Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We use a broad definition of adequacy to refer to the inclusion of a set of elements and characteristics needed for enabling adaptation tracking. This is distinct from the strict IPCC definition, which refers to the sufficiency of adaptation solutions to avoid or manage risks31, or the GST definition of adequacy, which refers to policies' ability to capture national needs, considering the nature and severity of risks. ...

    Options:
    A. We focus on Africa because of its general high levels of vulnerability to climate change and the urgent need to adapt.
B. We apply three criteria derived from the plan quality and adaptation tracking literature: coverage, consistency and robustness, organized around the adaptation cycle.
C. We apply a pragmatic 0-1 scoring system to assess performance of the documents against each criterion and compute an adequacy index on the basis of equally weighted aggregation of criteria scores.
D. The criteria allow us to: (1) inventory countries' intentions, establishing a baseline for future assessments of progress and (2) identify opportunities for enhancing second-generation NDCs and improving NAPs to enable future adaptation tracking efforts.
E. Countries use various instruments to report planned adaptation targets, actions and support needed to the UNFCCC.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Most documents provided evidence of only half of the linkages defining consistency (mean = 0.53, s.d. = 0.28). NAPs registered higher consistency scores than NDCs (P < 0.001, N = 15 and N = 53, respectively) with a narrower spread. ...

    Options:
    A. Eleven documents were fully consistent, indicated by maximum consistency scores.
B. These included 5 NDCs (less than 10%), that is, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Uganda, and 6 NAPs (less than 50%), including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Liberia, Madagascar and South Africa.
C. Most often, countries link climate risk and impact assessment and action implementation (87% and 100% of NDCs and NAPs, respectively).
D. Less often, climate risk and impact assessment intentionally link to planning (72%, 87%) or planning to implementation (68%, 87%).
E. MEL is the least consistent component across the adaptation cycle, partly due to indicators being featured less overall.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Yet despite the apparent importance of CDR, there are few dedicated efforts to track real-world deployments, commitments, policies or related developments in the sector. By contrast, tracking is widely available for emissions reductions. ...

    Options:
    A. In particular, none have evaluated the removal component of the 'emissions gap'—a science-policy device for assessing progress towards the Paris Agreement temperature goal, published each year in the Emissions Gap Report and supported by an underlying evidence base.
B. So far, the emissions gap has been formulated in terms of net GHG emissions, with no distinction having been made between gross emissions and removals.
C. This simplifies the assessment to a single aggregated gap and recognizes certain empirical realities: most countries do not distinguish emissions and removals in their targets, and integrated assessment model (IAM) reporting has tended to combine emissions and removals on managed land as a single net indicator.
D. However, there are several compelling reasons why CDR should be distinguished in the gap analysis.
E. MEL is the least consistent component across the adaptation cycle, partly due to indicators being featured less overall.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To estimate the CDR gap, we first organize our analysis around two categories of CDR that differ in terms of scale, technology readiness and permanence: 'conventional CDR on land' and 'novel CDR'. The former consists of methods conventionally defined as removals in the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector (for example, afforestation, restoration). ...

    Options:
    A. Novel CDR comprises all other CDR methods, such as biochar, direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) or bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
B. Whereas conventional CDR on land methods are already widely adopted and integrated into national climate pledges, novel CDR methods remain at an early stage of adoption and policy integration.
C. Studies are now beginning to report total current CDR deployments following these definitions, which we estimate as approximately 3 GtCO2 yr-1, of which 99.9% is from conventional CDR on land.
D. Concretely, this judgment manifests in the scenarios we choose as a point of comparison to national proposals, including the specific amounts and types of CDR they implement, as well as their rates of emissions reductions.
E. However, rather than obscure this choice by comparing against broad scenario ranges, we instead select individual scenarios and aim to discuss and justify our particular choices, further opening the discourse on 'how much CDR is needed' to meet the Paris Agreement.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    In the case of the long-term strategies, there is a general acknowledgement that CDR is needed to realize national net-zero targets. Indeed, most countries include at least a qualitative description of how this type of mitigation effort would be achieved. ...

    Options:
    A. However, only 40 countries have outlined scenarios in their long-term strategies that depict quantifiable levels of CDR by 2050.
B. Our NDC assessment finds that countries' conventional CDR on land will change from -3.0 GtCO2 yr-1 for the period 2011-2020 (that is, the removals reported in GHG inventories once the indirect effects are factored out in this study) to approximately -3.1 GtCO2 yr-1 (unconditional pledges) or about -3.5 GtCO2 yr-1 (conditional pledges) in 2030.
C. While some countries include novel CDR in their qualitative description of mitigation efforts towards the 2030 pledges and a few provide initial quantifications (for example, Korea, Canada, Norway), these are currently not possible to distinguish from avoided emissions (for example, fossil-based CCS).
D. We therefore estimate zero commitments towards novel CDR by 2030, with no change from current levels of approximately 2 MtCO2 yr-1.
E. However, rather than obscure this choice by comparing against broad scenario ranges, we instead select individual scenarios and aim to discuss and justify our particular choices, further opening the discourse on 'how much CDR is needed' to meet the Paris Agreement.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The urgency of climate change has not always been matched by the pace of action by governments. However, increasing concerns about climate-induced financial instability and stranded assets have led some academics and financial regulators to advance a set of possible policy changes to help catalyse the green transition. ...

    Options:
    A. While various policies aimed at assessing climate-related financial risks—which could possibly indirectly stimulate the net-zero carbon transition—have become widespread in recent years.
B. Yet, a largely neglected question in this literature and among policymakers is whether existing financial regulations could be negatively contributing to the net-zero carbon transition.
C. This paper assesses whether widely used model-based risk regulations might create disincentives for financial institutions to divest their portfolios from high-carbon assets.
D. Such financial regulations have extensively required banks to use statistical models for assessing firms' and investments' financial risk for various purposes (for example, financial stability).
E. These regulatory frameworks affect key metrics of financial institutions, which ultimately influence manage- ment incentives and resource allocation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our empirical analysis allows us to observe that model-based estimates of risk are lower for high-carbon sectors compared with low-carbon ones. We then provide an assessment of the implications of this observation for some key financial metrics of banks if they had to divest from high-carbon assets. ...

    Options:
    A. Specifically, we utilize the accounting relationships among some of these metrics to show that an active divestment from high-carbon assets could be costly for banks.
B. We argue that this, in turn, could create perverse incentives impairing the shift of financial resources from high-carbon to low-carbon assets, possibly including much needed investments in renewable energy.
C. Finally, we provide some possible explanations as to why some of these models may lead to estimates that are negatively correlated with carbon emissions.
D. We are particularly interested in the ratio of LLR over the value of outstanding loans, which is a proxy of banks' estimates of expected credit losses.
E. This measure is often called provision cover- age ratio (PCR).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The robustness of our results highlights that our findings are not a function of the specific high-carbon/low-carbon classification used but driven by a lower average estimated risk for high-carbon sectors compared with low-carbon ones. As long as the structure of the regulation foresees that (1) losses are costs that are accounted for as expected costs as opposed to incurred costs and (2) provision coverage ratios are proportional to model-based estimates of risk, then divesting from an 'estimated' low-risk asset and re-investing in an 'estimated' high-risk asset mechanically leads to higher costs in the income statement. ...

