Chris Huntingford
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 6717814 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Chris Huntingford |
| NOMBRES | Chris |
| APELLIDO | Huntingford |
| FIRMA | HUNTINGFORD C |
| AFILIACIONES | UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5941-7770 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 2 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 1 |
Concurrent climate extremes and biological carryover effects dominate severe seasonal reductions in northern vegetation growth
The implications of overshooting 1.5 °C on Earth system tipping elements—a review
Due to insufficient emission reductions in recent years, it is increasingly likely that global warming will exceed the 1.5 °C temperature limit in the late 2020s or 2030s. As a result, several Earth system tipping elements could, at least temporarily, have their tipping points surpassed, posing risks of large-scale and profound structural change. Tipping does not always occur immediately upon crossing such a critical threshold. If the length of t…
Underestimating global land greening
A call to refine fire attribution
The January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles resulted in a tragic loss of life and major damage to homes, infrastructure, and public health. Two key questions are: to what extent did climate change increase the likelihood of the event, and what role did direct human actions play? Direct human actions could encompass expanding urban developments into wildlands, unattended campfires, sparks from faulty equipment such as powerlines, or deliberate chang…
Future increases in soil moisture drought frequency at UK monitoring sites
Concerns exist about the viability of food security across Europe due to multiple, potentially adverse drivers. These include economic, political and climate forcing factors, all of which require quantification. Here, we focus on the climate forcing, and in particular, the soil moisture change component which crucially determines water availability for crop uptake. We estimate future soil moisture levels at 34 sites of the UK COsmic-ray Soil Mois…
Seeking more robust early warning signals for climate tipping points
Potential tipping points in the Earth System present challenges for society and ecosystems, especially as the global warming thresholds at which these may be triggered remain uncertain. Fortunately, a theory of `critical slowing down' has been developed which could warn of approaching tipping points. Applications of this theory often implicitly assume stationary white-noise forcing, itself requiring a clean separation between forced trends and va…
Nitrogen cycle impacts on CO 2 fertilisation and climate forcing of land carbon stores
Anthropogenic fossil fuel burning increases atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration, which is adjusting the climate system. The direct impact of rising CO 2 levels and climate feedback alters the terrestrial carbon stores. Land stores are presently increasing, offsetting a substantial fraction of CO 2 emissions. Less understood is how this human-induced carbon cycle perturbation interacts with other terrestrial biogeochemical cycles. The…
Optimal Covid-19 Vaccine Sharing Between Two Nations That Also Have Extensive Travel Exchanges
Countries around the world have observed reduced infections from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that causes COVID-19 illness, primarily due to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdowns and social distancing measures designed to limit physical proximity between people. However, economies and societal interactions require restarting, and so lockdowns cannot continue indefinitely. Therefore, much hope is placed in using newly developed vaccin…
Historical and future global burned area with changing climate and human demography
Temporary “Circuit Breaker” Lockdowns Could Effectively Delay a Covid-19 Second Wave Infection Peak to Early Spring
How and When to End the Covid-19 Lockdown
Countries around the world are in a state of lockdown to help limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, as the number of new daily confirmed cases begins to decrease, governments must decide how to release their populations from quarantine as efficiently as possible without overwhelming their health services. We applied an optimal control framework to an adapted Susceptible-Exposure-Infection-Recovery (SEIR) model framework to investigate the effi…
Significant feedbacks of wetland methane release on climate change and the causes of their uncertainty
Emissions from wetlands are the single largest source of the atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) methane (CH 4 ). This may increase in a warming climate, leading to a positive feedback on climate change. For the first time, we extend interactive wetland CH 4 emissions schemes to include the recently quantified, significant process of CH 4 transfer through tropical trees. We constrain the parameterisations using a multi-site flux study, and biogeoche…
Compensatory climate effects link trends in global runoff to rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration
River runoff is a key attribute of the land surface, that additionally has a strong influence on society by the provision of freshwater. Yet various environmental factors modify runoff levels, and some trends could be detrimental to humanity. Drivers include elevated CO 2 concentration, climate change, aerosols and altered land-use. Additionally, nitrogen deposition and tropospheric ozone changes influence plant functioning, and thus runoff, yet …
Machine learning and artificial intelligence to aid climate change research and preparedness
Climate change challenges societal functioning, likely requiring considerable adaptation to cope with future altered weather patterns. Machine learning (ML) algorithms have advanced dramatically, triggering breakthroughs in other research sectors, and recently suggested as aiding climate analysis (Reichstein et al 2019 Nature 566 195–204, Schneider et al 2017 Geophys. Res. Lett. 44 12396–417). Although a considerable number of isolated Earth Syst…
