This research review explains new studies that demonstrate how incorporating social systems into climate models is important for creating realistic climate forecasts and making informed policy decisions.

New research showcases how coupling existing state efforts (1) to accelerate renewable energy adoption in underserved low-income communities and (2) to replace aging gas distribution networks with district heating and cooling could transform overburdened communities into high energy-performance communities that are safer and more resilient.

As European nations operationalize their commitments to the Paris Agreement, policymakers from across the EU and the UK are promoting the creation of more renewable energy communities (RECs) to scale up decentralized renewable energy production across Europe. However, researchers argue that RECs could actually exacerbate socioeconomic divides. Local and national policies can address potential pitfalls and ensure that RECs can indeed be a mechanism for energy justice in the transition.

As awareness of climate risks grows, more businesses are struggling to quantify climate change impacts, but applying climate model data appropriately is a major challenge. Researchers are identifying new ways climate science can help businesses, investors, and insurance underwriters make more informed decisions.

This research review highlight the challenges of studying the mental health impacts of climate change along with the lack of representation in current research of those most vulnerable to and most impacted by climate change.

Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe as climate change accelerates. Advances in modeling now make it possible to more quickly and reliably determine to what extent global warming causes individual events, offering greater opportunities to educate the public about climate change impacts.

Solar power plays an essential role in the clean energy transition, but its land-use requirements put it in direct competition with agriculture. New research on agrivoltaics demonstrates the benefits of combining both solar and agricultural production including increased productivity, water conservation, and local economic development, while also bolstering public support for clean energy.

Research shows increasingly frequent, more intense wildfires in the Western U.S. will dramatically shift the landscape over the coming decades, resulting in the conversion of forests to shrublands, grasslands, or hardwood-dominated ecosystems before 2100, but strategies such as prescribed fires, managed wildfires, and silvicultural treatments could help protect forests.

A critical tipping point for the Earth’s climate is the potential transformation of the world’s largest tropical forests from carbon sinks into net sources of emissions, which has been challenging for researchers to predict. But now, groundbreaking studies analyzing observations from Amazonian and African tropical forests find these forests have already reached or are nearing their “saturation points.” Halting deforestation and degradation of forests, while cutting global emissions is critical.

Given the long lifespans of power system investments, planning should start incorporating climate change effects. A new study provides a valuable example of an approach to more comprehensively integrate climate risks in long-term electricity planning. This work also illustrates an important win-win in that solar power is both an effective adaptation (helping to reduce summer peak) and carbon mitigation strategy, highlighting positive, no-regret investments.