Climate impact studies often require a reduction of the ensembles of opportunity from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project when the simulations are used to drive impact models. An impact model’s nature limits the number of feasible realizations based on complexity and computational requirements or capacities. For the purpose of driving a hydrological model and an ocean model in the BaySys research program, two hierarchical, differently sized simulation ensembles were produced to represent climate evolution for the region of the Hudson Bay Drainage Basin. We compare a 19-member ensemble to a 5-member subset to demonstrate comparability of the driving climate used to produce model results. Ten extreme climate indicators and their changes are compared for the full study region and seven sub regions, on an annual and seasonal basis and for two future climate horizons. Results indicate stronger warming in the North and for cold temperatures and an East-West gradient in precipitation with larger absolute increases to the East and South of the Hudson Bay. Generally, the smaller ensemble is sufficient to adequately reproduce the mean and spread in the indicators found for the larger ensemble. The analysis of extreme climate indicators ensures that the tails of the distribution of temperature and precipitation are addressed. We conclude that joint analysis at the interface of the hydrological and ocean model domains are not limited by the application of differently sized climate simulation ensembles as driving input for the two different modeling exercises of the BaySys project environmental studies, yet acknowledging that impact model output may be dependent on other factors.

In this analysis, we examine relative contributions from climate change and river discharge regulation to changes in marine conditions in the Hudson Bay Complex using a subset of five atmospheric forcing scenarios from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), river discharge data from the Hydrological Predictions for the Environment (HYPE) model, both naturalized (without anthropogenic intervention) and regulated (anthropogenically controlled through diversions, dams, reservoirs), and output from the Nucleus for European Modeling of the Ocean Ice-Ocean model for the 1981–2070 time frame. Investigated in particular are spatiotemporal changes in sea surface temperature, sea ice concentration and thickness, and zonal and meridional sea ice drift in response to (i) climate change through comparison of historical (1981–2010) and future (2021–2050 and 2041–2070) simulations, (ii) regulation through comparison of historical (1981–2010) naturalized and regulated simulations, and (iii) climate change and regulation combined through comparison of future (2021–2050 and 2041–2070) naturalized and regulated simulations. Also investigated is use of the diagnostic known as e-folding time spatial distribution to monitor changes in persistence in these variables in response to changing climate and regulation impacts in the Hudson Bay Complex. Results from this analysis highlight bay-wide and regional reductions in sea ice concentration and thickness in southwest and northeast Hudson Bay in response to a changing climate, and east-west asymmetry in sea ice drift response in support of past studies. Regulation is also shown to amplify or suppress the climate change signal. Specifically, regulation amplifies sea surface temperatures from April to August, suppresses sea ice loss by approximately 30% in March, contributes to enhanced sea ice drift speed by approximately 30%, and reduces meridional circulation by approximately 20% in January due to enhanced zonal drift. Results further suggest that the offshore impacts of regulation are amplified in a changing climate.

Adaptation pathways is an approach to identify, assess, and sequence climate change adaptation options over time, linking decisions to critical signals and triggers derived from scenarios of future conditions. However, conceptual differences in their development can hinder methodological advance and create a disconnect between those applying pathways approaches and the wider community of practitioners undertaking vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation assessments. Here, we contribute to close these gaps, advancing principles, and processes that may be used to guide the trajectory for adaptation pathways, without having to rely on data-rich or resource-intensive methods. To achieve this, concepts and practices from the broad pathways literature is combined with our own experience in developing adaptation pathways for primary industries facing the combined impacts of climate change and other, nonclimatic stressors. Each stage is guided by a goal and tools to facilitate discussions and produce feasible pathways. We illustrate the process with a case study from Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, involving multiple data sources and methods in two catchments. Resulting guidelines and empirical examples are consistent with principles of adaptive management and planning and can provide a template for developing local-, regional- or issue-specific pathways elsewhere and enrich the diversity of vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation assessment practice.