Equilibrium forest demography explains the distribution of tree sizes across North America
The distribution of tree sizes within a forest strongly influences how it will respond to disturbances and environmental changes such as future climate change and increases in atmospheric CO 2 . This means that global vegetation models must include variation in tree size to accurately represent carbon sinks, such as that seen in North America. Here we use an analytical model of large-scale forest demography which assumes tree growth varies as a p…
Increased importance of methane reduction for a 1.5 degree target
To understand the importance of methane on the levels of carbon emission reductions required to achieve temperature goals, a processed-based approach is necessary rather than reliance on the transient climate response to emissions. We show that plausible levels of methane (CH4) mitigation can make a substantial difference to the feasibility of achieving the Paris climate targets through increasing the allowable carbon emissions. This benefit is e…
Changing the retention properties of catchments and their influence on runoff under climate change
Many studies on drought consider precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) impacts. However, catchment water retention is a factor affecting the interception of precipitation and slowing down runoff which also plays a critical role in determining the risks of hydrological drought. The Budyko framework links retention to the partitioning of precipitation into runoff or evapotranspiration. Applied worldwide, we demonstrate that retention…
CO 2 loss by permafrost thawing implies additional emissions reductions to limit warming to 1.5 or 2 °C
Large amounts of carbon are stored in the permafrost of the northern high latitude land. As permafrost degrades under a warming climate, some of this carbon will decompose and be released to the atmosphere. This positive climate-carbon feedback will reduce the natural carbon sinks and thus lower anthropogenic CO2 emissions compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Simulations using an ensemble of the JULES-IMOGEN intermediate complexity c…
Attributing human mortality during extreme heat waves to anthropogenic climate change
It has been argued that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. The extreme high temperatures of the summer of 2003 were associated with up to seventy thousand excess deaths across Europe. Previous studies have attributed the meteorological event to the human influence on climate, or examined the role of heat waves on human health. Here, for the first time, we explicitly quantify the role of human activity on clima…
More frequent moments in the climate change debate as emissions continue
Recent years have witnessed unprecedented interest in how the burning of fossil fuels may impact on the global climate system. Such visibility of this issue is in part due to the increasing frequency of key international summits to debate emissions levels, including the 2015 21st Conference of Parties meeting in Paris. In this perspective we plot a timeline of significant climate meetings and reports, and against metrics of atmospheric greenhouse…
The implications of carbon dioxide and methane exchange for the heavy mitigation RCP2.6 scenario under two metrics
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with Representative Concentration Pathway RCP2.6 could limit global warming to around or below a 2 °C increase since pre-industrial times. However this scenario implies very large and rapid reductions in both carbon dioxide (CO2) and non-CO2 emissions, and suggests a need to understand available flexibility between how different greenhouse gases might be abated. There is a growing interest in developing a great…
Complexity and determining dangerous levels of climate impacts
A recent paper (Gerten et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 034032) finds very different global warming thresholds of concern between water scarcity and ecosystem changes. This may at first appear surprising, as each process is controlled to some extent by functioning of the land surface. Hence this analysis reflects the fundamentally different character of what constitutes water scarcity among people, compared to water stress for ecosystems. Gerten …
High sensitivity of future global warming to land carbon cycle processes
Unknowns in future global warming are usually assumed to arise from uncertainties either in the amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions or in the sensitivity of the climate to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. Characterizing the additional uncertainty in relating CO2 emissions to atmospheric concentrations has relied on either a small number of complex models with diversity in process representations, or simple models. To date, t…
The link between a global 2 °C warming threshold and emissions in years 2020, 2050 and beyond
In the Copenhagen Accord, nations agreed on the need to limit global warming to two degrees to avoid potentially dangerous climate change, while in policy circles negotiations have placed a particular emphasis on emissions in years 2020 and 2050. We investigate the link between the probability of global warming remaining below two degrees (above pre-industrial levels) right through to year 2500 and what this implies for emissions in years 2020 an…
Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide
The implications of carbon dioxide and methane exchange for the heavy mitigation RCP2.6 scenario under two metrics
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with Representative Concentration Pathway RCP2.6 could limit global warming to around or below a 2 °C increase since pre-industrial times. However this scenario implies very large and rapid reductions in both carbon dioxide (CO2) and non-CO2 emissions, and suggests a need to understand available flexibility between how different greenhouse gases might be abated. There is a growing interest in developing a great…