    Options:
    A. Indeed, despite not being able to use carbon emissions data directly, in our Discussion and Methods, we provide strong evidence for a negative correlation between CPRS/emission intensity of assets and risk estimates.
B. Once again, we find that our main results persist.
C. If we use quarterly average levels from March 2020 to June 2022 (maximum temporal depth of the data), the impacts are similar (100% increase in PCR, 33% increase in provisions, 14% impact on previous 5-years profits).
D. We are particularly interested in the ratio of LLR over the value of outstanding loans, which is a proxy of banks' estimates of expected credit losses.
E. Moreover, our results are robust after controlling for different time periods.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Over the past two decades, an increasing number of countries have been engaging in a 'race to the bottom' on corporate tax rates. Some countries have even implemented a zero tax rate to attract international capital inflows. ...

    Options:
    A. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) may take advantage of differing tax regimes between jurisdictions and effectively avoid paying taxes.
B. To prevent this, a global minimum tax, the second pillar of the overall global tax reform agreement, was approved by over 130 countries and jurisdictions in October 2021.
C. The reform is designed to ensure that MNEs are subject to a minimum tax rate of 15% in every country of operation starting in 2023.
D. As MNEs play a central role in shaping countries' production patterns, the global race to the bottom in corporate tax and the global minimum tax reform may reshape the global production network, adversely impacting economic and environmental development.
E. Corporate tax-cutting may even offset the burden of climate regulations and challenge CO2 mitigation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    There is a significant negative correlation between changes in CO2 emission (in percentages) and corporate tax cuts. Intuitively, corporate tax cuts would lead to an increase in the economy's output and subsequently result in higher local CO2 emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. The simulation results indicate that China experienced the most substantial increase in emissions in absolute terms, with emissions rising by 0.7%.
B. Similarly, emerging economies, such as India and Vietnam, also experienced corporate tax cuts and increasing CO2 emissions.
C. The CO2 emissions of emerging countries are sensitive to changes in corporate tax rates.
D. Meanwhile, some developed economies, such as Japan, Italy and Germany, also cut their corporate tax sharply.
E. Germany's CO2 emissions increased by 1.8%, as its corporate tax decreased from 38.3% in 2005 to 29.7% in 2016.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Different from the effect of global tax competition, the structural effect plays a larger role than the scale effect for ~60% of the economies in this exercise. This indicates the heightened influence of the reconfiguration of the global production structure on emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. The difference primarily stems from the more pronounced dispersion of tax rate changes across countries in this exercise than that in the exercise on global tax competition.
B. The coefficient of variation for tax rate changes for the two exercises are 1.24 and 0.82, respectively.
C. A more pronounced disparity in tax rate changes among countries would lead to larger shifts in competitive advantage and consequently result in a relatively greater transformation of production structures.
D. Meanwhile, some developed economies, such as Japan, Italy and Germany, also cut their corporate tax sharply.
E. At the economic level, we observed a negative correlation both between the structural effect and changes in corporate tax rates, as well as between the scale effect and changes in corporate tax rates.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Although they are criticized for being currently immature or speculative3,4, as well as for the possibility of crowding out emission reductions, there is consensus that NETs will be needed at scale to achieve the Paris Agreement targets. Therefore, research and development on these technologies is necessary to reduce the uncertainty about their cost, potential and scalability, and to build an effective and efficient portfolio of options to reach net-zero or net-negative emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. However, leaving this effort exclusively to the private sector could pose additional challenges.
B. Once they mature, the cost-minimizing solution to incentivize NETs is deemed to be their integration into a single carbon market alongside traditional mitigation strategies such as renewables.
C. In this paper, we point out that this 'first-best' setting could entail major drawbacks: if the carbon price is a tax from the perspective of carbon emitters, it would be seen as a subsidy for carbon removal companies.
D. In 2022 alone, foundations linked to private donors such as Google and Facebook pledged almost US$1 billion to advance the research and development of negative emissions technologies (NETs).
E. In a world of insufficient climate mitigation efforts, these technologies can help the decline of CO2 emissions, offset hard-to-abate emissions and aid recovery from temperature overshoot.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Since we do not consider the cost of public funds nor potential aggregate growth effects due to variations in the income distribution, these fluxes have no aggregate impact on the economy or emissions. However, they still influence welfare distribution because each flux impacts different income deciles differently. ...

    Options:
    A. Emission reduction costs and the carbon tax are assumed to be regressive for rich countries and progressive for developing countries, following empirical evidence.
B. We do not consider dynamics such as employment effects and stranded asset ownership that could have distributional implications both within and across societies.
C. Costs and revenues of NETs are assumed to fall mainly on the wealthiest two deciles of each country, which own most stocks and capital.
D. For better data availability, we use wealth distribution as a proxy for equity ownership.
E. In our main scenarios, we assume that all capital is owned exclusively by each country's citizens.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that the no overshoot scenario has higher inequality before net zero as emission reductions, which are regressive, are frontloaded. This increase is more accentuated for regions with high removal since more negative emissions are deployed in the 2030s and 2040s and these are financed with a higher carbon price. ...

    Options:
    A. However, negative emissions are lower in the second half of the century if the budget is not overshot.
B. Consequently, the inequality implications of negative emissions are reduced, especially for highly impacted countries (fourth bracket).
C. Thus, promoting net-negative emissions by overshooting emissions and temperature leads to an intertemporal inequality trade-off between regressive mitigation in the short term and regressive NET ownership in the long term.
D. For the countries that are more impacted by the inequality repercussions of negative emissions, Fig. 4 indicates that a smaller overshoot is preferable.
E. Furthermore, while not estimated in this study, climate damages avoided with lower temperature overshoot would be likely to have progressive effects and support the rationale for reducing overshoot.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Despite the need for more stringent climate policies to achieve the Paris climate targets, many countries seem reluctant to ratchet up their mitigation efforts. This might be partly because the costs of mitigation are incurred domestically and immediately, whereas most of its benefits will be reaped globally and in the future. ...

    Options:
    A. In addition, more ambitious climate action might be hindered by concerns about the limited effectiveness of nations' domestic efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions if other countries do not do make similar changes.
B. This consideration is especially pertinent in relatively small countries.
C. Indeed, in 2021 the smallest 90% of emitters contributed only about 20% of global GHG emissions.
D. Such a narrow perspective, however, neglects the fact that international leadership in climate change mitigation can yield substantial benefits beyond domestic emission reductions.
E. For example, stringent climate policies at home can support the international diffusion of technological innovations that reduce mitigation costs in other countries.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Motivated by these findings, we next conduct an econometric analysis to more systematically identify whether the adoption of carbon pricing in one country affected the probability of its subsequent adoption elsewhere. To do so, we estimate a Cox proportional hazard model (equation (1) in Methods) with several country characteristics as explanatory variables. ...

    Options:
    A. We use Lasso regressions and a detailed examination of multicollinearity for the selection of variables.
B. On the basis of a statistical test using Schoenfeld residuals we cannot reject the null hypothesis of proportional hazards for models with the preferred five or more control variables.
C. To model international diffusion, we also include a spatial lag of prior carbon pricing adoption in other countries.
D. For this variable, we use several alternative metrics of the proximity of countries (Methods).
E. We find the best model fits for a metric that combines the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries with the geographical distances between them in the spirit of gravity models of international trade, and for a metric based on joint membership in international organizations.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Overall, the results of the empirical analysis suggest that between 1988 and 2021, carbon pricing policies diffused internationally. We next examine how much this diffusion could contribute to reduc- tions of GHG emissions globally. ...

