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To make sound decisions in the face of climate change, government agencies, policymakers and private stakeholders require suitable climate information on local to regional scales. In Switzerland, the development of climate change scenarios is strongly linked to the climate adaptation strategy of the Confederation. The current climate scenarios for Switzerland CH2018 - released in form of six user-oriented products - were the result of an intensive collaboration between academia and administration under the umbrella of the National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS), accounting for user needs and stakeholder dialogues from the beginning. A rigorous scientific concept ensured consistency throughout the various analysis steps of the EURO-CORDEX projections and a common procedure on how to extract robust results and deal with associated uncertainties. The main results show that Switzerland's climate will face dry summers, heavy precipitation, more hot days and snow-scarce winters. Approximately half of these changes could be alleviated by mid-century through strong global mitigation efforts. A comprehensive communication concept ensured that the results were rolled out and distilled in specific user-oriented communication measures to increase their uptake and to make them actionable. A narrative approach with four fictitious persons was used to communicate the key messages to the general public. Three years after the release, the climate scenarios have proven to be an indispensable information basis for users in climate adaptation and for downstream applications. Potential for extensions and updates has been identified since then and will shape the concept and planning of the next scenario generation in Switzerland. ; Climate Scenarios for Switzerland CH2018 – Approach and Implications ; publishedVersion

Direct quantification of terrestrial biosphere responses to global change is crucial for projections of future climate change in Earth system models. Here, we synthesized ecosystem carbon-cycling data from 1,119 experiments performed over the past four decades concerning changes in temperature, precipitation, CO2 and nitrogen across major terrestrial vegetation types of the world. Most experiments manipulated single rather than multiple global change drivers in temperate ecosystems of the USA, Europe and China. The magnitudes of warming and elevated CO2 treatments were consistent with the ranges of future projections, whereas those of precipitation changes and nitrogen inputs often exceeded the projected ranges. Increases in global change drivers consistently accelerated, but decreased precipitation slowed down carbon-cycle processes. Nonlinear (including synergistic and antagonistic) effects among global change drivers were rare. Belowground carbon allocation responded negatively to increased precipitation and nitrogen addition and positively to decreased precipitation and elevated CO2. The sensitivities of carbon variables to multiple global change drivers depended on the background climate and ecosystem condition, suggesting that Earth system models should be evaluated using site-specific conditions for best uses of this large dataset. Together, this synthesis underscores an urgent need to explore the interactions among multiple global change drivers in under-represented regions such as semi-arid ecosystems, forests in the tropics and subtropics, and Arctic tundra when forecasting future terrestrial carbon-climate feedback. ; National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaNational Natural Science Foundation of China [31430015, 31830012]; US NSFNational Science Foundation (NSF) [DEB-0955771]; ClimMani COST actionEuropean Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) [ES1308] ; We thank J. Wang (Hebei University), S. Yang (Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences), L. Zhou (East China Normal University), C. Qiao (Xinyang Normal University) and H. Li (Henan University) for their help in meta-analyses and interaction analyses, and H. Li, Y. Liu (Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Y. He (Peking University) for their help in plotting figures. This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 31430015 and 31830012). This study emerged from the INTERFACE Workshop in Beijing, China (https://www.bio.purdue.edu/INTERFACE/) supported by the US NSF DEB-0955771. We also acknowledge support from the ClimMani COST action (ES1308). ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee