Abstract This research note focuses on the current climate change research scenario and discusses primarily what is required in the present global climate change conditions. Most of the climate change research and models predict adverse future conditions that have to be faced by humanity, with less emphasis on mitigation measures. Moreover, research ends as reports on the shelves of scientists and researchers and as publications in journals. At this juncture the major focus should be on research that helps in reducing the impact rather than on analysing future scenarios of climate change using different models. The article raises several questions and suggestions regards climate change research and lays emphasis on what we really need from climate change researchers.

The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) is being held in November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Having a climate summit hosted in an African country makes it timely to highlight climate change research from the continent. We asked a selection of researchers to share their thoughts on current research questions and how they affect African responses to climate change.

ABSTRACT Climate change research has emerged over the past few decades as a vibrant field of inquiry with significant impact on society, economics and politics. Analysing the context of past climate change research is necessary to check progress, gaps, needs and to optimise the benefits of future development. This paper analyses nearly 6000 government-funded climate change research projects in Taiwan from 1993 to 2020 based on data in Government Research Bulletin (GRB), supplemented by reviewing Taiwan’s science and technology policies to obtain a constructive research discourse. While the Taiwan government has continued to actively promote climate change research following the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), it suffers from uneven development of research fields, lack of social and interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary research, and a gap between scientific research and decision-making. While these individual issues can be addressed, they stem from a core factor: the lack of determination and commitment of politicians and government to implement recommended mitigation/adaptation policies. This is one of very few papers investigating climate change research from a national perspective and the first focusing on Taiwan, and is of potential interest to researchers, policymakers and members of the general public concerned about national-scale climate change research.

When Democrats gained control of the U.S. Congress, they made climate change one of their top priorities. But they quickly realized that putting into law caps on greenhouse gas emissions could take years of political wrangling—and possibly a new president. So while proposals for emissions controls have captured headlines (Science, 11 May, p. 813), key legislators have quietly focused on a more immediate goal: reordering priorities in climate change research to reflect the most pressing questions.

Earth observation technology has provided highly useful information in global climate change research over the past few decades and greatly promoted its development, especially through providing biological, physical, and chemical parameters on a global scale. Earth observation data has the 4V features (volume, variety, veracity, and velocity) of big data that are suitable for climate change research. Moreover, the large amount of data available from scientific satellites plays an important role. This study reviews the advances of climate change studies based on Earth observation big data and provides examples of case studies that utilize Earth observation big data in climate change research, such as synchronous satellite–aerial–ground observation experiments, which provide extremely large and abundant datasets; Earth observational sensitive factors (e.g., glaciers, lakes, vegetation, radiation, and urbanization); and global environmental change information and simulation systems. With the era of global environment change dawning, Earth observation big data will underpin the Future Earth program with a huge volume of various types of data and will play an important role in academia and decisionmaking. Inevitably, Earth observation big data will encounter opportunities and challenges brought about by global climate change.

Over the last few years, several “major findings” in the area of global climate change research have been retracted or shown to be erroneous. The credibility of a few others is still being challenged in the literature. All of them were attempts to extract global climate change signals from

A literature review shows that the circular reasoning fallacy is common in climate change research. It is facilitated by confirmation bias and by activism such that the prior conviction of researchers is subsumed into the methodology. Example research papers on the impact of fossil fuel emissions on tropical cyclones, on sea level rise, and on the carbon cycle demonstrate that the conclusions drawn by researchers about their anthropogenic cause derive from circular reasoning. The validity of the anthropogenic nature of global warming and climate change and that of the effectiveness of proposed measures for climate action may therefore be questioned solely on this basis.

Australia’s primary industries are likely to be uniquely impacted upon by climate change. In February 2011 the inaugural Climate Change Research Strategy for Primary Industries (CCRSPI) conference was held to discuss the current state of climate change research across Australia’s primary industries. Never before had policy makers, producers and scientists from all sectors of our primary industries been brought together in one event to focus on the challenges and opportunities of climate change. This conference was a unique forum to address those challenges and opportunities by sharing knowledge across the various sectors, scientific disciplines and the industry-policy-science divide. While this collection of review papers provides an excellent knowledge base for industry and government to plan and implement policy and make further research investments to address the obvious gaps there is still much to be done in terms of research and the co-ordination of research. The often unrelated research activity in the adaptation and mitigation components of climate change research have the potential to have either synergistic or antagonistic outcomes at several scales and in several sectors ranging from policy to industry and community. The significant injection of research and development funds into this area through the Carbon Farming Futures and other associated programs will provide further impetus to the need for national co-ordination of climate change research in Australia’s Primary Industries. To build on all this knowledge and experience gained at the 2011 CCRSPI Conference, CCRSPI is currently (2012) finalising the national climate change research strategy for the sector, with an associated audit of existing projects and capacity, in order to encourage and advocate the cross-sectoral RDE needs and co-ordination for the future.

Current approaches for deciding what science is covered in the media portray only a narrow slice of climate change research and aren’t well suited for stoking climate action.

The aim of the article is to analyze the tendencies in scientific research on business and climate change. The main research question (what tendencies can be identified in scientific research on business and climate change over the years) allowed to formulate three specific research questions. The Analyses of dynamics over time, research centers and content were carried out using bibliometric methods. The dataset was obtained from Scopus and consisted of 1546 records related to scientific publications from 1989 to 2018. A clear upward trend emerged over time in business and climate change research. University of Waterloo, Griffith University, and ETH Zurich were identified as the most important research centers for thought development. Furthermore, climate change, greenhouse gases, and global warming emerged as the three very well explored thematic areas in the business context. Additionally, three research gaps were identified, i.e., adaptive management, tourism management, and waste management. The results of the analyses can be useful to researchers when planning, designing, and conducting own research. Political decision-makers who seek support and advice could also take advantage of the findings, as they may assist in the development of new political instruments. Last but not least, the presented research outcomes may serve the business community by providing solutions, and references to appropriate experts and analysts.