Benthic animals profoundly influence the cycling and storage of carbon and other elements in marine systems, particularly in coastal sediments. Recent climate change has altered the distribution and abundance of many seafloor taxa and modified the vertical exchange of materials between ocean and sediment layers. Here, we examine how climate change could alter animal-mediated biogeochemical cycling in ocean sediments. The fossil record shows repeated major responses from the benthos during mass extinctions and global carbon perturbations, including reduced diversity, dominance of simple trace fossils, decreased burrow size and bioturbation intensity, and nonrandom extinction of trophic groups. The broad dispersal capacity of many extant benthic species facilitates poleward shifts corresponding to their environmental niche as overlying water warms. Evidence suggests that locally persistent populations will likely respond to environmental shifts through either failure to respond or genetic adaptation rather than via phenotypic plasticity. Regional and global ocean models insufficiently integrate changes in benthic biological activity and their feedbacks on sedimentary biogeochemical processes. The emergence of bioturbation, ventilation, and seafloor-habitat maps and progress in our mechanistic understanding of organism–sediment interactions enable incorporation of potential effects of climate change on benthic macrofaunal mediation of elemental cycles into regional and global ocean biogeochemical models.

Ocean ecosystems are changing, and the climate envelope paradigm predicts a steady shift, approximately poleward, of species ranges. The Gulf of Maine presents a test case of this paradigm, as temperatures have warmed extremely rapidly. Some species have shifted northeastward, matching predictions. Others—namely harmful algal species like Pseudo-nitzschia australis and Karenia mikimotoi —do not appear to have followed climate trajectories, arriving as surprises in the Gulf of Maine. Rare-biosphere dynamics offer one possible ecological lens for understanding and predicting this type of surprise. Rare species in the plankton, possibly more so than southerly ones, may provide management challenges in the future. Improved monitoring and broader coordination of monitoring of the rare biosphere could help develop early warning systems for harmful and toxic algae. A better theoretical understanding of rare biosphere dynamics is also needed. A challenge for the next cohort of ecosystem projections is to predict the newly emerging harmful species of the type that catch us by surprise.

The pan-Arctic domain is undergoing some of Earth’s most rapid and significant changes resulting from anthropogenic and climate-induced alteration of freshwater distribution. Changes in terrestrial freshwater discharge entering the Arctic Basin from pan-Arctic watersheds significantly impact oceanic circulation and sea ice dynamics. Historical streamflow records in high-latitude basins are often discontinuous (seasonal or with large temporal gaps) or sparse (poor spatial coverage), however, making trends from observed records difficult to quantify. Our objectives were to generate a more continuous 90-year record (1981–2070) of spatially distributed freshwater flux for the Arctic Basin (all Arctic draining rivers, including the Yukon), suitable for forcing ocean models, and to analyze the changing simulated trends in freshwater discharge across the domain. We established these data as valid during the historical period (1971–2015) and then used projected futures (preserving uncertainty by running a coupled climate-hydrologic ensemble) to analyze long-term (2021–2070) trends for major Arctic draining rivers. When compared to historic trends reported in the literature, we find that trends are projected to nearly double by 2070, with river discharge to the Arctic Basin increasing by 22% (on average) by 2070. We also find a significant trend toward earlier onset of spring freshet and a general flattening of the average annual hydrograph, with a trend toward decreasing seasonality of Arctic freshwater discharge with climate change and regulation combined. The coupled climate-hydrologic ensemble was then used to force an ocean circulation model to simulate freshwater content and thermohaline circulation. This research provides the marine research community with a daily time series of historic and projected freshwater discharge suitable for forcing sea ice and ocean models. Although important, this work is only a first step in mapping the impacts of climate change on the pan-Arctic region.

Chile is positioned in the 20th rank of water availability per capita. Nonetheless, water security levels vary across the territory. Around 70% of the national population lives in arid and semiarid regions, where a persistent drought has been experienced over the last decade. This has led to water security problems including water shortages. The water allocation and trading system in Chile is based on a water use rights (WURs) market, with limited regulatory and supervisory mechanisms, where the volume to be granted as permanent and eventual WURs is calculated from statistical analyses of historical streamflow records if available, or from empirical estimations if they are not. This computation of WURs does not consider the nonstationarity of hydrological processes nor climatic projections. This study presents the first large sample diagnosis of water allocation system in Chile under climate change scenarios. This is based on novel anthropic intervention indices (IAI), which were computed as the ratio between the total granted water volume to the water availability within 87 basins in north-central and southern Chile (30°S–42°S). The IAI were evaluated for the historical period (1979–2019) and under modeled-based climatic projections (2055–2080). According to these IAI levels, to date, there are 20 out of 87 overallocated basins, which under the assumption that no further WURs will be granted in the future, increases up to 25 basins for the 2055–2080 period. The results show that, to date most of north-central Chilean catchments already have a large anthropic intervention degree, and the increases for the future period occurs mostly in the southern region of the country (approximately 38°S), which has been considered as possible source of water for large water transfer projects (i.e., water roads). These indices and diagnosis are proposed as a tool to help policy makers to address water scarcity under climate change.