What do recent advances in quantifying climate and carbon cycle uncertainties mean for climate policy
Global policy targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions are being negotiated. The amount of emitted carbon dioxide remaining in the atmosphere is controlled by carbon cycle processes in the ocean and on land. These processes are themselves affected by climate. The resulting 'climate-carbon cycle feedback' has recently been quantified, but the policy implications have not. Using a scheme to emulate the range of state-of-the-art model results…
Climate change
Boykoff and Mansfield (2008), in a recent paper in this journal, provide a detailed analysis of the representation of climate change in the UK tabloid newspapers. They conclude that the representation of this issue in these papers 'diverged from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change'. That is, portrayal of climate change in tabloid newspapers contradicts the conclusions of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate …
Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide
Exploring the likelihood and mechanism of a climate-change-induced dieback of the Amazon rainforest
We examine the evidence for the possibility that 21st-century climate change may cause a large-scale “dieback” or degradation of Amazonian rainforest. We employ a new framework for evaluating the rainfall regime of tropical forests and from this deduce precipitation-based boundaries for current forest viability. We then examine climate simulations by 19 global climate models (GCMs) in this context and find that most tend to underestimate current …
Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne
How difficult is it to recover from dangerous levels of global warming
Climate models provide compelling evidence that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at \npresent rates, then key global temperature thresholds (such as the European Union limit of two \ndegrees of warming since pre-industrial times) are very likely to be crossed in the next few \ndecades. However, there is relatively little attention paid to whether, should a dangerous \ntemperature level be exceeded, it is feasible for the global temperature to…
High sensitivity of future global warming to land carbon cycle processes
Unknowns in future global warming are usually assumed to arise from uncertainties either in the amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions or in the sensitivity of the climate to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. Characterizing the additional uncertainty in relating CO2 emissions to atmospheric concentrations has relied on either a small number of complex models with diversity in process representations, or simple models. To date, t…
The link between a global 2 °C warming threshold and emissions in years 2020, 2050 and beyond
In the Copenhagen Accord, nations agreed on the need to limit global warming to two degrees to avoid potentially dangerous climate change, while in policy circles negotiations have placed a particular emphasis on emissions in years 2020 and 2050. We investigate the link between the probability of global warming remaining below two degrees (above pre-industrial levels) right through to year 2500 and what this implies for emissions in years 2020 an…
Complexity and determining dangerous levels of climate impacts
A recent paper (Gerten et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 034032) finds very different global warming thresholds of concern between water scarcity and ecosystem changes. This may at first appear surprising, as each process is controlled to some extent by functioning of the land surface. Hence this analysis reflects the fundamentally different character of what constitutes water scarcity among people, compared to water stress for ecosystems. Gerten …
More frequent moments in the climate change debate as emissions continue
Recent years have witnessed unprecedented interest in how the burning of fossil fuels may impact on the global climate system. Such visibility of this issue is in part due to the increasing frequency of key international summits to debate emissions levels, including the 2015 21st Conference of Parties meeting in Paris. In this perspective we plot a timeline of significant climate meetings and reports, and against metrics of atmospheric greenhouse…
The implications of carbon dioxide and methane exchange for the heavy mitigation RCP2.6 scenario under two metrics
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with Representative Concentration Pathway RCP2.6 could limit global warming to around or below a 2 °C increase since pre-industrial times. However this scenario implies very large and rapid reductions in both carbon dioxide (CO2) and non-CO2 emissions, and suggests a need to understand available flexibility between how different greenhouse gases might be abated. There is a growing interest in developing a great…
Attributing human mortality during extreme heat waves to anthropogenic climate change
It has been argued that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. The extreme high temperatures of the summer of 2003 were associated with up to seventy thousand excess deaths across Europe. Previous studies have attributed the meteorological event to the human influence on climate, or examined the role of heat waves on human health. Here, for the first time, we explicitly quantify the role of human activity on clima…
CO 2 loss by permafrost thawing implies additional emissions reductions to limit warming to 1.5 or 2 °C
Large amounts of carbon are stored in the permafrost of the northern high latitude land. As permafrost degrades under a warming climate, some of this carbon will decompose and be released to the atmosphere. This positive climate-carbon feedback will reduce the natural carbon sinks and thus lower anthropogenic CO2 emissions compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Simulations using an ensemble of the JULES-IMOGEN intermediate complexity c…
