Richard Betts

Biographic Data

ID5771432
NAMERichard Betts
GIVEN NAMESRichard
FAMILY NAMEBetts
SIGNATUREBETTS R
AFFILIATIONSMet Office
ORCID0000-0002-4929-0307
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS29
TOTAL CITATIONS23
AUTHOR COUNT28
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1975
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX2

  • Spikes in UK wildfire emissions driven by peatland fires in dry years

    Open AccessSarah J Baker, Matthew C Perry et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2025

    Wildfires on peatlands can nearly double global fire-driven carbon emissions, requiring centuries to re-sequester carbon (C) losses. Peatland fires require sufficiently hot, dry conditions and/or drainage for the peat to burn. Although these conditions have historically been infrequent, the warming and drying climate could increase the potential for wildfires and subsequent emissions. Here, we evaluate how climate change impacts peatland fire emi…

  • Very high fire danger in UK in 2022 at least 6 times more likely due to human-caused climate change

    Open AccessChantelle Burton, Andrew Ciavarella et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2025

    The UK experienced an unprecedented heatwave in 2022, with temperatures reaching 40 °C for the first time in recorded history. This extreme heat was accompanied by widespread fires across London and elsewhere in England, which destroyed houses and prompted evacuations. While attribution studies have identified a strong human fingerprint contributing to the heatwave, no studies have attributed the associated fires to anthropogenic influence. In th…

  • Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system

    Open AccessBernardo M Flores, Edwin Montoya et al.ARTICLENature2024

    The possibility that the Amazon forest system could soon reach a tipping point, inducing large-scale collapse, has raised global concern 1–3 . For 65 million years, Amazonian forests remained relatively resilient to climatic variability. Now, the region is increasingly exposed to unprecedented stress from warming temperatures, extreme droughts, deforestation and fires, even in central and remote parts of the system 1 . Long existing feedbacks bet…

  • A review of planting principles to identify the right place for the right tree for ‘net zero plus’ woodlands

    Open AccessIan J Bateman, Karen Anderson et al.ARTICLEPeople and Nature2023

    We outline the principles of the natural capital approach to decision making and apply these to the contemporary challenge of very significantly expanding woodlands as contribution to attaining net zero emissions of greenhouse gases. Drawing on the case of the UK, we argue that a single focus upon carbon storage alone is likely to overlook the other ‘net zero plus’ benefits which woodlands can deliver. A review of the literature considers the wid…

  • Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change

    Open AccessMatthew W Jones, John T Abatzoglou et al.ARTICLEReviews of Geophysics2022

    Recent wildfire outbreaks around the world have prompted concern that climate change is increasing fire incidence, threatening human livelihood and biodiversity, and perpetuating climate change. Here, we review current understanding of the impacts of climate change on fire weather (weather conditions conducive to the ignition and spread of wildfires) and the consequences for regional fire activity as mediated by a range of other bioclimatic facto…

  • Assessing the chance of unprecedented dry conditions over North Brazil during El Niño events

    Open AccessGillian Kay, Nick Dunstone et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2022

    The strongest El Niño events of the past four decades were associated with large rainfall deficits in North Brazil during the December to February mature phase, leading to substantial societal and ecological impacts and influencing the global carbon cycle. While the teleconnection between El Niño and northern South America is well studied, the small number of El Niño events—and especially high magnitude ‘major’ El Niños—in the recent observationa…

  • Regional disparities and seasonal differences in climate risk to rice labour

    Open AccessCharles Simpson, J Scott Hosking et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2021

    The 880 million agricultural workers of the world are especially vulnerable to increasing heat stress due to climate change, affecting the health of individuals and reducing labour productivity. In this study, we focus on rice harvests across Asia and estimate the future impact on labour productivity by considering changes in climate at the time of the annual harvest. During these specific times of the year, heat stress is often high compared to …

  • Evaluating changes of biomass in global vegetation models

    Open AccessAnselmo García Cantú Ros, Katja Frieler et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2018

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  • Assessing the impacts of 1.5 °C global warming – simulation protocol of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (Isimip2b)

    Open AccessKatja Frieler, Stefan Lange et al.ARTICLEGeoscientific Model Development2017

    In Paris, France, December 2015, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. In Nairobi, Kenya, April 2016, the IPCC panel accepted the invitation. Here we describe th…

  • Conflict After the Cold War

    Richard K Betts, Richard BettsBOOKConflict after the Cold War2017

  • Benchmarking carbon fluxes of the Isimip2a biome models

    Open AccessJinfeng Chang, Philippe Ciais et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2017

  • Photosynthetic productivity and its efficiencies in Isimip2a biome models

    Open AccessAkihiko Ito, Kazuya Nishina et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2017

  • Regional contribution to variability and trends of global gross primary productivity

    Open AccessMin Chen, Rashid Rafique et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2017

  • The importance of population, climate change and CO2 plant physiological forcing in determining future global water stress

