Climate Science and Policy

The waste culture of the Global North has accelerated the flow of discarded goods to developing countries with limited waste-management infrastructure. Fast fashion has produced a take-make-dispose model in which secondhand clothing is donated, exported, and ultimately accumulated under ambient sunlight at open dumpsites in receiving countries. Royer et al. (2018) demonstrated that plastic polymers from water bottles and plastic bags release methane under ultraviolet (UV) weathering. This study tests whether polyester exhibits similar properties of UV-driven greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This was done by measuring GHGs (CH₄, CO₂, and CO) from textiles under controlled experimental UV exposures in a laboratory at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and in situ from textile waste sitting under the sun in Ghana. As for the laboratory experiment we included different variables to our analysis in order to mimic possible conditions in the field, namely with the type of polymer (polyester, cotton), the color of the textile (yellow, black), the pre-aging of the textiles (experimentally UV weathered for 1, 2, or 3 weeks), and the exposure condition (dry, wet either with water or H₂O₂). Polyester produced significant amounts of all three gases across most conditions tested, with consistently larger fluxes than cotton, establishing synthetic textiles as a measurable greenhouse gas source under environmentally realistic UV exposure. Field measurements at nine sites in Accra, Ghana, including the open-air textile waste dump of Old Fadama detected GHGs substantially above atmospheric background, with CH₄ being up to 28 times greater in some areas. These preliminary findings establish disposal-phase emissions from accumulated textile waste as a possible greenhouse gas emissions pathway that is unaccounted for in climate predictions. Textile waste is an issue that has been aggravated by the fast fashion industry and managing the waste would help address its contribution to GHGs emission. Policies under the Extended Producer Responsibility frameworks have been put in place for this purpose but have shown some serious limitations, notably by excluding countries receiving the textile waste. This study will help close this regulatory gap by demonstrating that the end-of-life of the textile product is key to assessing its carbon footprint, thus pushing for lifecycle assessment traceability through secondhand export.

This study examines how the tone of climate communication influences both climate concern and willingness to participate in climate action. Participants at Birch Aquarium (N = 600) completed a survey after viewing one of two short videos featuring identical Large Area Imaging (LAI) visualizations of coral reefs in Kenting, Taiwan. The videos differed only in narrative framing: one emphasized ecological resilience and solutions, while the other emphasized environmental degradation and climate-related loss. Survey responses measured climate concern using questions adapted from Yale University's Six Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY) and willingness to engage in five categories of climate action. Results indicate that narrative tone influenced climate concern and climate action differently. Participants exposed to the negative narrative were more likely to be classified as Alarmed and reported higher levels of climate concern. However, participants exposed to the positive narrative consistently reported greater willingness to engage in personal, communicative, communal, and political climate action. These findings suggest that communication strategies that maximize concern are not necessarily the same strategies that maximize willingness to act. While problem-focused communication may be effective for increasing perceptions of climate risk and urgency, solution-oriented communication may be more effective for motivating public engagement. The results have implications for climate scientists, educators, conservation organizations, and public-facing institutions seeking to translate environmental concern into meaningful action.

Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme heat and dry events worldwide, with profound implications for the health of drying saline lakes. The synergistic compound exposure of extreme heat and dust around these environments as they recede poses hazards for public health, being linked to increased rates of respiratory disease. A relevant example of climate and policy-driven compound exposure around drying saline lakes is California’s Salton Sea, having been polluted by farm runoff and receding due to the decline of the Colorado River and the 2003 Quantification Settlement Agreement for water management. Local communities today have lower household incomes and higher rates of respiratory disease than state averages. Investigating compound extreme heat and dust events in the region and their health outcomes through the lens of health equity is thus crucial as a case study for climate adaptation and ensuring environmental justice. This study examines various metrics for spatiotemporal extreme heat and dust compound exposure around the Salton Sea using publicly available temperature, air quality, and health datasets. Our results suggest that compound exposure is increasing over time in the area, with the most disadvantaged communities, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, bearing the highest exposures and adverse health effects.

Blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) are coastal vegetated habitats with a natural capacity to sequester and store vast amounts of carbon over long timescales. Given rising greenhouse gas concentrations and the subsequent increase in global efforts to reduce and offset emissions, BCEs are increasingly promoted as nature-based climate solutions. Their relevance to climate policy as a tool for climate change mitigation has garnered increasing attention, but heavily depends on ecosystem-specific evidence for carbon storage, sequestration permanence, monitoring feasibility, and governance compatibility. BCEs are also highly valued for providing many ecosystem services, biodiversity, and coastal resilience benefits. This study evaluates two prominent Norwegian BCEs: seagrass (Zostera marina) and macroalgal systems, primarily kelp forests and rockweed beds, as candidates for blue carbon policy and broader marine nature-based solutions. The analysis combines site-to-national carbon and ecosystem-service databases for seagrass and macroalgae, uncertainty analysis, spatial co-location screening from interactive mapping, and policy evaluation. Seagrass occupies a comparatively small national area (modeled extent ≈ 90 km²) but is directly compatible with sediment-based blue carbon accounting. Its sediment carbon density varies strongly among regions — low in the Barents Sea, much higher in Oslofjord and Skagerrak — reflecting the influence of differing environmental controls such as sediment dry bulk density, hydrodynamic exposure, and water column depth. Macroalgae dominate Norway's vegetated coastal area (kelp ≈ 7,417 km², rockweed ≈ 3,090 km²) and hold far larger estimated biomass-carbon pools and annual production fluxes; however, their carbon is living biomass, so any long-term climate benefit depends on export, deposition, and burial outside the production habitat, creating significant attribution and permanence uncertainties for carbon accounting. These differences imply different policy pathways. Norwegian seagrass is conceptually compatible with the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) Wetlands Supplement and could progress toward lower-tier inventory treatment as mapping, disturbance, and burial-rate data improve; its strongest near-term policy argument is the avoided degradation of existing sediment carbon. Macroalgae are better treated as an emerging blue carbon frontier and as high-priority biodiversity, fisheries, and coastal-resilience assets, entering policy through nature-based adaptation and co-benefits frameworks while export-driven accounting methods mature. The most defensible near-term pathway is therefore differentiated by habitat type: seagrass can begin IPCC Tier 1 accounting while developing capacity toward Tier 2 and Tier 3 readiness, whereas macroalgae should first be embedded into biodiversity and co-benefits frameworks while macroalgal carbon-fate research advances. Both ecosystems should be protected, monitored, and included into Nationally Determined Contributions immediately, with the differentiated pathway also phased so that each ecosystem is integrated further into formal carbon accounting and blue carbon governance as the underlying science matures.