India’s solar electricity generation capacity is concentrated in its western and southern states, while coal mining is concentrated in central and eastern India. Previous studies have found that increasing solar capacity in India’s coal belt may ameliorate the distributional consequences of electricity decarbonization, but we lack detailed assessments of the tradeoffs involved. Here, we evaluate the costs and emissions reduction benefits associated with building solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity on land currently used for opencast (OC) coal mining in India. We use 50 years of weather data to quantify the P10, P50, and P90 capacity factors and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for identically configured PV arrays at the 100 largest OC mines. At 97 mines, the expected LCOE is higher than at the Pavagada Solar Park in southern India that we use as a benchmark. When adjusted for the value of avoided emissions, 49 mines spread across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh have lower social costs of solar generation than Pavagada. For the 50 largest mines, we compile acreage information and estimate that they can support up to 28 GW of new solar PV capacity, approximately one-third of India’s total solar PV capacity today. This capacity would avoid approximately 47 Mt , or US$2.4 billion in damages, per year at abatement costs between US$15–28/t . Mines expected to be depleted by 2025 may support annual abatement of up to 4.8 Mt  yr−1, with additional abatement of 6.5 Mt  yr−1 and 8.6 Mt  yr−1 possible at mines closing between 2025–30 and 2030–35, respectively. Our results show that depleted mine land in India’s coal belt can play a meaningful role in an electricity capacity mix that minimizes the combination of private costs and damages.

Governments worldwide are adopting ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A New York State (NYS) legislative mandate requires net zero statewide GHG emissions by 2050 in part through decarbonizing electricity generation. However, increasing renewable energy capacity, including utility scale solar (USS), competes with land-uses such as agriculture and forestry. This case study evaluates USS historic land use to project future demand for land to meet NYS’s 2050 GHG goal. Data collected from open-source solar databases were combined with USS boundaries obtained through manual and automated digitization and Monte-Carlo and Maximum Entropy modeling were used to project the likely area and land use characteristics of future sites built to meet the projected 2050 demand for electricity. Demand for solar energy in NYS is projected to reach 116–125 terawatt hours per year by 2050, when electrification of current fossil-fueled heating and transportation sectors is taken into account. By analyzing the performance of over 300 existing USS sites across NYS, we project that approximately 100 GWDC of USS capacity can meet this demand. We found an average power density of 0.62 MWDC/ha of land for fixed axis sites and 0.59 MWDC/ha for single axis tracked sites. Stochastic modeling of power density trends over time indicates that the 2050 mandate will require between 71,072 and 128,784 hectares (ha) depending on siting variables. If trends continue, we project that between 21 386 and 27 233 ha of cropland and between 14,985 and 18,463 ha of forest could be converted to USS. For future scenarios in which conversion of annual row crop land and high-quality soils were limited, there was an increase in distance to transmission lines, number of parcels required, and complexity of site shapes, which would likely increase solar development costs. These results help bound the likely land use changes that will occur to meet electric sector GHG mitigation mandates. These results also provide information about the benefits and trade-offs of restricting the conversion of current agricultural land to solar energy production. Additionally, the approach we developed, combining analysis of fenced area, capacity factors, trends in power density over time, and projecting likely future locations for solar stochastically is applicable to many global regions with solar development on agricultural lands.

Philip Ball dives into the challenges in developing quantum computing, and building up investments and users for the tech The post Quantum computing on the verge: correcting errors, developing algorithms and building up the user base appeared first on Physics World.

Telescope observations reveal material accreting onto the planet Cha1107-7626 in a way that resembles the infancy of stars The post Young rogue planet grows like a star appeared first on Physics World.

Changing wildfire regimes in recent decades have prompted extensive investigation into their hydrological impact. However, contradictory findings on post-fire flow regime changes have highlighted the complexity of this relationship. This study considers rich daily-resolution hydrological data on 898 burned catchments and over 8000 unburned control catchments to choose a set of 39 paired catchment experiments, along with 500 control pair experiments. We use these 500 control catchments to evaluate the extent to which the paired watershed approach accounts for hidden co-varying factors, finding that in most instances, it does not. We assess the influence of wildfires on flow magnitude, timing, and dynamicity. We also explore the effects of wildfire on water storage, evapotranspiration, and flood flows across the Western USA from 1984 to 2023. We find that percent changes in flow magnitude post-fire are not statistically significant and are uncorrelated with the percent of the catchment that burned, even when data are restricted to the critical first 5 years post-fire. However, linear regression analysis of 94 catchment variables found weak positive relationships between pre-fire forest cover and percent changes in flow magnitudes. Our results emphasize that the statistical uncertainty associated with even well-established methods may overshadow the magnitude of observed effects.