    Options:
    A. Specifically, we use our estimated model to quantify the emission reductions that can be attributed to the adoption of carbon pricing in a given country, distinguishing between direct (domestic) emissions reduction and indirect (foreign) emission reductions due to diffusion.
B. All results are based on the empirical estimates from the econometric analysis, but we assume a constant baseline hazard, which means that all differences in the probability of policy adoption between countries can be attributed to the spatial lag and country characteristics.
C. Given the probabilistic nature of our model, we conduct Monte Carlo simulations.
D. All simulations start in 2022 from the carbon pricing policies adopted by the end of 2021.
E. For every country without a carbon price, we conduct 30,000 simulations in which this country adopts carbon pricing in 2022.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To limit global warming and achieve the Paris climate targets, society needs to bring down global carbon emissions to net zero and strongly reduce non-CO2 emissions. Future cost-effective climate change mitigation strategies often deploy bioenergy at large scales. ...

    Options:
    A. The use of biofuels promises a low-carbon alternative to fossil-fuel-based liquids as well as the possibility to enable carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere using bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
B. The combined ability of biofuels to overcome and compensate for decarbonization bottlenecks is a major driver of its future large-scale deployment.
C. However, the relevance of bioenergy as a means to climate change mitigation is also controversially discussed,since its production will be in competition with other land-use (LU) activities and will thus increase the already existing pressure on land systems, affecting biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, freshwater use andfoodprices.
D. A broad range of studies have investigated LUC and ILUC emissions induced by bioenergy production at different locations.
E. They have identified vastly different emission factors (EFs) ranging from 0 to 100 kg CO2 GJbiofuel-1, potentially exceeding the EF of fossil diesel (74 kg CO2 GJ-1).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    All scenarios reach the same climate target by imposing a uniform carbon price applied on all GHGs in the energy sector at the level necessary to comply with the carbon budget. However, they differ with respect to assumptions on the coordination of additional LU and energy policies, implying different carbon price levels. ...

    Options:
    A. A highly idealized scenario with a globally uniform carbon price (UCP) in both sectors serves as an aspirational benchmark, representing a world in which climate policies are internationally harmonized and implemented in the energy and LU sectors without delay.
B. This policy is contrasted with a second benchmark scenario, where the LU sector lacks any regulatory scheme for controlling emissions (noLUreg)—that is, there is neither a price instrument on any type of LU-based GHG emissions nor any widespread land-protection scheme.
C. Both policies assume that bioenergy is carbon neutral in the energy sector.
D. A broad range of studies have investigated LUC and ILUC emissions induced by bioenergy production at different locations.
E. However, while LU emissions are controlled in the UCP case, there is a regulation gap in the noLUreg scenario.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    There is a considerable disconnect between the spatial patterns of bioenergy production and additional LUC emissions. We find that irrespective of the policy design-a large fraction of LUC emissions does not originate from the sites of bioenergy cultivation but occurs indirectly at formerly forested areas or pasture, where agricultural activity displaced by bioenergy production is moved. ...

    Options:
    A. Those ILUC emissions as well as bioenergy plantations directly replacing carbon-rich ecosystems contribute to high EFs (for example, in the northern regions of South America for noLUreg).
B. Without LU policies globally, more than 85% of the additional emissions induced by bioenergy production originate from territories that together generate less than 16% of total biomass production.
C. By contrast, the main part of the bioenergy (more than three quarters across all policy settings) is being produced with a direct 80-year EF of less than 37 kg CO2 GJbiofuel-1 (half the EF of diesel), directly causing less than 10% of the total bioenergy-induced emissions if LU regulation policies are absent.
D. Therefore, by only accounting for direct LUC emissions within major bioenergy-producing regions, only a small fraction of attached emissions can be traced.
E. Accordingly, the total ILUC emissions related to the total bioenergy production are considerable and vary strongly with the regulatory framework.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The combined forces of social media and rise of populism have amplified the politicization of knowledge. What is considered true often depends on group membership rather than scientific evidence and facts. ...

    Options:
    A. This politicization is seen in numerous topics, including climate change.
B. Overwhelming scientific evidence suggests that climate change is occurring, is caused by human activity8 and is likely to result in dire consequences.
C. Nonetheless, actions of governments around the world lag behind what climate scientists say is needed.
D. For example, in the United States, surveys show that over a third of the population believes that the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated, and more than half the population disagrees with the claim that climate change is caused by humans.
E. In some cases, this inaction is related to a lack of concern about climate change.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We screened for individuals with polarized positions by selecting only individuals who answered 'Yes'/'No', skipping those who said 'Don't know'. Participants completed two surveys, one before the beginning of the prediction period and one at its conclusion. ...

    Options:
    A. The surveys captured participants' concerns about climate change, support for climate action, climate knowledge and variables such as demographics, political orientation and more.
B. Betting topics were set by the experimenters and were released intermittently (between 1 and 3 days apart in Study 1 and daily in Study 2).
C. The bets reflected both events that dominated the news (that is, California wildfires, extreme heat waves) and events that were less salient to the average participant (that is, Antarctic Sea ice extent, change in the Air Quality Index).
D. All bets had a settle date/time and an unambiguous source for determining the outcome.
E. For each bet, participants could decide whether they wanted to make a bet, which position to take (Yes/No) and how much money to wager.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    In line with existing theoretical arguments about the power of climate prediction markets, our findings from two field studies suggest that participating in such markets can influence people's attitudes towards climate change. Specifically, we show that participants who bet on climate-related events reported higher levels of concern about climate change, showed higher levels of support for remedial climate action and had higher levels of knowledge on climate issues. ...

    Options:
    A. While the positive impact of our intervention on attitudes was conditional on betting success in Study 1, it was unrelated to earnings in Study 2.
B. This discrepancy might, in part, be explained by the fact that the participants in Study 1 were recruited to be highly polarized in their views on climate change.
C. The effects of our intervention are small, with our experimental condition explaining between 1% and 7% of the variance in the post-survey responses regarding concern, support and knowledge.
D. However, we argue that our intervention offers a meaningful tool for behaviour change.
E. Prior work has suggested that when considered at scale, small effects can turn into highly impactful outcomes.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Nearly three-quarters of the world's global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by a net-zero law, policy or political pledge as of early 2022. In its simplest form, net zero involves balancing some amount of remaining emissions with an equal amount of negative emissions through carbon dioxide removal. ...

    Options:
    A. This idea of achieving a 'balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks' was enshrined in Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement and has become a prominent feature of recent IPCC assessments as well as country strategies.
B. Net-zero targets are driven by science that indicates that to limit warming to 1.5 °C, the world must reach net-zero CO2 emis- sions around 2050 and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions later in the century (2095-2100 with no or limited overshoot, 2070-2075 with high overshoot).
C. With the advent of net zero as a concept, the category of 'residual emissions' has emerged to denote emissions that are regarded as hard to abate and will need to be compensated via carbon removal.
D. In the integrated modelling literature, residual emissions may be defined as those whose abatement remains uneconomical or technically infeasible under the assumptions of a specific model and mitigation scenario.
E. For corporations, residual emissions may be defined in terms of the value chain; there may be emissions outside of the scope of the company's direct control.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We also examined the approach the countries took to projecting residual emissions. In theory, there are two main ways to estimate the amount of residual emissions at mid-century. ...

