongratz et al. Current Climate Change Reports
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s40641-021-00178-y
Machine learning reveals complex effects of climatic means and weather extremes on wheat yields during different plant developmental stages
Schierhorn et al. Climatic Change
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10584-021-03272-0
Substantial increase of compound droughts and heatwaves in wheat growing seasons worldwide
He et al. International Journal of Climatology
10.1002/joc.7518
Cross-scale trade-off analysis for sustainable development: linking future demand for animal source foods and ecosystem services provision to the SDGs
Kozicka et al. Sustainability Science
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11625-021-01082-y
Hydrology & climate change
Increases in Future AR Count and Size: Overview of the ARTMIP Tier 2 CMIP5/6 Experiment
O'Brien et al.
Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10504170.1
Fewer troughs, not more ridges, have led to a drying trend in the western United States
Zhang et al. Geophysical Research Letters
10.1029/2021gl097089
Enhanced winter, spring, and summer hydroclimate variability across California from 1940 to 2019
Zamora?Reyes et al. International Journal of Climatology
10.1002/joc.7513
Urban rainfall in the Capitals of Brazil: Variability, trend, and wavelet analysis
de Oliveira-Júnior et al. Atmospheric Research
10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105984
Upper Gila, Salt, and Verde Rivers: Arid Land Rivers in a Changing Climate
Woodhouse & Udall Earth Interactions
Open Access pdf 10.1175/ei-d-21-0014.1
Climate change economics
The economic impact of a deep decarbonisation pathway for China: a hybrid model analysis through bottom-up and top-down linking
Su et al. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11027-021-09979-w
Do CO2 emissions trading schemes deliver co-benefits? Evidence from Shanghai
Tan-Soo et al. Climate Policy
Open Access pdf 10.1080/14693062.2021.2009432
Towards a funding mechanism for loss and damage from climate change impacts
Pill Climate Risk Management
Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2021.100391
Climate change mitigation public policy research
Emission burden concerns for online shopping returns
Tian & Sarkis Nature Climate Change
Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-021-01246-9
How do we best synergise climate mitigation actions to co-benefit biodiversity?
Smith et al. Global Change Biology
10.1111/gcb.16056
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
Climate data and information needs of indigenous communities on reservation lands: insights from stakeholders in the Southwestern United States
Fillmore & Singletary Climatic Change
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10584-021-03285-9
Implications of increasing household air conditioning use across the United States under a warming climate
Obringer et al. Earth's Future
Open Access pdf 10.1029/2021ef002434
Can remittances contribute to financing climate actions in developing countries? Evidence from analyses of households’ climate hazard exposure and adaptation actors in SE Nigeria
Maduekwe & Adesina Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11027-021-09987-w
Climate change adaptation guidance: Clarifying three modes of planning and implementation
Stafford-Smith et al. Climate Risk Management
Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2021.100392
Climate change impacts on human health
Impacts of air temperature and its extremes on human mortality in Shanghai, China
Bi et al. Urban Climate
Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2021.101072
Climate change impacts on human culture
Exposure of cultural resources to 21st-century climate change: Towards a risk management plan
Clark et al. Climate Risk Management
Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2021.100385
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
The need for stewardship of lands exposed by deglaciation from climate change
Zimmer et al. WIREs Climate Change
10.1002/wcc.753
Can I afford to publish? A dilemma for African scholars
Mekonnen et al. Ecology Letters
Open Access pdf 10.1111/ele.13949
The tragedy of climate change science
Glavovic et al. Climate and Development
Open Access pdf 10.1080/17565529.2021.2008855
Knowledge for a just climate
Clifford et al. Climate Services
Open Access 10.1016/j.cliser.2020.100155
CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE. Actions Needed to Improve DOE Management of Demonstration Projects (pdf), Rusco et al., US Government Accountability Office
"Key scientific assessments have underscored the urgency of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most significant greenhouse gas, to help mitigate the negative effects of climate change. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions from sources such as coal plants and industrial facilities. Since 2009, the Department of Energy (DOE) has sought to establish the viability of CCS technologies through various demonstration projects. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized and appropriated billions of dollars in new investments in CCS demonstration projects. Congress included a provision in the Energy Act of 2020 for GAO to review DOE's practices, successes, failures, and any improvements in executing CCS demonstration projects. This report examines (1) the outcomes of DOE-funded CCS demonstration projects and the factors that affected them and (2) DOE management of those projects. GAO reviewed laws, regulations, guidance, funding agreements, and other project documentation, and interviewed DOE officials and project representatives. GAO found that DOE’s investment of $1.1 billion in CCS demonstration projects resulted in varying levels of success. Largely due to external factors that affected their economic viability, coal CCS projects were generally less successful than CCS projects at industrial facilities, such as chemical plants."
We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance.
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:
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.
When the input list for New Research is processed, some articles do not produce a result from the journal databases we employ. Usually this is because the publisher has not yet supplied information to doi.org for the given article. In these cases and in order to still include timely listing of articles, we employ an alternate search tactic. While this method is usually correct, sometimes the link shown will lead to an incorrect destination (available time does not always permit manual checking of these). We invite readers to submit corrections in comments below.
Each edition of New Research is reprocessed some two weeks after intitial publication to catch stragglers into the DOI ecosystem. Many "provisional links" will end up being corrected as part of this process.
Please let us know if you're aware of an article you think may be of interest for Skeptical Science research news, or if we've missed something that may be important. Send your input to Skeptical Science via our contact form.
A list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.
The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
Posted by Doug Bostrom on Thursday, 30 December, 2021
 |
The Skeptical Science website by Skeptical Science is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. |