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Journal articleFraser K, Cibrelus L, Horton J, et al., 2026, , BMC Global and Public Health, Vol: 4, ISSN: 2731-913X
BackgroundThe importation of arbovirus diseases into new countries is a global concern. This risk is exacerbated by human movement and climate change effects. In the World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean regional office, three countries - Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen - are currently classified as potential or moderate risk for yellow fever (YF) outbreaks.MethodsHere we present a quantitative assessment of the risk of introduction and propagation of yellow fever virus (YFV) transmission in Djibouti, Somalia and Yemen. This modelling has two components: i) projecting the risk of importation of infectious individuals into the countries of interest using a radiation model of human movement and ii) estimating the risk of onward transmission given importation using a dynamic compartmental model of yellow fever virus transmission. Both components are multiplicatively combined to give an overall relative outbreak risk combining both risk of importation and risk of an outbreak given importation.ResultsWe show that areas such as the western coast of Yemen, regions of Somalia bordering Ethiopia and Kenya, and Djibouti City have potential for YF outbreaks (where the estimated probability of an outbreak given an imported infectious case is over 50%). This is due to environmental suitability for transmission based on factors such as temperature and projected human mobility between endemic and at-risk regions.ConclusionsCountries bordering existing YF endemic regions are potentially vulnerable to both introduction of YF cases and subsequent outbreak spread. This promotes the awareness of YF importation potential when conducting clinical surveillance in at-risk countries.
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Journal articleZhao J, Paschalis A, Gentine P, et al., 2026, , Communications Earth and Environment, Vol: 7
Quantification of the impact of environmental stress on terrestrial vegetation photosynthesis is crucial for our understanding of the global carbon cycle, particularly under a changing climate. Vegetation responses to environmental stress manifest first as plant physiological changes, and at later stages through changes in canopy structure. Here we leverage CO<inf>2</inf> and water flux data from 103 eddy covariance towers and satellite thermal images to assess whether current satellite reconstructions of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence capture these plant mechanisms. After removing seasonality using standardized anomalies (z-scores), we found that the relationship between tower-observed gross primary productivity and fluorescence reconstructions considerably weakened across a wide range of biomes. This loss of correlation results from a decoupling between stomatal responses and the physiological emission yield (Φ<inf>F</inf>) of fluorescence reconstructions during soil and atmospheric dry periods. The consequence is that productivity derived from fluorescence reconstructions will be progressively overestimated as dry conditions persist.
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Journal articleZelinka MD, Myers TA, Qin Y, et al., 2026, , Communications Earth and Environment, Vol: 7
Earth’s energy imbalance has increased markedly over the past two decades, reaching a record in 2023. Both the long-term trend and year-to-year variations are linked to reduced reflection of sunlight by low-level clouds, which is pronounced over Northern Hemisphere oceans. However, the causes of these cloud changes and their implications for future Earth system evolution are unknown, raising concerns about a stronger-than-expected cloud feedback. Here we quantify the meteorological factors behind interannual cloud-radiative anomalies, several of which aligned to produce the extreme 2023 value. These meteorological variations are superposed on a background of declining sulfate aerosol concentrations, contributing to a sustained decrease in cloud reflection over the past 22 years. The resulting constraints on cloud feedback and aerosol forcing are consistent with previous studies, supporting an equilibrium climate sensitivity near 3<sup>∘</sup>C (likely range 2.7–4.1<sup>∘</sup>C). Thus, recent observations do not indicate an emerging stronger cloud feedback or underestimated future warming.
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Journal articleAuestad H, Shibu A, Ceppi P, et al., 2026, , Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Vol: 9
Extratropical storms release latent heat as they transport warm, moist air poleward and upward. That latent heating feeds back on storms by intensifying individual cyclones and by altering the environmental conditions for the growth of storms, constituting a latent heating-dynamics feedback. As the climate warms, storm-track latent heating increases, but the role of this feedback in a future climate remains unclear. Using atmospheric general-circulation model experiments that separate the coupled heating-dynamics feedback from climatological changes in latent heating, we show that this feedback plays a leading-order role in intensifying storm tracks under +4 K warming. The feedback increases lower-tropospheric storm intensity, compensating for reduced baroclinicity, while its upper-tropospheric effect is seasonal: amplifying summer eddies but damping winter ones. The feedback is critical for storms that grow in moist environments, typical for summer and warmer climates, underscoring the need for accurate representation of moist processes in climate models.
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Journal articleDe Lorm TA, Heon SP, Bernard H, et al., 2026, , Forest Ecology and Management, Vol: 619, ISSN: 0378-1127
Replanting a tree plantation - that is, clearing old trees and replacing these with young plants - drastically alters its habitat structure and microclimate, leading to changes in its biodiversity. Nevertheless, we lack an understanding of how the replanting of oil palm plantations - the most prominent oil crop globally - affects mammals and birds, while the amount of area replanted will increase exponentially over the next decades. We therefore studied how the bird and mammal community of an oil palm plantation in Malaysian Borneo changed in response to replanting. Using camera traps for mammals, and acoustic recordings and BirdNET for birds, we show that both communities are transformed. Mammal species richness slightly dropped, because of the absence from replanted plantations of long- and pig-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis and M. nemestrina), both endangered primate species. Bird species richness did not significantly differ between replanted and mature plantations. However, the detection frequency of most species changed, as the bird community shifted from forest and woodland species towards open-habitat species. The detection frequency and species richness of different trophic niches stayed largely constant, indicating that birds will still be able to perform similar high-level ecological functions in replanted plantations. Overall, our results show that replanting reshaped mammal and bird communities, but that their diversity and abundance does not collapse. These findings stress the importance of staggered replanting, as opposed to replanting large stretches of plantation in one go, to bolster landscape level biodiversity, and underscore that tree plantations are temporally dynamic habitats.