    Options:
    A. The first is a top-down approach that starts with a specified national policy target (such as 85% or 90% of emissions from a baseline year) and either simply sets residual emissions equal to that or uses economy-wide or sector-specific modelling to figure out how to solve for it.
B. The second is a bottom-up stakeholder-informed approach that estimates possible reductions in each sector then aggregates those sectoral estimates.
C. In principle, a third approach is also possible—one that begins with negative emis- sions, with either a top-down approach that starts with a target sink capacity or a bottom-up approach that estimates the capacity for each source of carbon removals and then projects allowable residual emissions equal to that amount.
D. However, countries are not at present using an approach that leads with negative emissions.
E. In our sample of 50 LT-LEDS, around one-third of countries utilized a top-down approach, about 15% used a bottom-up approach, about 10% set residual emissions equal to the level of forest sinks and the rest used a combined approach or left the approach unspecified.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The projections in country strategies cohere largely with the sectoral breakdown of residual emissions one can find in the literature, although countries may be projecting larger amounts than in the literature. The International Energy Agency's Net Zero by 2050 scenario describes a largely decarbonized power sector. ...

    Options:
    A. Out of 1.5 Gt of residual emissions in this scenario, 40% is from heavy industries, mainly in developing economies (chemicals, steel, cement), and 33% is from aviation, shipping and trucks; notably, this scenario is focused only on energy, not land.
B. Scenario studies analysed in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) similarly highlight residual emissions from non-electric energy, particularly in transport and industry.
C. The AR6 also presents esti- mations of residual GHG emissions at net zero from illustrative mitigation pathways (IMPs).
D. The pathways compatible with below 1.5 °C with limited or no overshoot have residuals of 6.79 Gt ('shifting development pathways', IMP-SP), 8.73 Gt ('low demand', IMP-LD) and 11.87 Gt ('high renewables', IMP-Ren), with half to two-thirds of these from non-CO2 emissions.
E. In our sample of 50 LT-LEDS, around one-third of countries utilized a top-down approach, about 15% used a bottom-up approach, about 10% set residual emissions equal to the level of forest sinks and the rest used a combined approach or left the approach unspecified.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To reach the CO2-emission reduction targets of the Paris Agreement's Nationally Determined Contributions, a growing number of countries are considering implementing domestic carbon taxes. These would increase the price on fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, end-use electricity and petroleum) to decrease fossil fuel consumption (for example, Coalition of Finance Ministers). ...

    Options:
    A. However, and repeatedly recognized during both the 26th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting in Glasgow and the recently finalized COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, many countries currently have policies that keep end-user prices artificially low through subsidies.
B. This encourages increases in both production and consumption of fossil fuels and thus effectively counteracts the intended objective of carbon pricing.
C. In addition, subsidies repre- sent a burden on the governments' fiscal budgets through deficits and revenue losses.
D. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that tax breaks and spending programmes (fossil fuel support) in the G20 countries, linked to both the production and use of coal, oil, gas and other petroleum products, had risen to US$190 billion in 2021, a level that is higher than in previous years (30% higher than in 2020).
E. All these mentioned costs are, however, only the direct costs of the subsidies themselves.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Second, a range of studies have demonstrated how individuals display more-positive attitudes towards policies directed towards industry rather than towards themselves, in much the same way as people in general tend to prefer less-stringent policies over more-coercive ones. This might be due to both general beliefs concerning how the proposed policy will have direct implications for personal welfare (personal outcome expectancies) and distributional preferences driven by the attitude that industry rather than individuals should bear the main costs of climate change. ...

    Options:
    A. As such, we hypothesize that people dislike policies that imply direct personal costs more than policies aimed towards industry, even if these might indirectly affect consumer prices, and that public acceptance of removing fossil fuel subsidies for private consumption therefore is lower than for those for industrial use.
B. In our survey, the respondents were also asked about their social and economic characteristics, whether they own a fossil fuelled vehicle and their views regarding various climate change scenarios.
C. In addition, we empirically analyse the effects of these variables on their policy attitudes.
D. We proceed from the well-established hypothesis that an important driver of policy attitudes is the balance of perceived personal costs and benefits of a proposed policy.
E. First, we hypothesize that acceptance of removing fossil fuel subsidies will be lower than the corresponding attitude to introducing a carbon tax, as the former indicates a more visible and direct loss of money for the consumer compared with the indirect workings of a tax.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    When we, more exploratorily, consider each of our countries (Ecuador, Egypt, India, Indonesia and Mexico) individually, we find that the attitudes towards fossil fuel subsidy removal are on the same level as attitudes towards the introduction of a carbon tax. In the comparison, Egypt constitutes an exception, with the least positive attitudes towards removal of fossil fuel subsidies for industrial use (M = 5.4) and private consumption (M = 5.3) compared with averages in the other countries of 6.2 for industrial use and 6.3 for private consumption. ...

    Options:
    A. Overall, from our results, we can conclude that the resistance towards (or acceptance of) the removal of fossil fuel subsidies is on par with the public opinion on introducing taxes on CO2.
B. A commitment to use the tax money saved from removing existing subsidies in a way that benefits stakeholders will increase the level of public acceptance.
C. At the country level, we find that the use of revenues for 'investment in climate adaptation' is the most popular alternative in both Mexico and Ecuador, while it is the least popular alternative in Egypt.
D. These results indicate that there are potentially important country-specific characteristics that should be considered by policymakers aiming to remove fossil fuel subsidies.
E. In this explorative part of our study, we do not have any causal claims or hypotheses regarding mechanisms.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Human activities have increased the atmospheric concentration of GHGs, leading to warming of the Earth's land, atmosphere and ocean. Global initiatives such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals aim to reduce the impacts of climate change by limiting the rise in global temperature and stepping up adaptation efforts. ...

    Options:
    A. However, the global mean temperature continued to rise over the past two decades, from 0.89 °C in 2001-2010 to 1.09 °C in 2011-2020 above pre-industrial conditions.
B. The Nile Basin (Fig. 1) faces the threat of climate change alongside water scarcity, rapidly rising pressures on water resources due to population and economic growth, and a politically complex transboundary water management system.
C. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, several large water infrastructure projects have been constructed on the Nile River to reduce the spatial and temporal variabilities of the river flow and to facilitate water supply, flood control and hydropower generation.
D. Most of these infrastructures are in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
E. Currently, most of the consumptive usage of the Nile streamflow, measured at Aswan, is located in Sudan and Egypt.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The large uncertainties associated with the water resource implications of changes in socio-economic and climate systems motivate adaptive infrastructure development plans. Several approaches have been proposed to enable planning under deep uncertainty; these allow designing robust and flexible plans that maximize resilience and minimize investment costs on the basis of, for example, adaptation tipping points, dynamic adaptive planning and dynamic adaptive policy pathways. ...

