Scope

The Interdisciplinary Climate Studies section aims to highlight interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to environmental issues, paying special intention to climate change. This section strives to emphasize the significance of the interactions between people, society and science, and the need for various stakeholders to work in unity to fully comprehend the influence of a changing climate on the environment around us.

Climate issues are very much at the forefront of earth and environmental sciences, most recently highlighted by COP26. The increasing global effects and public awareness of climate change present a strong need to achieve increased climate adaptation and resilience. Despite much effort to communicate climate science to decision makers and to the public, there is still a wide gap between the messages that the scientific community wishes to convey and the way these messages are received and interpreted by stakeholders and the general public. There is a significant need to understand the increased risks posed by the changing climate and to develop management strategies which can address and minimize the impacts in an applied manner. This is highly important in relation to extreme weather events, particularly compounding and cascading extremes. If we are able to better understand these events and minimize their impact, lives and infrastructure can be saved.

Interdisciplinary Climate Studies is therefore aimed at publishing innovative insights into climate-relevant processes bringing multiple different fields together to create an overall bigger and more complete picture of the challenges we are presently facing as well as future challenges. Additionally, it is a platform to analyze previous climate events for research and development purposes to optimize our future reactions.

The careful study of the atmospheric component of the climate system is key in conjunction with the study of the five major biomes highlighting interlinks and feedback to other components of the system, such as the oceans, cryosphere, or biosphere. Subjects highly desired include:

• The integration of disciplines to fundamentally understand the climate system and the effects of climate change.
• Measuring and understanding the processes that shape the physical, chemical, and biological makeup of land, atmosphere, and water.
• Identifying how the different biogeochemical systems are linked and interact.
• The cascading set of mechanisms leading to sea-level rise.
• Improved monitoring, forecasting and modeling of extreme weather and climate events across scales, as well as improved management techniques to mitigate their impacts.
• Using paleo climate data as a useful mechanism for future planning and management.
• A platform to address issues of importance to stakeholders working in conjunction with scientists to develop our knowledge of the variability and change in climate and related and human systems, and for encouraging the application of this knowledge.
• Methods which build solutions-led approaches to climate resilience and adaptation, including compounding and cascading extremes.

The journal will enable cross-cutting topics in climate change and climate impacts research to be discussed in ways that other journals may not be able to achieve. The idea of using Frontiers in Environmental Science to talk about climate is, indeed, not to duplicate the contents of other specialized journals but to use the online platform of the journal to trigger further thinking and encourage debate on the complexities of highly non-linear systems that gravitate around climate science.

Submission

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