    Open AccessA Wiltshire, Jemma Gornall et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2013Cited by: 1References: 2

  • High sensitivity of future global warming to land carbon cycle processes

    Open AccessBen Booth, Ben B B Booth et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2012

    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…

  • Dealing With Uncertainties in Climate Change Impacts Assessments

    Carlo Buontempo, Jens Kristian Lørup et al.CHAPTER2011

  • Harmonization of land-use scenarios for the period 1500–2100

    Open AccessG C Hurtt, Louise Chini et al.ARTICLEClimatic Change2011

    In preparation for the fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international community is developing new advanced Earth System Models (ESMs) to assess the combined effects of human activities (e.g. land use and fossil fuel emissions) on the carbon-climate system. In addition, four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios of the future (2005–2100) are being provided by four Integrated …

  • Land use/land cover changes and climate

    Open AccessRoger A Pielke, A J Pitman et al.ARTICLEWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews…2011Cited by: 17References: 5

    This article summarizes the changes in landscape structure because of human land management over the last several centuries, and using observed and modeled data, documents how these changes have altered biogeophysical and biogeochemical surface fluxes on the local, mesoscale, and regional scales. Remaining research issues are presented including whether these landscape changes alter large‐scale atmospheric circulation patterns far from where the …

  • Analyzing abrupt and nonlinear climate changes and their impacts

    Open AccessDoug McNeall, Paul R Halloran et al.ARTICLEWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews…2011Cited by: 5References: 11

    The Earth system shows the tendency to change in nonlinear and sometimes abrupt ways; small changes in external forcing can lead to large and perhaps irreversible changes in outcome. The prospect of crossing important ‘tipping points’ and realizing their impacts poses unique challenges to decision makers within society, hoping to avoid damaging anthropogenic influence on Earth systems. Abrupt and nonlinear changes are by their very nature highly …

  • Climate change in cities due to global warming and urban effects

    Open AccessMark Mccarthy, Mark P McCarthy et al.ARTICLEGeophysical Research Letters2010

    Urbanisation is estimated to result in 6 billion urban dwellers by 2050. Cities will be exposed to climate change from greenhouse gas induced radiative forcing, and localised effects from urbanisation such as the urban heat island. An urban land‐surface model has been included in the HadAM3 Global Climate Model. It shows that regions of high population growth coincide with regions of high urban heat island potential, most notably in the Middle Ea…

  • Implications of climate change for agricultural productivity in the early twenty-first century

    Open AccessJemma Gornall, Richard Betts et al.ARTICLEPhilosophical Transactions of the…2010

    This paper reviews recent literature concerning a wide range of processes through which climate change could potentially impact global-scale agricultural productivity, and presents projections of changes in relevant meteorological, hydrological and plant physiological quantities from a climate model ensemble to illustrate key areas of uncertainty. Few global-scale assessments have been carried out, and these are limited in their ability to captur…

  • Climate Change, Deforestation, and the Fate of the Amazon

    Open AccessY Malhi, J T Roberts et al.ARTICLEScience2008

    The forest biome of Amazonia is one of Earth's greatest biological treasures and a major component of the Earth system. This century, it faces the dual threats of deforestation and stress from climate change. Here, we summarize some of the latest findings and thinking on these threats, explore the consequences for the forest ecosystem and its human residents, and outline options for the future of Amazonia. We also discuss the implications of new …

  • Climate–Carbon Cycle Feedback Analysis

    Pierre Friedlingstein, Peter M Cox et al.ARTICLEJournal of Climate2006

    Eleven coupled climate–carbon cycle models used a common protocol to study the coupling between climate change and the carbon cycle. The models were forced by historical emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 anthropogenic emissions of CO2 for the 1850–2100 time period. For each model, two simulations were performed in order to isolate the impact of climate change on the …

  • In Defense of Huntington

    Fouad Ajami, Richard Betts et al.ARTICLEForeign Policy2004

    Fouad Ajami, Richard Betts, George Borjas, Stephen Bosworth, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, Michael Glennon, Mariano Grondona, Lawrence Harrison, Robert D. Kaplan, Richard Lamm, David Landes, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Minxin Pei, Lucian Pye, Stephen Rosen, Peter Skerry, Tony Smith, James Q. Wilson, Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of Huntington, Foreign Policy, No. 145 (Nov. - Dec., 2004), pp. 4+6+8-10

  • Global response of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function to CO 2 and climate change

    Open AccessWolfgang Cramer, Alberte Bondeau et al.ARTICLEGlobal Change Biology2001

    The possible responses of ecosystem processes to rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration and climate change are illustrated using six dynamic global vegetation models that explicitly represent the interactions of ecosystem carbon and water exchanges with vegetation dynamics. The models are driven by the IPCC IS92a scenario of rising CO 2 ( Wigley et al . 1991 ), and by climate changes resulting from effective CO 2 concentrations corresponding to IS…