ALBERT

Description: Based on a theoretical framework inspired by the Greed-Efficiency-Fairness-Hypothesis (GEF), it is argued that perceived effectiveness of climate policies, in addition to other policy beliefs (i.e. perceived personal and distributional consequences), influences perceived overall policy fairness and acceptance. However, links between these policy beliefs and perceived overall fairness as well as whether perceived overall fairness might mediate effects of these beliefs on acceptance remains understudied. This study addresses these gaps and extends the GEF-inspired framework: We add procedural fairness to the list of fairness-relevant beliefs and analyze whether perceived overall carbon pricing fairness integrates and mediates their effect on acceptance, using survey data representative of Germany (n = 4646). Additionally, we test whether adherence to the polluter-pays principle (a general fairness principle) moderates the effects of perceived distributional consequences and effectiveness on perceived overall fairness. Results showed that perceived personal consequences, distributional consequences, procedural fairness, as well as perceived effectiveness, all impact perceived overall fairness, and that the latter (partially) mediates their effects on carbon pricing acceptance. We also find weak evidence that the impact of perceived effectiveness and negative distributional consequences on perceived overall fairness is greater for polluter-pays adherents than for non-adherents. These results suggest that, additionally to perceived personal and distributional consequences as well as fair procedures, perceiving a policy to be effective increases its perceived overall fairness.

Description: Shared pooled mobility has been hailed as a sustainable mobility solution that uses digital innovation to efficiently bundle rides. Multiple disciplines have started investigating and analyzing shared pooled mobility systems. However, there is a lack of cross-community communication making it hard to build upon knowledge from other fields or know which open questions may be of interest to other fields. Here, we identify and review 9 perspectives: transdisciplinary social sciences, social physics, transport simulations, urban and energy economics, psychology, climate change solutions, and the Global South research and provide a common terminology. We identify more than 25 000 papers, with more than 100 fold variation in terms of literature count between research perspectives. Our review demonstrates the intellectual attractivity of this as a novel perceived mode of transportation, but also highlights that real world economics may limit its viability, if not supported with concordant incentives and regulation. We then sketch out cross-disciplinary open questions centered around (1) optimal configuration of ride-pooling systems, (2) empirical studies, and (3) market drivers and implications for the economics of ride-pooling. We call for researchers of different disciplines to actively exchange results and views to advance a transdisciplinary research agenda.

Description: The European Union’s outreach to third countries during the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism was rigid and uncoordinated, new Ariadne analysis has found. Researchers investigated how the EU organized its diplomacy to counter trade concerns during the development of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. According to the Ariadne researchers, the fact that the EU’s diplomatic outreach was rather reactive may have helped to provide less of a target for opposition from trading partners and to increase acceptance of the mechanism as an expression of the EU’s claim to leadership in ambitious climate policy.

Description: Opinion formation within society follows complex dynamics. Towards its understanding, axiomatic theory can complement data analysis. To this end we propose an axiomatic model of opinion formation that aims to capture the interaction of individual conviction with social influence in a minimalist fashion. Despite only representing that (1) agents have an initial conviction with respect to a topic and are (2) influenced by their neighbours, the model shows emergence of opinion clusters from an initially unstructured state. Here, we show that increasing individual self-reliance makes agents more likely to align their socially influenced opinion with their inner conviction which concomitantly leads to increased polarisation. The opinion drift observed with increasing self-reliance may be a plausible analogue of polarisation trends in the real world. Modelling the basic traits of striving for individual versus group identity, we find a trade-off between individual fulfilment and societal cohesion. This finding from fundamental assumptions can serve as a building block to explain opinion polarisation.

Description: Renewable hydrogen is necessary for the decarbonization of sectors that are difficult to electrify, such as industry and aviation, and as a storage medium for surplus electricity from renewable sources.

Description: The world should redouble its efforts on the SDGs, not abandon them. Here’s how to progress the United Nations’ agenda towards 2050.