Social vulnerability plays a critical role in shaping the impacts of flooding, yet the ways in which it is measured remain inconsistent and often disconnected from local realities. As climate-related flood events intensify globally, there is an urgent need to understand how social vulnerability is conceptualized and assessed to inform more equitable and effective risk reduction strategies. This paper reports the results of a systematic literature review on indicators and indexes used to assess social vulnerability to floods. Utilizing the PRISMA methodology, we identified and screened 1621 studies published between 2013 and 2023, selecting 36 peer-reviewed publications for examining how social vulnerability indices have been conceptualized, constructed, and applied, as well as the range of indicators, and methodological approaches used. We identified 78 indicator sets across 22 thematic domains. Results indicate that most attention has been given to a small set of indicators focusing on at-risk populations, socioeconomic factors, housing, and employment, while other factors such as health conditions, disaster preparedness, social connectedness, gender minorities, and sexuality are consistently underrepresented. Many studies rely on established frameworks without adapting them to local socio-cultural contexts and use census and secondary data sources, providing limited household-level and qualitative insights. Lack of methodological transparency, particularly regarding normalization and weighting, is common as is insufficient validation and ground-truthing. Greater attention to these issues, along with empirical case studies, is needed to provide in-depth insights into the root causes of social vulnerability and inform policies better tailored to local realities. This review highlights significant conceptual and methodological gaps, calling for more context-sensitive, mixed-method, and empirically validated approaches to improve the robustness and local relevance of social vulnerability assessments in flood-prone areas.

Gamification has emerged as a promising tool for education and awareness-raising in the context of climate adaptation, but we lack a clear understanding of its topical and geographical reach, as well as its effectiveness. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the state of the art, we conducted a systematic literature review of 40 studies addressing sea level rise; flooding resulting from sea level rise or extreme weather events; and transformations in urban geography through adaptative policies in response to climate change. The findings indicate a steady growth in this area of research over the past decade. The reviewed interventions—primarily oriented toward fostering learning related to adaptative behaviors or directly aimed at behavioral change—have generally yielded positive outcomes. Specifically, gamification has been shown to enhance participants’ sense of accomplishment, promote social interaction, and create immersive learning environments. However, we also identified limitations in terms of intervention context, design, measured outcomes, and methodology. In response to these, we propose a set of recommendations for future research in this field. Among them, we highlight the importance of developing and deploying gamified experiences in emerging economies that are particularly vulnerable to climate risk; promoting social dynamics within digital interventions, thereby enhancing collective awareness and cooperation; considering the affective dimension of engagement within experimental designs by capturing emotional responses and their influence on behavior; and deepening and broadening the scope of results by grounding the studies’ execution and reporting more firmly on critical self-reflection and transparency.

Future sea level (SL) change in the Mediterranean Sea is one of the major climate hazards for populations living in coastal areas. In this study, we analyze projections of relative SL (RSL) rise in the Mediterranean Sea until the end of the 21st century. For the first time, we provide a detailed characterization of regional patterns of future SL change using an ensemble of three multi-decadal SSP5-8.5 scenario simulations with high-resolution fully coupled regional climate system models (RCSMs) of the Med-CORDEX initiative and their driving global climate models (GCMs). At the basin-scale, RCSMs do not significantly modify the GCM-projected RSL changes by 2100, with a mean RSL change of 69 cm (60–93 cm, 17th-83rd percentiles) relative to 1995–2014. Among the RSL components, the sterodynamic (primarily driven by the global thermal expansion) and the surface mass balance drive the basin-scale RSL rise, with the latter being the largest source of uncertainty. We find that the RSL rise in the Mediterranean is expected to be 4%–12% lower than the global mean due to differences in the surface mass contribution, and 6%–15% lower than in the nearby Atlantic as a result of dynamic adjustments within the semi-enclosed basin. While dynamic SL drives the mean regional patterns, vertical land motion introduces the greatest local spatial variability along coasts, resulting in a projected local RSL rise by 2100 of −26 cm to +178 cm in GCMs and −39 cm to +170 cm in RCSMs. Furthermore, compared to GCMs, RCSMs incorporate local details that result in greater spatial variability, which is important to consider in risk assessments and adaptation planning.