Hudson Bay, at the southern margin of the Arctic Ocean, receives nearly one-third of Canada’s river discharge and approximately 5.5 Tg of riverine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) annually. Riverine DOC fluxes to Hudson Bay are expected to increase with climate change, but how this increase will influence the biogeochemistry of the coastal waters is largely unknown. In particular, the fate of riverine DOC that enters Hudson Bay during the dark, frozen winter period (roughly January to April) is poorly known despite high discharge from the large, regulated rivers of Hudson and James Bays at that time. Few studies have assessed the degradability of riverine DOC transported in winter anywhere across the Arctic, leaving unanswered questions regarding the impact of riverine DOC on the Arctic carbon budget, CO 2 fluxes, and local food webs. Here, we assessed the biodegradability of DOC in riverine and coastal waters of southern Hudson Bay in late winter using 45-day incubation experiments. We found 24%–60% of the DOC in the rivers and on average 21% of the DOC in the immediate coastal waters to be biodegradable. Differences in biodegradability appeared to depend on properties of the rivers/watersheds and physical and biochemical processes in the aquatic environments. DOC biodegradability correlated strongly with DOC concentration, which was higher during winter than summer in all studied rivers and higher in the Nelson and Hayes Rivers, draining the Hudson Bay Lowlands than in most previously studied large rivers of the Arctic watershed. The Nelson River, regulated for hydropower production, had the highest winter DOC concentrations and most degradable DOC. The high biodegradability of Hudson Bay riverine DOC in late winter and high concentrations and fluxes of riverine DOC at that time imply strong leverage for future increases in DOC fluxes to impact the carbon cycle of these coastal waters.

There are many examples of nonmonetary awards which can serve as proxies for social recognition of good agricultural stewardship and conservation behavior. However, the degree to which these awards motivate implementation and sustained use of conservation practices (such as cover cropping) has not been adequately examined. In this study, we used a serious game approach to explore the effect of nonmonetary conservation awards on participants’ agricultural management decisions in an online experiment. Our results show that study participants were highly motivated to implement cover crops on a year-by-year basis by the fictional Ecobadge award, particularly when award thresholds were set at low levels. There was no difference between participants with prior agricultural experience and those without. Although participants who were not motivated to seek the Ecobadge achieved higher mean financial returns, they also had a wider variation in their financial performance as a group. Those who attained the Ecobadge were less risk-tolerant than those who did not. Achievement of the Ecobadge decayed over several rounds of game play, except among participants who planted cover crops on a high percentage (≥50%) of their land, suggesting these participants possessed high intrinsic motivation. This exploration suggests that nonmonetary awards have high potential to serve as motivational tools to increase adoption of cover crops and potentially other agricultural conservation practices, likely as part of a suite of motivational strategies. We suggest that organizations reconsider how they issue these awards. Better integration of awards with opportunities for peer-to-peer recognition among farmers is a promising approach to expand implementation of conservation practices.

Sustainability is a common goal and catchphrase used in conjunction with seafood, but the metrics used to determine the level of sustainability are poorly defined. Although the conservation statuses of target or nontarget fish stocks associated with fisheries have been scrutinized, the relative climate impacts of different fisheries are often overlooked. Although an increasing body of research seeks to understand and mitigate the climate forcing associated with different fisheries, little effort has sought to integrate these disparate disciplines to examine the synergies and trade-offs between conservation efforts and efforts to reduce climate impacts. We quantified the climate forcing per unit of fish protein associated with several different U.S. tuna fishing fleets, among the most important capture fisheries by both volume and value. We found that skipjack tuna caught by purse seine, a gear type that is often associated with relatively high bycatch of nontarget species, results in lower climate forcing than all other sources of proteins examined with the exception of plants. Conversely, skipjack tuna caught by trolling, a gear type that is often associated with relatively low bycatch of nontarget species, generates higher climate forcing than most other protein sources with the exception of beef. Because there is a range of selectivity and climate forcing impacts associated with fishing gears, examining the trade-offs associated with bycatch and climate forcing provides an opportunity for broadening the discourse about the sustainability of seafood. A central goal of more sustainable seafood practices is to minimize environmental impacts, thus mitigation efforts—whether they target conservation, habitat preservation, or climate impacts—should consider the unintended consequences on fisheries conservation.