Description: The Arctic sea ice (ASI) is expected to decrease with further global warming. However, considerable uncertainty remains regarding the temperature range that would lead to a completely ice-free Arctic. Here, we combine satellite data and a large suite of models from the latest phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) to develop an empirical, observation-based projection of the September ASI area for increasing global mean surface temperature (GMST) values. This projection harnesses two simple linear relationships that are statistically supported by both observations and model data. First, we show that the September ASI area is linearly proportional to the area inside a specific northern hemisphere January–September mean temperature contour Tc. Second, we use observational data to show how zonally averaged temperatures have followed a positive linear trend relative to the GMST, consistent with Arctic amplification. To ensure the reliability of these observations throughout the rest of the century, we validate this trend by employing the CMIP6 ensemble. Combining these two linear relationships, we show that the September ASI area decrease will accelerate with respect to the GMST increase. Our analysis of observations and CMIP6 model data suggests a complete loss of the September ASI (area below 10〈sup〉8〈/sup〉 km〈sup〉2〈/sup〉) for global warming between 1.5 C and 2.2 C above pre-industrial GMST levels.

Description: The loss of Arctic sea ice (ASI) represents a major transformation in the Arctic region, impacting regional and global climate, ecosystems, and socio-economic structures. Observational and reanalysis data have consistently shown a notable shift in polar environmental conditions over recent decades, marked by a substantial reduction in the ASI area and a rise in the variability in its coverage and distribution. Utilizing data from the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase, our study reveals a consistent pattern highlighting a fundamental shift in ASI dynamics preceding total loss. We observe increasing fluctuations in the September ASI area as the threshold for an ice-free Arctic is approached across various scenarios and models. This pattern is particularly concentrated in the Central Arctic (CA) sub-region. Spatial analyses reveal increasing variance along the CA's northern coastlines, accompanied by a substantial increase in open water coverage, underscoring the shift from stable to highly variable ice conditions in this region. Additionally, our findings suggest a potential link between increased ASI fluctuations and variability in surface wind speeds. These specific results underscore the urgency of multidisciplinary approaches in addressing the challenges posed by ASI variability, with implications for marine ecosystems, Indigenous communities, and navigational safety.

Description: Detection of critical slowing down (CSD) is the dominant avenue for anticipating critical transitions from noisy time-series data. Most commonly, changes in variance and lag-1 autocorrelation [AC(1)] are used as CSD indicators. However, these indicators will only produce reliable results if the noise driving the system is white and stationary. In the more realistic case of time-correlated red noise, increasing (decreasing) the correlation of the noise will lead to spurious (masked) alarms for both variance and AC(1). Here, we propose two new methods that can discriminate true CSD from possible changes in the driving noise characteristics. We focus on estimating changes in the linear restoring rate based on Langevin-type dynamics driven by either white or red noise. We assess the capacity of our new estimators to anticipate critical transitions and show that they perform significantly better than other existing methods both for continuous-time and discrete-time models. In addition to conceptual models, we apply our methods to climate model simulations of the termination of the African Humid Period. The estimations rule out spurious signals stemming from nonstationary noise characteristics and reveal a destabilization of the African climate system as the dynamical mechanism underlying this archetype of abrupt climate change in the past.

Description: With the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) failing to provide adequate support to climate victims, vulnerable countries, nongovernmental organizations and affected communities are increasingly exploring legal avenues to obtain recourse for loss and damage. This article contributes to the emerging scholarship on climate litigation by exploring whether, how and with what effects such litigation interacts with the UNFCCC negotiations. For this purpose, the article contextualizes normative claims about the influence of climate court cases through practice‐embedded views of stakeholders in the loss and damage context and provides a typology of loss and damage‐related cases. Having due regard to the fact that litigation for liability and compensation of climate harms is still at an early stage, it argues that this legal avenue offers significant potential to advance the UNFCCC negotiations on loss and damage, and provides recommendations on how both spheres can be more strongly interlinked.