Amid accelerating urbanization and severe biodiversity loss in global drylands, reconciling urbanization with habitat conservation is crucial for sustainable development. Focused on China’s Loess Plateau (LP), a typical arid to semi-arid region, this study quantified the dual effects of urbanization on both the size and quality of natural habitats (NHs) from 1990 to 2050 by multi-scenario land cover simulations with the system dynamics PLUS model, combining landscape indices and habitat quality (HQ) analysis. The study revealed that urbanization directly consumed 3470 km2 of NHs and indirectly resulted in the loss of 4706.4 km2 between 1990 and 2020. Under the SSP5–8.5 scenario, direct and indirect NHs losses are projected to increases of 7.75 and 7.39 times respectively, from 2020 to 2050. Nevertheless, LP’s landscape pattern exhibited an optimizing trend: the increasing aggregation index of urban patches, coupled with an enhanced largest patch index for forests and grasslands, indicates that intensified urbanization can mitigate the disordered encroachment on NHs, reduce landscape fragmentation, and preserve larger and more contiguous habitat patches, thereby improving overall HQ. The LP case demonstrates urbanization and NHs conservation are not inherently antagonistic; well-planned urbanization can catalyze NHs protection. We further proposed strategies including spatially concentrated urbanization to advance sustainable urbanization and enhance HQ, fostering synergies between social progress and ecological preservation in global arid regions.

For Halloween, a couple of spooky stories from the world of physics The post Spooky physics: from glowing green bats to vibrating spider webs appeared first on Physics World.

Effective carbon dioxide removal requires a One-Earth approach, Boyd, Philip W, Gattuso, Jean-Pierre, Legendre, Louis, Moustakis, Yiannis, Pongratz, Julia

The gender gap in exam results was much larger in the high-stakes classes that did not allow retakes The post Lowering exam stakes could cut the gender grade gap in physics, finds study appeared first on Physics World.

Our podcast guests are a physicist and a sculptor The post Quantum steampunk: we explore the art and science appeared first on Physics World.

Rayleigh-Taylor instability responsible for mushroom clouds appears in a two-component BEC The post Quantum fluids mix like oil and water appeared first on Physics World.

Novel design strategies provide a step towards more efficient and stable perovskite–perovskite–silicon solar cells The post Large-area triple-junction perovskite solar cell achieves record efficiency appeared first on Physics World.

Tara Shears reviews This is for Everyone: the Captivating Memoir from the Inventor of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee The post Tim Berners-Lee: why the inventor of the Web is ‘optimistic, idealistic and perhaps a little naïve’ appeared first on Physics World.

Physicists have designed a protocol to study high-temperature superconductivity on an experimentally realizable platform The post New protocol makes an elusive superconducting signature measurable appeared first on Physics World.

Researchers enhance a 2D ferromagnetic material by layering with a topological insulator to reveal stronger, tuneable behaviour for next-generation quantum devices The post Interface engineered ferromagnetism appeared first on Physics World.

ATLAS researchers have provided compelling evidence for off-shell Higgs boson production with vastly increased confidence The post Probing the fundamental nature of the Higgs Boson appeared first on Physics World.

Join the audience for a live webinar at 6 p.m. GMT/1 p.m EST on 19 November 2025 Discover how NiO/Ga₂O₃ heterojunction rectifiers unlock high-performance power electronics with breakthrough thermal, radiation, and structural resilience—driving innovation in EVs, AI data centers, and aerospace systems The post Fabrication and device performance of Ni0/Ga2O3 heterojunction power rectifiers appeared first on Physics World.

Nutrient retention in lakes and rivers is an essential regulating ecosystem service that protects downstream water bodies from nutrient excess, reducing anthropic impacts on aquatic habitats. Quantifying nutrient retention in freshwaters is important for basin management, but difficult as retention depends, among other things, on the spatial and temporal scales of interest. This study aimed at assessing freshwater nutrient retention in contemporary Europe at continental scale with an ensemble modeling exercise. We used the conceptual model GREEN, changing lake retention according to alternative formulations, generating six model versions for total nitrogen (TN), and seven for total phosphorus (TP). All versions were calibrated independently in six European regions, defined by the sea to which land drained to. Parameter sets that performed well in overall calibration and at stations downstream lakes formed the ensembles that were used to quantify freshwater retention over a decade (2012–2021). Ensemble median river retention was about 10% of incoming TN load and 6% TP load. Median lake retention was about 4% for TN and 6.5% for TP. Median freshwater retention amounted to 170 kg N yr−1 and 7.2 kg P yr−1 per km2 of drainage area. European freshwaters retained about 16% of incoming nitrogen and 13% of incoming phosphorus loads, preventing about 1066 kt N yr−1 and 49 kt P yr−1 to reaching the coastline. Nitrogen retention mostly occurred in rivers, whereas phosphorus retention occurred predominantly in lakes, however important regional differences were noted. The assessment likely underestimates the overall role of freshwater nutrient retention, as secondary streams, wetlands, and ponds were not considered explicitly. Nevertheless, it provides quantitative references for accounting of freshwaters ecosystem services at continental scale.