    Options:
    A. Several recent studies have applied such adaptive methods to planning water resource systems in various contexts.
B. For instance, a reservoir adaptive planning framework has been developed to explicitly consider learning about climate uncertainty over time, and other stud- ies have optimized the indicators, actions and/or thresholds in the design process of adaptive plans for water resource systems.
C. However, none of the previous studies considered engineering performance alongside economy-wide performance in the design process of climate adaptation plans for large water infrastructure systems, even though the ultimate goal of building and operating infrastructure is typically to stimulate economic development and generate economy-wide gains.
D. Our adaptive planning framework uses artificial-intelligence-based algorithms to design efficient adaptive plans for climate change on the basis of thousands of iterations between the algorithms and the integrated simulators.
E. We use the framework to design a cooperative adaptive management policy for the GERD (for 2020-2045) that considers economic and river system interests of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Under the 29 examined projections, the results show varying impacts of climate change on the naturalized streamflow of the Nile and some socio-economic characteristics of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. The lower the GHG emissions and EOC forcing levels, the lower the change in precipitation and streamflow. ...

    Options:
    A. The 30-year moving average naturalized streamflow data shown in Fig. 3c-f indicate that the mean Nile streamflow could change by between -13% and +90% by 2050 compared with 2020.
B. The intra-annual variability of the naturalized streamflow of the Nile and its main tributaries is projected to change, with the biggest changes occurring under SSP5 and high EOC temperature projections.
C. The inter-annual streamflow variability shows varying changes depending on different SSPs, forcing levels, GCMs and time horizons, as depicted in Extended Data Fig. 2.
D. The increase in temperature imposed by climate change is projected to increase PET, which would increase future irrigation water demands and evaporation from open water bodies.
E. We use the framework to design a cooperative adaptive management policy for the GERD (for 2020-2045) that considers economic and river system interests of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Many countries and other non-national actors announced new climate ambition, actions and targets ahead of the Twenty-Sixth Conference of Parties (COP26), held in Glasgow in November 2021. COP26 provided the first real demonstration of the 2015 Paris Agreement;s mechanism to regularly revisit and enhance national climate strategies. ...

    Options:
    A. By the end of COP26, 151 countries submitted updated and new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outlining plans to cut GHG emissions by 2030.
B. Although the updated and new 2030 pledges suggest higher ambition compared to the 2015 Paris pledges, limiting global warming below 1.5 °C this century—the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement—will require countries to further ratchet or increase ambition in 2030 and beyond. Importantly, recognizing the need for countries to ratchet their ambition beyond their current pledges,
C. Article IV of the Glasgow Climate Pact accelerates the previously expected timeline for revising these NDCs and calls for countries “to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their nationally determined contributions ... to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022”13.
D. The Pact also “emphasizes the urgent need for Parties to increase their efforts to collectively reduce emissions through accelerated action”.
E. As the international community responds to these calls for ratcheting ambition, there is a strong need to understand both the long-term temperature outcomes of ratcheting ambition in 2030 and beyond and what this ratcheting implies for sectoral and regional emissions.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Furthermore, ratcheting near-term ambition could markedly reduce the number of years of overshoot before returning to 1.5 °C this century. For example, the pathways with NDC emission level in 2030 followed by a 2% or 5% minimum decarbonization rate and net-zero pledges in the specified target years do not return to 1.5 °C this century and the number of years of overshoot in the pathway with an 8% minimum decarbonization rate is 67. ...

    Options:
    A. By contrast, in the pathways with NDC++ emission level in 2030, the number of years of overshoot reduces to 58, 56 and 47 years respectively.
B. Advancing the timing of net-zero pledges can be an important ratcheting strategy as it could provide the extra push required in the long-term to return 2100 warming to <1.5 °C and further reduce temperature overshooting.
C. For example, in the pathway with NDC+ emissions in 2030 followed by a 5% minimum decarbonization rate and net-zero pledges in the specified target years, the 2100 and peak temperature changes are, respectively, 1.51 °C and 1.72 °C.
D. Advancing the timing of net-zero pledges by 10 years brings the 2100 and peak temperature changes down to 1.46 °C and 1.68 °C.
E. As the international community responds to these calls for ratcheting ambition, there is a strong need to understand both the long-term temperature outcomes of ratcheting ambition in 2030 and beyond and what this ratcheting implies for sectoral and regional emissions.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The implications of ratcheting ambition for regional emissions depend on whether countries currently have net-zero pledges. For countries with net-zero pledges (for example, China, India and the USA), cumulative emissions grow and then remain flat beyond the year of net-zero under the pathway with central assumptions. ...

    Options:
    A. For such countries, ratcheting ambition in the near-term—as in the NDC++ pathways—results in slower growth of emissions and a plateauing of emissions at a lower peak level.
B. In addition, ratcheting ambition in the near-term for such countries also facilitates an advancement of the timing of net-zero CO2 emissions.
C. This advancement occurs despite the target years for the official net-zero pledges—which are modelled in terms of net-zero GHG emissions for the above countries—remaining unchanged (see Methods and Supplementary Table 2 for details on how net-zero pledges are modelled) because it facilitates a more rapid phase out of fossil-fuel-based infrastructure.
D. Advancing the target year for net-zero pledges further advances the timing of net-zero CO2 emissions.
E. By contrast, cumulative emissions for emerging economies with- out net-zero pledges (for example, Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia) grow throughout the century under the NDC pathways—albeit at a slower rate under the 8% minimum decarbonization rate assumption.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Flooding is a devastating natural hazard, causing an average >US$100 billion of damage every year. Recent events of coastal and river flooding in Europe and Asia have shown the huge impact of such events on communities and policy-makers are struggling with how to anticipate future increase in flood risk due to climate change and population growth. ...

    Options:
    A. Without adaptation investments under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and shared socio-economic pathway (SSP) 2 scenarios, fluvial flood risk for the USA is expected to increase from about US$27 billion to US$66 billion per year, while coastal flood risk cost is expected to increase from US$1.8 billion to US$189 billion.
B. In the USA, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is the main program for managing flood risk.
C. The program requires households in a participating community with a bank-backed mortgage living within a 100-year flood zone to purchase mandatory flood insurance coverage.
D. The NFIP provides almost 5 million policies to homeowners and businesses in the USA, covering US$1.2 trillion in assets and making it the largest flood insurance market worldwide.
E. It also requires that new developments in these zones meet certain building codes.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
     These effects result in a decrease of insurance penetration rates in fluvial regions from 24.7% to 13.2% (partly due to an increase in unaffordability). This implies that (on average) the NFIP is currently underpricing these regions. ...

    Options:
    A. Conversely, coastal regions display an increase from 10.2% to 17.1% in penetration rates due to more attractive premiums under risk-based insurance pricing for a share of households due to spatial variation in premiums.
B. Still, a subset of policy-holders will experience a steep increase of their premium in these regions.
C. Despite the lower penetration rates in fluvial regions, introducing risk-based premiums and offering premium discounts based on the actual reduction of risk achieved by flood-proofing buildings is expected to decrease the total average residential flood risk (coastal and fluvial) across the USA by about US$1 billion (-7.3%) by 2050.
D. These results highlight the effectiveness of offering a premium discount to implement a variety of DRR types (wet and dry flood-proofing), including through retrofitting.
E. Our model demonstrates that unaffordability (Methods) is expected to decrease from 4.5 million households (23.8%) to 1 million households (5.6%) for the 18.8 million households at risk of floods nationwide in 2050 following a transition to risk-based premiums.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The core of the modelling framework was developed for the conterminous US, including the entire USA coastline and all main river basins. It simulated flood risk at a yearly time step with representative household adaptation at a resolution of 30ʺ x 30ʺ and government adaptation at the county level. ...