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Journal articleGhail RC, Crouch EJP, Mason PJ, 2026, , Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Vol: 692, ISSN: 0012-821X
Whether Venus once had oceans and, if so, when it lost them are critical issues in the understanding of habitability on exoplanets, as well as for the future of life on Earth. Analysis of distinctive, lowland polygonal terrains on Venus reveals 6 main types. Many are several kilometres across, suggesting a mode of formation by contraction of confined marine clays, supporting the hypothesis that Venus had oceans within the last billion years. By analogy with the Messinian desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea on Earth, we identify other features of possible marine origin, including canali, which we conclude formed as submarine channels. The distribution of wrinkle ridges is consistent with them overlying salt layers, calculated to be at least 64 m thick, but probably significantly more, precipitated from evaporating oceans. While the interpretation of these features is not unambiguous, there is a compelling case that Venus once supported oceans, and perhaps life, across most of its surface.
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Journal articleHarrison SP, Prentice IC, Ascoli D, et al., 2026,
Land management to mitigate the risks of future fire in the Mediterranean region: strategies and barriers to their adoption
, Frontiers in Environmental Science, ISSN: 2296-665XExtreme wildfires are becoming more frequent in the Mediterranean region and already frequently exceed controllable thresholds, leading to large impacts on natural and social systems. Wildfire risk is predicted to increase in the region over the 21st century because of ongoing global climate changes. The risk of wildfires is being exacerbated by rural land abandonment, which is promoting increased landscape flammability; and by expansion of the wildland-urban interface. To address the challenges arising from fire regime changes, there is an urgent need to improve existing management strategies to reduce fire risk and to minimise the occurrence of extreme wildfires. Doing so successfully requires integrating insights across varied wildfire management paradigms, that stem from diverse disciplinary traditions and often serve competing policy priorities. Here we review the state of knowledge and practice on wildfire management in the Mediterranean region. We begin by highlighting the diversity of land management practices that deliberately or indirectly have been used for fire risk mitigation, shaping contemporary Mediterranean landscapes and fire regimes. We then summarise the evolution of policy priorities and fire management practices, and how these changes in infrastructural, economic and legal frameworks could influence landscape vulnerability to wildfire. We also examine some of the barriers that work against the adoption of management strategies to minimise wildfire risk at local and national levels. The paper brings together ecological, land-management, governance, planning and economic perspectives that are often treated separately, in order to clarify where current wildfire risk reduction strategies are supported by evidence and where important barriers remain. Finally, we integrate these different insights to identify key knowledge gaps and make recommendations for future action.
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OtherNakoneczny DP, Itcovitz JP, Vida D, et al., 2026,
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Journal articlede Hoyos L, Schlag F, Jahagirdar S, et al., 2026, , Nat Hum Behav
Social behaviour is a heritable trait linked to well-being and mental health, yet it varies across social context, including social domains, informants and development, which may shape its underlying genomic architecture. Here, we conducted a genome-wide meta-regression meta-analysis of social behaviour from infancy to early adulthood, studying ~500,000 repeated measures in European-ancestry cohorts (N = 73,321). We modelled heterogeneity in single-variant associations across social domains (low prosocial behaviour and peer/social difficulties), multiple informants (parents, teachers and self-reports) and ages (2-29 years), identifying 6 associated loci, including variation within CADM2 (P = 2.51 × 10-9). Single nucleotide polymorphism-based heritability ranged from 2% to 7%, and the genetic architecture comprised 4 factors reflecting differences in either social domains or informants. Polygenic scores (N = 16,305) accurately predicted contextual variation in independent cohorts, with some cross-ancestry transferability. Context-specific patterns of genetic correlations, particularly when estimating the developmental onset of associations, offer opportunities to disentangle shared trajectories linking social behaviour with later-life and mental health outcomes.
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Journal articleCeppi P, Bodas-Salcedo A, Zelinka MD, et al., 2026, , Geoscientific Model Development, Vol: 19, Pages: 8693-8708, ISSN: 1991-959X
Cloud processes constitute one of the key uncertainties for climate change projections. The fourth iteration of the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project, CFMIP4, contributes to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 7 (CMIP7), by providing a set of global climate model experiments aiming to enhance our understanding of clouds, circulation and climate sensitivity, thereby informing improved projections of future climate change. CFMIP4 targets four knowledge gaps: (1) Physical mechanisms of cloud feedback and adjustment; (2) Dependence of cloud feedback and adjustment on climate base state and on the nature of the forcing; (3) Coupled mechanisms of the sea-surface temperature “pattern effect”; and (4) Coupling of clouds with circulation and precipitation. CFMIP4 contributes four CMIP7 Assessment Fast Track experiments that are central to the quantification of climate feedback and sensitivity in past, present and future climates, essential for process understanding and model evaluation. Furthermore, CFMIP4 supports the joint analysis of models and observations through a data request that includes process and satellite simulator output.
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