A scientific scenario paper was prepared ahead of the Gulf of Maine (GOM) 2050 International Symposium to review and summarize possible weather-related and sea-level changes within the GOM as a result of climate change. It is projected that the GOM will experience warming temperatures, continued sea-level rise, and changes to storm characteristics and related elements such as precipitation and waves in the intermediate term, by approximately 2050. Coastal communities within the GOM region are particularly vulnerable to the anticipated impacts of climate change. This article aims to provide context on some of the consequential impacts that may occur from the changes projected within the area.

High latitude ecosystems are characterized by cold soils and long winters, with much of their biogeochemistry directly or indirectly controlled by temperature. Climate warming has led to an expansion of shrubby plant communities across tussock tundra, but whether these clear aboveground shifts correspond to changes in the microbial community belowground remains less certain. Using bromodeoxyuridine to label growing cells, we evaluated how total and actively growing bacterial communities varied throughout a year and following 22 years of passive summer warming. We found that changes in total and actively growing bacterial community structures were correlated with edaphic factors and time point sampled, but were unaffected by warming. The aboveground plant community had become more shrub-dominated with warming at this site, and so our results indicate that belowground bacterial communities did not track changes in the aboveground plant community. As such, studies that have used space-for-time methods to predict how increased shrub cover has altered bacterial communities may not be representative of how the microbial community will be affected by in situ changes in the plant community as the Arctic continues to warm.

Ice algae are critical components to the lipid-driven Arctic marine food web, particularly early in the spring. As little is known about these communities in multiyear ice (MYI), we aimed to provide a baseline of fatty acid (FA) and stable isotope signatures of sea-ice communities in MYI from the Lincoln Sea and compare these biomarkers to first-year ice (FYI). Significant differences in the relative proportions of approximately 25% of the identified FAs and significantly higher nitrogen stable isotope values (δ 15 N) in bottom-ice samples of FYI (δ 15 N = 6.4 ± 0.7%) compared to MYI (δ 15 N = 5.0 ± 0.4%) reflect different community compositions in the two ice types. Yet, the relative proportion of diatom- and dinoflagellate-associated FAs, as well as their bulk and most of the FA-specific carbon stable isotope compositions (δ 13 C) were not significantly different between bottom FYI (bulk δ 13 C: –28.4% to –26.7%, FA average δ 13 C: –34.4% to –31.7%) and MYI (bulk δ 13 C: –27.6% to –27.2%, FA average δ 13 C: –33.6% to –31.9%), suggesting at least partly overlapping community structures and similar biochemical processes within the ice. Diatom-associated FAs contributed, on average, 28% and 25% to the total FA content of bottom FYI and MYI, respectively, indicating that diatoms play a central role in structuring sea-ice communities in the Lincoln Sea. The differences in FA signatures of FYI and MYI support the view that different ice types harbor different inhabitants and that the loss of Arctic MYI will impact complex food web interactions with ice-associated ecosystems. Comparable nutritional quality of FAs, however, as indicated by similar average levels of polyunsaturated FAs in bottom FYI (33%) and MYI (28%), could help to ensure growth and reproduction of ice-associated grazers despite the shift from a MYI to FYI-dominated sea-ice cover with ongoing climate warming.

Benthic organisms depend primarily on seasonal pulses of organic matter from primary producers. In the Arctic, declines in sea ice due to warming climate could lead to changes in this food supply with as yet unknown effects on benthic trophic dynamics. Benthic consumer diets and food web structure were studied in a seasonally ice-covered region of Baffin Bay during spring 2016 at stations ranging in depth from 199 to 2,111 m. We used a novel combination of highly branched isoprenoid (HBI) lipid biomarkers and stable isotope ratios (δ 13 C, δ 15 N) to better understand the relationship between the availability of carbon sources in spring on the seafloor and their assimilation and transfer within the benthic food web. Organic carbon from sea ice (sympagic carbon [SC]) was an important food source for benthic consumers. The lipid biomarker analyses revealed a high relative contribution of SC in sediments (mean SC% ± standard deviation [ SD ] = 86% ± 16.0, n = 17) and in benthic consumer tissues (mean SC% ± SD = 78% ± 19.7, n = 159). We also detected an effect of sea-ice concentration on the relative contribution of SC in sediment and in benthic consumers. Cluster analysis separated the study region into three different zones according to the relative proportions of SC assimilated by benthic macrofauna. We observed variation of the benthic food web between zones, with increases in the width of the ecological niche in zones with less sea-ice concentration, indicating greater diversity of carbon sources assimilated by consumers. In zones with greater sea-ice concentration, the higher availability of SC increased the ecological role that primary consumers play in driving a stronger transfer of nutrients to higher trophic levels. Based on our results, SC is an important energy source for Arctic deep-sea benthos in Baffin Bay, such that changes in spring sea-ice phenology could alter benthic food-web structure.