    Options:
    A. Homeowners could invest in DRR measures (elevation or flood-proofing of buildings) or take out/cancel insurance and governments could invest in elevating dikes.
B. Both these adaptations and the proposed NFIP reform policies were captured in four policy scenarios.
C. The model was run 50 times for each of these policy scenarios while also assuming different climate scenarios and socio-economic scenarios.
D. The framework builds upon earlier versions of DYNAMO.
E. New components are the flood insurance market module, the addressing of coastal flood risk in addition to fluvial flood risk and the nationwide application of the model.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Here we combine information about SBTi-certified company emission reduction targets with data on REC purchases to assess the effect of RECs on the alignment of companies' reported scope 2 emission trajectories with the Paris temperature goal. We use the climate change disclosures of 115 companies, which represents the subset of companies with SBTs that have also disclosed data which can be used to assess the contribution of RECs to their reported (2015-2019) and potential future emission reductions. ...

    Options:
    A. Importantly, it was necessary that all companies in our sample reported their past emissions using both market- and location-based emission accounting methods.
B. Although empirical evidence is still needed, we have adopted here the common assumption that PPAs do lead to additional renewable energy production and real emission reductions, as the long-term power price de-risks new projects and allows access to project finance.
C. By contrast, we assume that RECs and similar market-based instruments are non-additional, that is, not leading to additional renewable genera- tion capacity or real emissions reductions, and we use the term RECs to refer to all non-PPA instruments for that reason.
D. Although existing literature suggest that RECs are non-additional due to their low and uncertain prices11–18, some claim that RECs may still contribute to the generation of more renewable energy in the longer term by, in aggregation, signaling to the market that there is a demand for renewable energy.
E. Analyses so far do not find evidence to support the existence of such an indirect market effect, and we consequently do not consider this potential effect here. We acknowledge, however, the possibility that such longer-term indirect effects may become evident in future analyses.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    This real emission reduction is driven by decarbonization of the residual electricity grid (representing the grid mix without the energy production that has been claimed by RECs or PPAs) and to a lesser extent by a net-increase in company use of PPAs. By contrast, the increase in energy consumption had a net-positive contribution to the change in emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. Hence, the appearance that the combined historical scope 2 emission trajectory of companies with SBTs easily aligned with the 1.5 °C goal is strongly misleading and a consequence of heavy reliance on RECs, which are not associated with real emission reductions.
B. Reported location-based emissions reduced from 77.1 to 69.2MtCO2e per year (10.3%) over the period, far less than the reported market-based emissions.
C. This is as RECs and PPAs are not considered in location-based accounting (Box 1), which is also why location-based emissions were higher than market-based emissions in 2015.
D. Instead, decarbonization of the electricity grid was the main contributor to the reported emis- sion reduction, with the increase in energy consumption again having a net-positive contribution to the change in emissions.
E. Companies headquartered in Europe and North America (88% of the sample) reported larger combined market-based emission reductions in 2015-2019 than companies based in Asia (11% of the sample), but also relied more on RECs in their reporting.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    In this study we assessed the use of RECs by companies with SBTs and the implications for their Paris alignment claims. The widespread use of RECs raises doubt on companies' apparent historic Paris-aligned emission reductions, as it allows companies to report emission reductions that are not real. ...

    Options:
    A. Moreover, a continuation of recent trends would mean that nearly half of future scope 2 emission reductions reported by companies with SBTs would not be real.
B. Overall, our results confirm earlier suppositions and suggest that corporate use of RECs in the pursuit of SBTs is the norm rather than the exception.
C. This is consistent with recent findings for a smaller sample of companies with net-zero targets.
D. SBTs must cover both scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, and for many industries scope 2 emissions are the larger of the two.
E. Consequently, companies' use of RECs threatens to undermine the integrity of SBTs as a whole.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    In response to this opposition, interest has grown in deploying carbon tax revenues to boost public support. Carbon tax revenues can be directed towards environmental spending or can be paired with tax cuts, although this latter approach may be less effective than green spending at reducing public opposition or only effective for some voters. ...

    Options:
    A. However, earmarking through either spending or tax cuts may lack high visibility, and voters may distrust that governments will deliver or maintain these benefits.
B. Instead, it has been suggested that highly visible lump-sum rebates or 'dividends' could be more effective in winning public support and reinforcing that support over time as beneficiaries become accustomed to regular dividends.
C. The hypothetical potential of climate rebates to increase public carbon pricing support has been shown in the United States, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Turkey, France and India.
D. These studies offer strong reasons to expect that bundling carbon taxes with lump-sum rebates could increase public acceptance.
E. However, other studies offer more sobering assessment. Surveys measuring public support for hypothetical policies may overestimate voters' support when confronted with real-world costs.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Beyond low visibility, we also consider alternative reasons for the weak effects of rebates on public opinion. In Canada, carbon pricing preferences might have remained relatively stable despite rebates because the political benefits of revenue recycling came with policy announcement (before our wave 1), not during implementation (our panel period). ...

    Options:
    A. Two pieces of evidence suggest this as unlikely.
B. First, we find little baseline knowledge about the rebate in wave 1, which we would expect if anticipation of future rebates had already increased support.
C. Second, the announcement of a federal rebate policy for Alberta occurred between waves 2 and 3, after a newly elected provincial government repealed the provincial tax, which did not provide universal rebates.
D. This prompted the federal government to step in to announce it would impose a tax and rebate policy over the objection of the provincial government (as in Saskatchewan and Ontario.)
E. However, we find no announcement effect in Alberta, where carbon pricing support trends roughly in parallel with other provinces after policy announcement.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Altogether, results from these studies paint a more complex picture of the benefits of lump-sum carbon tax rebates than did previous surveys and laboratory experiments using hypothetical policies. While the climate-dividend policies in Switzerland and Canada diverge from policy ideals, trading off public transparency for administrative efficiency, we note that these are the only two extant examples of carbon tax and dividend globally. ...

    Options:
    A. Both were implemented in the context of partisan and interest-group debates, including widespread dissemination of selective or misleading information.
B. As always, both policy design and attitudinal change may still occur.
C. The government of Canada has announced that future rebates, which will steadily increase in value, will be delivered to households directly.
D. However, in Switzerland, voters rejected an increase in the country's carbon tax rate, alongside increased rebates, in June 2021 when faced with intense politicization of policy costs by opponents.
E. The evolution and impact of new rebate designs, increasing tax rates and benefit sizes, and potential shifts in partisan positions remain for future research.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    However, these models ignore the possibility that the revenues from a carbon tax could be used in a progressive way that generates immediate net benefits for the current poor. A large literature has now investigated the implications of these 'revenue recycling' opportunities and identified an equal per capita refund of the revenues as a salient option. ...