This article introduces evolutionary game theory as an approach to stylised long-term analysis of water governance transformations in Central Asia. This world region has been strongly affected by natural hazards, political disruptions and historically diverse attempts to establish effective water management principles. Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, we establish a game theoretical baseline model of a user community in which irrigation is efficiently governed by group sanctions. By allowing for drift in the evolutionary equilibrium, we model how a loss of traditional authorities over water management can erode established group norms. We then analyse a hypothetical scenario of privatised water rights, inspired by historical and current policy debates in Central Asia. Under the assumption that such rights can be technically implemented, we show that they can restore an efficient water use equilibrium of owners that is egalitarian and evolutionary stable. We discuss how future climate change scenarios or conflicts over transboundary water allocation may affect the model results, focusing on the effects of increased uncertainty and of decreasing water productivity on system resilience. Productivity shocks may make low-performing equilibria unsustainable and thus lead to disruptive change or extinction of certain equilibria. Policy should focus on local interaction as an arena of institutional change. We suggest empirical research questions emerging from our analysis and highlight the benefits of uncontested property rights as an institutional solution to water governance.

Grasslands cover over 50% of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP), playing a critical role in water conservation, soil retention, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and supporting pastoral livelihoods. Due to the high-altitude and cold-climate conditions, the QTP is highly vulnerable to climate change. Understanding the relative importance of the drivers of grassland degradation is essential for developing adaptive management strategies. While numerous studies have explored these drivers, the impacts of large-scale ecological restoration efforts since 2000, particularly across different grassland types and degradation-recovery phases, remain underexplored. This study analyzes 40 years of grassland vegetation dynamics on the QTP, identifying key inflection points and classifying regions into four ‘degradation-restoration’ trajectory types. The effects of climatic and anthropogenic drivers across distinct temporal phases are quantified. The results indicate that 6.56% of grasslands are in continuous degradation, while 28.97% are at risk of potential degradation risk. Drought and grazing emerge as the primary drivers of vegetation change, while restoration and afforestation programs play a significant role in enhancing recovery. Our findings underscore the spatiotemporal variability of grassland responses and emphasize the need for targeted grazing management and integrated water resource planning to optimize restoration outcomes. This study provides a framework for differentiated grassland management in the face of climate change and human pressures on the QTP.

Adopting individual behavioural changes to achieve a low-carbon lifestyle is a key strategy for addressing climate change. However, related studies have generally been conducted in Western contexts. Drawing upon a comprehensive national survey conducted in Taiwan, we developed a sociopsychological model to explain the motivation to alter behaviour to mitigate climate change and to engage in specific mitigation behaviours, including adopting plant-based diets, using public transportation, and donating to environmental nongovernmental organisations. We used a repeated cross-sectional survey design to test our model seven times to investigate general motivation and two times to investigate behaviour-specific motivation. Samples are representative of the Taiwanese population, collected between August 2021 and June 2024 (N = 4446). Our results confirm the validity and stability of the proposed model, demonstrating its potential to advance the understanding of how behavioural changes can mitigate climate change in non-Western contexts. Issues on psychological distance and seasonal changes on climate change risk perceptions are also discussed.

This study examines the impact of the Pilot Programs of the Combination of Technology and Finance (PPCTF) on energy system resilience (ESR) in China, with particular attention to the moderating role of climate policy uncertainty (CPU). Using panel data from 280 cities during 2010–2022 and employing a double machine learning approach, we find that the PPCTF significantly enhances ESR, with robust results from various tests. The mediation effect reveals that RAO and green technology innovation are vital influential channels. Moreover, CPU amplifies the positive effect of the PPCTF on ESR, particularly in non-resource-based, strictly regulated, and high-governance cities. These findings highlight the importance of integrating technology and finance initiatives with climate policy considerations to foster sustainable and resilient energy systems. Policy implications are also discussed.