The ability of the ocean to continue to sustain human society depends on adequate protections of its ecosystem function and services. Despite the establishment of marine protected areas, formal protection of critical connectivity corridors to link habitats and thereby maintain necessary demographic transitions in marine species under threat is now rare. Such protections are critical to future resilience of food webs as climate and ocean change continues. Here, we focus on the Gulf of Mexico to support an integrative, holistic approach to marine and coastal habitat restoration, rehabilitation, and conservation in an ecosystem context following the extensive environmental and living resource injuries from the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout. Critically important physical, chemical, and biological connectivity processes drive nutrient transport from the nearshore, mid-waters, and even deep ocean into coastal terrestrial habitats, enhancing primary production and terrestrial species populations. The emerging scientific understanding of the nature, habitat specificity, locations, and directions of transport in connectivity processes can help build natural ecosystem capital through protecting flows from land to sea and from the sea to multiple coastal habitats. We expose a dire need for a new conservation imperative, recognizing that oceanic and coastal protected areas established around the reliance of individual species on critical habitats are insufficient without also conserving relevant connectivity corridors that service ontogenetic migration pathways and ecosystem-support processes. Such connectivity must be explicitly understood, protected, and often actively enhanced through restoration intervention to ensure the success of various site-specific conservation actions and be continually modified in anticipation of and in response to multiple impacts of changing climate.

Many ecosystems are experiencing an increase in drought conditions as a consequence of climate warming and changing precipitation patterns. The stress imposed by these environmental changes can affect ecosystem processes such as the extracellular enzymatic degradation of carbon-containing leaf litter by soil microbial communities. However, the magnitude of these impacts may depend on the composition and metabolism of the microbial community. Based on the hypothesis of local adaptation, microbial communities native to warm-dry ecosystems should display a greater capacity to degrade leaf litter polymers with extracellular enzymes following exposure to warm-dry conditions. To test this hypothesis, we performed a microcosm study in which we monitored extracellular enzyme activity and respiration of microbial communities from five ecosystems along a southern California climate gradient, ranging from warmer, drier desert to wetter, cooler subalpine forest. To simulate drought and rewetting, we subjected microcosms to periods of high temperature and low moisture followed by a water pulse. We found that enzyme activity of wet-cool communities generally exceeded that of warm-dry communities across enzyme types for the five sites we considered. Additionally, we observed a significant decrease in respiration for all communities after longer durations of drought exposure. Although these findings did not align with our expectations of local adaptation, they suggest litter-inhabiting microbial communities are able to retain metabolic functioning in environmental conditions different from those of their native ecosystems. These results may imply that factors such as litter chemistry impose greater constraints than climate on community metabolic function. Overall, despite differences in local climates, microbial communities from semiarid regions may be metabolically adapted to maintain functioning in the face of drought.

This study details the enhancement and calibration of the Arctic implementation of the HYdrological Predictions for the Environment (HYPE) hydrological model established for the BaySys group of projects to produce freshwater discharge scenarios for the Hudson Bay Drainage Basin (HBDB). The challenge in producing estimates of freshwater discharge for the HBDB is that it spans over a third of Canada’s continental landmass and is 40% ungauged. Scenarios for BaySys require the separation between human and climate interactions, specifically the separation of regulated river discharge from a natural, climate-driven response. We present three key improvements to the modelling system required to support the identification of natural from anthropogenic impacts: representation of prairie disconnected landscapes (i.e., non-contributing areas), a method to generalize lake storage-discharge parameters across large regions, and frozen soil modifications. Additionally, a unique approach to account for irregular hydrometric gauge density across the basins during model calibration is presented that avoids overfitting parameters to the densely gauged southern regions. We summarize our methodologies used to facilitate improved separation of human and climate driven impacts to streamflow within the basin and outline the baseline discharge simulations used for the BaySys group of projects. Challenges remain for modeling the most northern reaches of the basin, and in the lake-dominated watersheds. The techniques presented in this work, particularly the lake and flow signature clusters, may be applied to other high latitude, ungauged Arctic basins. Discharge simulations are subsequently used as input data for oceanographic, biogeochemical, and ecosystem studies across the HBDB.