    Options:
    A. The evidence indicates that an equal per capita refund typically makes immediate net beneficiaries out of most citizens and is often more progressive and potentially more feasible than other salient options for using revenues.
B. Findings from studies of revenue recycling have not been incor- porated into optimal policy analyses at the global level, including to model possible synergies with other development goals, for example sustainable development goals (SDGs).
C. This is an important oversight, as many of the arguments that there are trade-offs between climate action and poverty alleviation or other SDGs depend on the premise that climate action must harm the current poor.
D. If this assumption were correct, some trade-off between climate action and poverty alleviation would be inevitable.
E. The key question would then be to what extent benefitting the future poor through avoiding future climate damages can justify (from a development or equity perspective) reduced near-term development for the current poor.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    There is a similar pattern in all regions: without progressive revenue recycling, climate action does indeed involve a substantial trade-off where the poorest lose from climate policy in the short-to-medium term as they shoulder their share of mitigation costs without compensation. In contrast, with the equal per capita dividend, climate action involves a synergy with poverty alleviation. ...

    Options:
    A. Yet even in the recycling scenario, consumption falls below BAU for several regions later in the century.
B. This occurs because it is after the point where there are substantial revenues to be distributed but before the point where the benefits of climate action are large.
C. Nevertheless, consumption in the recycling scenario is always above the no recycling scenario in the early periods due to the benefits of redistribution.
D. After the year 2100, both cases produce increasing benefits from avoided climate damage.
E. Note that once carbon revenues disappear in the future, people will also be much wealthier than their counterparts today.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    This finding contributes to the debate over whether there should be a gradual ramp up to aggressive policy (for example, as advocated by Nordhaus27) or a large-scale push toward immediate maximum feasible reductions (for example, as advocated by Stern). Even with the relatively high discounting parameters preferred by Nordhaus, progressive revenue recycling leads to high levels of decarbonization immediately—comparable in the initial decades to strict climate target pathways (for example, 1.5 or 2  ̊C)—followed by less decarbonization in later periods. ...

    Options:
    A. With lower carbon emitted in the atmosphere early on, and anticipating the carbon Laffer curve, the initial period of high decarbonization is followed by a gradual long-term increase toward full decarbonization to keep peak warming at a moderate level and preserve revenue for redistribution.
B. The temporal difference in optimal decarbonization pathways between scenarios with and without revenue recycling (the crossing pattern seen in Fig. 5a) appears robust to several key uncertainties.
C. While our main results assume background inequality remains constant in all regions,
D. The crossing is repeated in all scenarios but is less extreme with more reductions in background inequality.
E. When background inequality is lower, initial decarbonization is again much higher with the progressive recycling but, unlike in the other scenarios, it then remains relatively high through time.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    International trade can be an important adaptation mechanism. Trade links countries with a food deficit with countries with a food surplus and raises consumption possibilities through specialization according to comparative advantage. ...

    Options:
    A. Climate change affects regions and crops differently, possibly shifting regional comparative advantages and altering trade patterns.
B. However, the current literature is incomplete in its scenario design and does not comprehensively assess whether and—if so, why—the role of trade becomes larger under climate change.
C. The 'adaptation illusion hypothesis' argues that many farm practices are wrongly identified as adaptation because they have equal beneficial impacts with or without climate change.
D. Here we investigated the case of adaptation through trade, and reveal whether climate change alters the pattern of comparative advantage and increases the impact of trade integration on hunger.
E. With the emerging integration between climate and trade policy agendas, a better understanding is needed to guide international policies to reduce hunger.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    They experience negative impacts on already low yields, also when including the impact of supply-side adaptation on yields. Across the RCP8.5 scenarios, projections for the baseline trade scenario range from an increase of 13-181% and 2-51% in the population at risk of hunger for SAS and SSA, respectively. ...

    Options:
    A. The effect of the trade scenarios on regional undernourishment is largest among baseline net-importing regions (SSA, MNA, EAS and SAS) and regions in which climate change reduces net exports.
B. The fixed imports scenario enlarges hunger impacts in the extreme climate change scenario in SSA, SAS and SEA by raising agricultural prices (Extended Data Figs. 5 and 6), increasing net exports in SEA, and reducing net imports in SSA and SAS.
C. Adverse effects from trade restriction, such as the export bans observed during the 2007-2008 world food crisis28,29 and those feared as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, may pose severe hunger risks under climate change.
D. Under the pre-Doha tariffs scenario undernourishment in SSA, SAS and EAS is substantially higher compared with the baseline trade scenario.
E. Tariff liberalization between 2001 and 2010 reduced average import tariffs in SSA, SAS and EAS by around 30%.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We ran the regressions presented in Table 1 with regional interaction effects. In most of the regions, climate-induced decreases in crop yields reduce food availability and increase hunger while reduced trade costs have opposite effects. ...

    Options:
    A. The food availability impacts of crop-yield changes are largest for SAS, SSA and SEA, whereas the effect of trade costs is largest for regions maintaining net imports under climate change (SSA, MNA and EAS).
B. The corresponding impact on hunger is largest in low-income regions (SSA and SAS), followed by middle-income regions (EAS, MNA, and SEA).
C. The interaction effect, which reveals whether climate change alters the relationship between trade costs and hunger, is most pronounced in SSA, followed by EAS.
D. Figure 3 plots the predicted hunger-yield relationship in EAS and SSA for different levels of trade cost, showing that hunger is less sensitive to climate-induced yield changes under reduced trade costs.
E. We assessed the extent that climate change shifts the pattern of com- parative advantage of four important crops (corn, wheat, soya and rice).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    This Analysis estimates the impact of the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) alerts of tree cover loss on deforestation trends across 22 tropical countries between 2011 and 2018. The system that we examine is the first to offer loss alerts at high spatial resolution (-30 m) and frequency (up to every 8 days, depending on cloud cover). ...

    Options:
    A. The GLAD alerts use all available Earth observation data from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellites, which combined have a revisit rate of 8 days.
B. Each day, all new images are first masked for clouds and shadow, and then a loss detection algorithm is applied to all unobscured land, evaluating the reflectance of the current obser- vation together with baseline Landsat metrics.
C. Each 0.00025° pixel (28m at the Equator) flagged as loss becomes an alert.
D. The alerts map all forms of tree cover loss including logging, clear-cuts and intensive fires in both natural forests and plantations.
E. These alerts and the date of first detection are provided without charge through a simple interface called Global Forest Watch (GFW).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To estimate the impact of alert availability, we examine only countries that had access to alerts by September 2018. In this case, the counterfactual is countries that received alerts later. ...

    Options:
    A. If it were the case that forests with higher deforestation rates received alerts sooner than forests with lower rates, and if those rates continued to be the same over time, then even in the absence of an effect of alerts, the estimated impact (approximately the deforestation rate of early recipients minus that of late recipients) would show that the availability of alerts had increased deforestation.
B. In this case, the comparison we make would understate the impact of alert availability.
C. The reverse is true if forests at low risk of deforestation receive alerts first.
D. Tests of differences in deforestation rates between late- and early-enrolled countries before 2016 suggest that the former provide a plausible counterfactual for the latter, as there are no significant differences in deforestation in this pre-alert period.
E. If we assume that time trends continue in a similar way across comparison groups in the absence of the alerts, then our results are not likely to be biased.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The alert system has an important limitation: a loss event can only be detected if there are no clouds above it when satellites pass over. If an area of forest is cleared and there are clouds overhead when the satellite images the area, it will not be detected. ...

