Abstract Strategies to strengthen regional water security will be essential for navigating a critical 21st-century environmental challenge: securing freshwater supplies against growing demands and increasingly severe climate extremes. This paper assesses the evolution of water security in the historically water-rich U.S. Northeast (NE) and Midwest (MW) to quantify their resilience to severe drought now and in the future. We develop a counterfactual framework that projects sectoral water demands based on socio-economic drivers and deconstructs the benefits of supply- and demand-side adaptations at the regional scale. During the half-century between the historic NE/MW 1960s drought and the 2012-2013 North American drought, rapid socio-economic growth held the potential to push water systems to a breaking point, rendering them unequipped to manage the impact of such severe droughts. However, this study reveals that both regions built resilience through long-term adaptations that averted potential water crises, mitigating otherwise severe summertime water stress (withdrawal-to-available supply) by factors of 2.8 (MW) and 5.6 (NE). While supply-side strategies through reservoir construction and coastal power development played a role, the driving factor has been water demand management, accounting for 83% to 92% of summertime water stress mitigations across the two regions and drought scenarios. These gains were rooted in economic and political incentives to adopt advanced thermoelectric cooling technologies and efficient industrial technologies, together with the regions’ shift from a manufacturing to service economy. Thus, our projections of increased water demand by the mid-21st century highlight a critical reality: future drought resilience will require continued investments in demand-side efficiency gains, such as water-efficient electricity production systems, to keep pace with expected socio-economic trends.
Abstract Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping sustainability science through advances in climate modeling, ecosystem monitoring, resource management, and evidence synthesis. Yet its use also raises concerns about reliability, equity, and environmental impacts. In this Prospective, we identify four priorities for responsible AI integration: ensuring AI-supported claims are causal, transparent, and auditable; treating model selection as an environmental decision; building sustainability-focused AI infrastructure; and engaging sustainability scientists and affected communities in AI design and governance. With these safeguards, AI can enhance sustainability science while promoting equitable and environmentally responsible decision-making.
Abstract The South China Sea (SCS) is one of the most active marginal seas for tropical cyclones (TCs) worldwide and a key region for TC hazards along the coasts of southern China, Philippines and Vietnam. However, the drivers of long-term changes in intense TC development in this region remain unclear. Here, we show that the number of TCs reaching Category 3-5 intensity has increased significantly, with more occurring in the northern SCS. This change is primarily linked to an increasing contribution of western North Pacific TCs entering through the Luzon Strait, which experience weaker land-induced weakening than those crossing the Philippine archipelago and retain greater intensity for subsequent development. After entering the SCS, reduced ocean cooling and enhanced oceanic and atmospheric conditions have increased the environmental favorability for intense TC development in the northern SCS. These results highlight the role of regional ocean-land-atmosphere interactions in reshaping where TCs reach high intensities.
Abstract In recent global climatic and environmental reports, Indigenous Knowledges (IK) are recognised as essential to comprehending social-ecological systems and multi-scalar climate-society relationships. However, IK and Indigenous Peoples (IP) continue to be mostly excluded from important and powerful processes such as the UNFCCC and the IPCC reports. In the current (AR7) cycle of the IPCC, it is important to understand whether the last cycle (AR6) meaningfully engaged with IK and IP. Here, we present a multi-tiered bibliometric analysis of the literature cited in the AR6 report (n=46,145 citations), through which we identified citations with abstracts mentioning IK (n=482). Additionally, through exploring this cluster of IK citations, we address enduring questions around disciplinary bias, geographical bias, and academic journal bias. Finally, we categorise IK citations using two indexes of equitable knowledge production. This highlights the different types of relationships (from extractive to co-productive) that guided the cited papers’ research process. Our findings highlight that despite advocacy, promises, and assurances, IK is mostly excluded from the IPCC AR6 report (1.04% of scholarly literature cited). We also call attention to the fact that biophysical sciences, elite journals, and authors from the Global North are dominant in the IK that is included. Finally, we identify some key points of intervention for AR7, which include strategic choices for chapter authors, a focus on Working Group I (climate science), and the inclusion of chapter-scale knowledge justice audits.
Abstract The North Pacific Meridional Mode (NPMM) is a key extratropical trigger of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, and its influence on ENSO has increased markedly in recent decades, offering a pathway to improve ENSO predictability. Yet, the relative contributions of external forcings versus internal variability to this intensified influence remain uncertain. Using multi-model simulation outputs from the Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparison Project and a suite of numerical experiments, we demonstrate that greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing dominates over internal variability in driving the recent strengthening of the NPMM–ENSO connection, whereas aerosol and natural forcings have minimal impact. GHG forcing enhances the wind–evaporation–SST feedback over the subtropical North Pacific by elevating the background mean SST, which amplifies NPMM-induced westerly wind bursts over the western tropical Pacific and promotes ENSO development. Sensitivity experiments further demonstrate that GHG-induced SST increasing in the subtropical North Pacific enhances the atmospheric response associated with the NPMM. These findings reveal an important role of anthropogenic forcing in modulating the extratropical impact on ENSO and suggest potential opportunities for extending ENSO prediction lead times.