Young people are both among the generations to be most affected by climate change and critical advocates for climate action. In the face of growing urgency surrounding the climate crisis, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has become an important institutional framework for political progress. We developed a community-based participatory action research project centered on youth involved in the COP climate negotiations. A “leverage points” approach guided our research; this paper is the first time the framework has been applied in an international negotiations context. Our findings point to the structural power, networks, and paradigms that youth might engage with for international climate justice work. We identify actionable leverage points through which youth organizers might increase their social power in the COP process to bring about climate action. Many of these leverage points are rooted in dynamics of power, which we expand upon and connect to broader literature. Moving forward, these findings can benefit and inform the strategies of youth as they participate in the COP process.

The decline of sea-ice thickness, area, and volume due to the transition from multi-year to first-year sea ice has improved the under-ice light environment for pelagic Arctic ecosystems. One unexpected and direct consequence of this transition, the proliferation of under-ice phytoplankton blooms (UIBs), challenges the paradigm that waters beneath the ice pack harbor little planktonic life. Little is known about the diversity and spatial distribution of UIBs in the Arctic Ocean, or the environmental drivers behind their timing, magnitude, and taxonomic composition. Here, we compiled a unique and comprehensive dataset from seven major research projects in the Arctic Ocean (11 expeditions, covering the spring sea-ice-covered period to summer ice-free conditions) to identify the environmental drivers responsible for initiating and shaping the magnitude and assemblage structure of UIBs. The temporal dynamics behind UIB formation are related to the ways that snow and sea-ice conditions impact the under-ice light field. In particular, the onset of snowmelt significantly increased under-ice light availability (>0.1–0.2 mol photons m –2 d –1 ), marking the concomitant termination of the sea-ice algal bloom and initiation of UIBs. At the pan-Arctic scale, bloom magnitude (expressed as maximum chlorophyll a concentration) was predicted best by winter water Si(OH) 4 and PO 4 3– concentrations, as well as Si(OH) 4 :NO 3 – and PO 4 3– :NO 3 – drawdown ratios, but not NO 3 – concentration. Two main phytoplankton assemblages dominated UIBs (diatoms or Phaeocystis ), driven primarily by the winter nitrate:silicate (NO 3 – :Si(OH) 4 ) ratio and the under-ice light climate. Phaeocystis co-dominated in low Si(OH) 4 (i.e., NO 3 :Si(OH) 4 molar ratios >1) waters, while diatoms contributed the bulk of UIB biomass when Si(OH) 4 was high (i.e., NO 3 :Si(OH) 4 molar ratios <1). The implications of such differences in UIB composition could have important ramifications for Arctic biogeochemical cycles, and ultimately impact carbon flow to higher trophic levels and the deep ocean.

Young people represent a powerful force for social change, and they have an important role to play in climate change responses. However, empowering young people to be “systems changers” is not straightforward. It is particularly challenging within educational systems that prioritize instrumental learning over critical thinking and creative actions. History has shown that by creating novel spaces for reflexivity and experimentation, the arts have played a role in shifting mindsets and opening up new political horizons. In this paper, we explore the role of art as a driver for societal transformation in a changing climate and consider how an experiment with change can facilitate reflection on relationships between individual change and systems change. Following a review of the literature on transformations, transformative learning and the role of art, we describe an experiment with change carried out with students at an Art High School in Lisbon, Portugal, which involved choosing one sustainable behavior and adopting it for 30 days. A transformative program encouraged regular reflection and group discussions. During the experiment, students started developing an art project about his or her experience with change. The results show that a transformative learning approach that engages students with art can support critical thinking and climate change awareness, new perspectives and a sense of empowerment. Experiential, arts-based approaches also have the potential to create direct and indirect effects beyond the involved participants. We conclude that climate-related art projects can serve as more than a form of science communication. They represent a process of opening up imaginative spaces where audiences can move more freely and reconsider the role of humans as responsible beings with agency and a stake in sustainability transformations.