Equilibrium forest demography explains the distribution of tree sizes across North America
The distribution of tree sizes within a forest strongly influences how it will respond to disturbances and environmental changes such as future climate change and increases in atmospheric CO 2 . This means that global vegetation models must include variation in tree size to accurately represent carbon sinks, such as that seen in North America. Here we use an analytical model of large-scale forest demography which assumes tree growth varies as a p…
Increased importance of methane reduction for a 1.5 degree target
To understand the importance of methane on the levels of carbon emission reductions required to achieve temperature goals, a processed-based approach is necessary rather than reliance on the transient climate response to emissions. We show that plausible levels of methane (CH4) mitigation can make a substantial difference to the feasibility of achieving the Paris climate targets through increasing the allowable carbon emissions. This benefit is e…
Changing the retention properties of catchments and their influence on runoff under climate change
Many studies on drought consider precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) impacts. However, catchment water retention is a factor affecting the interception of precipitation and slowing down runoff which also plays a critical role in determining the risks of hydrological drought. The Budyko framework links retention to the partitioning of precipitation into runoff or evapotranspiration. Applied worldwide, we demonstrate that retention…
Significant feedbacks of wetland methane release on climate change and the causes of their uncertainty
Emissions from wetlands are the single largest source of the atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) methane (CH 4 ). This may increase in a warming climate, leading to a positive feedback on climate change. For the first time, we extend interactive wetland CH 4 emissions schemes to include the recently quantified, significant process of CH 4 transfer through tropical trees. We constrain the parameterisations using a multi-site flux study, and biogeoche…
Compensatory climate effects link trends in global runoff to rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration
River runoff is a key attribute of the land surface, that additionally has a strong influence on society by the provision of freshwater. Yet various environmental factors modify runoff levels, and some trends could be detrimental to humanity. Drivers include elevated CO 2 concentration, climate change, aerosols and altered land-use. Additionally, nitrogen deposition and tropospheric ozone changes influence plant functioning, and thus runoff, yet …
Machine learning and artificial intelligence to aid climate change research and preparedness
Climate change challenges societal functioning, likely requiring considerable adaptation to cope with future altered weather patterns. Machine learning (ML) algorithms have advanced dramatically, triggering breakthroughs in other research sectors, and recently suggested as aiding climate analysis (Reichstein et al 2019 Nature 566 195–204, Schneider et al 2017 Geophys. Res. Lett. 44 12396–417). Although a considerable number of isolated Earth Syst…
Temporary “Circuit Breaker” Lockdowns Could Effectively Delay a Covid-19 Second Wave Infection Peak to Early Spring
How and When to End the Covid-19 Lockdown
Countries around the world are in a state of lockdown to help limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, as the number of new daily confirmed cases begins to decrease, governments must decide how to release their populations from quarantine as efficiently as possible without overwhelming their health services. We applied an optimal control framework to an adapted Susceptible-Exposure-Infection-Recovery (SEIR) model framework to investigate the effi…
Optimal Covid-19 Vaccine Sharing Between Two Nations That Also Have Extensive Travel Exchanges
Countries around the world have observed reduced infections from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that causes COVID-19 illness, primarily due to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdowns and social distancing measures designed to limit physical proximity between people. However, economies and societal interactions require restarting, and so lockdowns cannot continue indefinitely. Therefore, much hope is placed in using newly developed vaccin…
Historical and future global burned area with changing climate and human demography
Nitrogen cycle impacts on CO 2 fertilisation and climate forcing of land carbon stores
Anthropogenic fossil fuel burning increases atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration, which is adjusting the climate system. The direct impact of rising CO 2 levels and climate feedback alters the terrestrial carbon stores. Land stores are presently increasing, offsetting a substantial fraction of CO 2 emissions. Less understood is how this human-induced carbon cycle perturbation interacts with other terrestrial biogeochemical cycles. The…
Seeking more robust early warning signals for climate tipping points
Potential tipping points in the Earth System present challenges for society and ecosystems, especially as the global warming thresholds at which these may be triggered remain uncertain. Fortunately, a theory of `critical slowing down' has been developed which could warn of approaching tipping points. Applications of this theory often implicitly assume stationary white-noise forcing, itself requiring a clean separation between forced trends and va…
Climate change (24 obras) · Environmental Science (23 obras) · Ecology (17 obras) · Geography (13 obras) · Global warming (13 obras) · Greenhouse gas (12 obras) · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics (11 obras) · Atmospheric sciences (11 obras) · Climatology (11 obras) · Climate variability and models (9 obras)