The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body charged with assessing the science related to climate change, has released its latest report outlining the affects global warming has on nature and people around the world.

Politics and society largely dictate climate policy ambitions and therefore the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, yet climate change models and projections rarely include political and social drivers. A study from the University of California, Davis, simulated 100,000 possible future policy and emissions trajectories to identify relevant variables within the climate-social system that could impact climate change in this century. 

El Niño, an oceanic phenomenon that affects worldwide weather patterns, significantly affected the number of enslaved Africans transported from West Africa to the Americas between the mid-1600s and mid-1800s, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. 

Wheat products account for roughly 20% of what people eat every day around the globe. As climate changes, wheat crops must adapt to new weather patterns to keep up with demand. 

The University of California, Davis, is leading a five-year, $15 million research project to accelerate wheat breeding to meet those new climate realities, as well as to train a new generation of plant breeders. 

How small mountain lakes spend their winters is largely unknown to scientists, despite winter representing nearly half the year in such environments. A study by the University of California, Davis, helps demystify what happens above and below the ice. 

Being common is rather unusual. It’s far more common for a species to be rare, spending its existence in small densities throughout its range. How such rare species persist, particularly in an environment undergoing rapid climate change, inspired a 15-year study in arctic Greenland from the University of California, Davis. 

Da Yang, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences, is gearing up to launch a new research project on the buoyancy effect of water vapor and climate change. Yang received an $810,000 CAREER Award grant from the National Science Foundation, which presents its most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have demonstrated the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.

Warren Winiarski knows how to make beautiful wine and wants to help his beloved Napa Valley continue to do so for years to come. The legendary founder and former winemaker of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars fame is funding an ambitious research project to update and expand the globally recognized Winkler Index and give the industry new tools to cope with climate change.

Beth Forrestel, an assistant professor and plant biologist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology, leads the project to modernize the Winkler Index that growers used for decades to match suitable wine grape varieties with different regions of the state. Even though smoke, wildfires and pandemic-induced restrictions presented some formidable obstacles to field research in 2020, the initial year of the study, Forrestel reports progress by those involved with the work.