    Options:
    A. As images can only be obtained every 8 days, a month or more may pass before an image without clouds blocking the clearing can be obtained, particularly during rainy seasons or in regions with persistent cloud cover.
B. This means that there can be a time lag between the clearing event and the actual alert publication, so interventions to stop further deforestation may also be delayed.
C. This affects their utility, but it does not affect our impact estimates as we do not directly include the alerts in our estimation.
D. The fact that we detect an impact suggests that even this imperfect measure provides additional important information to control deforestation.
E. Furthermore, we do not think that variation in alert lags across continents drives the variation in our results—forests in Africa, Asia and South America have similar cloud-free image availability (an average of 76% months per year) during our study period.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To characterize mass preferences over climate cost paths, we devised a survey that we conducted among representative samples of adult populations (n = 10,075) in four major economies (France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States). The sociodemographic margins for the raw and weighted samples along with the population margins for each country are shown in Supplementary Table 1. ...

    Options:
    A. We first studied support for different climate cost schedules using a direct question item to introduce the idea of an international agreement that would entail certain average costs per month and per household.
B. The cost level was held constant for respondents in the United States, but we randomized whether the average monthly household costs for implementing the agreement were expected to be low (€28, €39 and £15) or high (€113, €154 and £60) in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, respectively.
C. These values have been used in previous research and correspond to approximately 0.5% and 2.0% of gross domestic product (GDP) expressed in average monthly costs per household.
D. The share of respondents who preferred a constant allocation of climate costs over time as opposed to other options, including an increasing cost path, is shown in Figure 2.
E. The results are virtually identical for the weighted data.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our estimates of how costs paths affect policy support, along with 95% and 99% robust confidence intervals, are shown in Fig. 3a. Moving from an increasing to a constant cost path caused a significant increase in policy support by 7 percentage points compared to the widely discussed option of ramping up costs over time (the reference category), even when we explicitly specified and fixed the cost level of the policy proposal. ...

    Options:
    A. At the same time, decreasing cost schedules also raised climate policy support compared to the increasing cost path.
B. We also note that the causal effect estimates are a function of both the preference for a policy feature and the intensity of that preference, which contrasts to the analysis above in which the estimates are simply a function of the number of individuals who prefer a given cost schedule.
C. Understanding the rationale for the positive estimate of the decreasing cost path in the conjoint experiment seems a productive inquiry for future research, but we focus primarily on the comparison between constant costs and increasing costs in the remainder of this paper because constant costs are preferred to an increasing time path across both measurement strategies.
D. To put the sensitivity to cost paths into perspective, we also visualized the causal effects of cost levels with support for climate action.
E. First, consistent with previous research, costs had a significant and substantively noteworthy effect on public support.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Credible climate policies will have to raise the price of carbon, and the public are concerned about these costs even if they believe the science of climate change and generally would like governments to address the issue. One intuitively appealing approach to this problem is to ramp up the costs of climate action over time. ...

    Options:
    A. This lowers costs in the near to medium term but also requires individuals to keep adjusting to steadily increasing carbon prices.
B. Our results indicate that such cost plans run the risk of reducing support for climate policies because many individuals prefer to smooth their consumption over time.
C. The ramping-up approach could remain politically feasible if some voters focus on near-term costs or if policy experience causes mass preferences to become more favourable towards costly climate action in general.
D. Similarly, respondents who were more patient were significantly more likely to support a constant climate cost schedule over time-varying cost paths such as the ramping-up approach.
E. Overall, the predictive patterns indicate that, consistent with the results from our analysis of respondents' answers to our open-ended question, general attitudes towards time seem to play a systematic role in understanding mass preferences for constant over dynamic cost paths.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To assess the potential increase in cost from heterogeneous subnational policy formation compared with theorized optimal uniform nationwide policy, we study the case of the United States. The United States is the world's second largest emitter and already displays one of the world's largest variations in subnational action. ...

    Options:
    A. Bottom-up coalitions, such as the 'America is All In' initiative, have gathered thousands of signatories from political leaders in cities, states, companies and universities that represent a constituency of more than half the U.S. population.
B. Nearly 40 states have created renewable portfolio standards or voluntary renewable energy goals to facilitate low-carbon transition.
C. Meanwhile, some states are making limited effort and are under no sustained public pressure to strengthen it.
D. Here we focus on heterogeneity in the stringency of policy efforts made by each state.
E. For ease, we will represent those policy efforts as state-varying prices on carbon.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We categorize states into three groups, namely low-, medium-, and high-supporting states, depending on the level of current public support for climate policy. With the Uniform approach, the carbon price is uniform across the three groups of states, but increases dramatically as the national mitigation efforts become more stringent (solid lines in Fig. 3: US$74, US$210, US$670 and US$1,557 per ton CO2 for national targets of 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% decarbonization, respectively). ...

    Options:
    A. The substantial increase in carbon price is a direct result of an increasing MAC, which suggests that availability of low-cost mitigation options becomes increasingly constrained to achieve more ambitious decarbonization goals.
B. Compared with the Uniform approach, the main effect of intro- ducing heterogeneous subnational policies is to shift the burden of emissions reductions from low- to medium- and high-supporting states, while the country overall still achieves the same national mitigation target.
C. The effect of such a shift is driven by much lower carbon prices in the low-supporting states and is greatest under the Heterogeneous approach, since it displays the widest heterogeneity in state-level effort.
D. We are mindful that state and federal policies arise through much more complex and nuanced processes; our purpose here is simply to show a plausible method for quantifying degrees of heterogeneity and their implications for mitigation cost (see Sensitivity analysis section for alternative formulations for policy heterogeneity).
E. To make computation easier, we set the relative ratios of state-level carbon prices based on public opinions, then let the model compute the whole set of carbon price values to achieve the national mitiga- tion targets.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We also consider three technology constraints based on what prior research has shown to be most pivotal in determining future mitigation costs. For all three policy approaches, we find much higher mitigation costs under: (a) limited electricity infrastructure investment and production, (b) no investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and (c) limited availability of biomass. ...

    Options:
    A. The greatest impacts on mitigation costs come from constraining CCS and biomass because this restricts the role of BECCS and forces greater reliance upon extremely expensive technologies outside the electricity and refinery sectors, such as hydrogen use in transport and industrial sectors.
B. Relaxing the bio- mass constraint, by contrast, significantly lowers the mitigation costs (Supplementary Figs. 11 and 12). Limiting electricity production has a lesser impact on overall costs because, in the face of such con- straints, reductions in energy demand through efficiency measures, increases in natural gas use coupled with CCS, as well as more mitigation in the refinery sector through BECCS, can provide additional decarbonization.
C. Detailed discussions are included in Supplementary Note 3.
D. Although these technology constraints raise the total national cost of mitigation, our main finding remains robust: a heteroge- neous policy approach, relative to a uniform approach, is only slightly more expensive.
E. To make computation easier, we set the relative ratios of state-level carbon prices based on public opinions, then let the model compute the whole set of carbon price values to achieve the national mitigation targets.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Climate change is increasing the likelihood of flooding, with often disastrous impacts, particularly in urban areas. Flood-related global economic losses reached a staggering $651 billion (US dollars) between 2000 and 2019. ...

    Options:
    A. The United States has been particularly impacted, with floods causing 1,782 fatalities and damages exceeding $102 billion, affecting 99% of US counties since 2000.
B. The growing impacts of flood events across the United States and globally will continue to rise, with losses projected to soar by a factor of 20 by the end of the twenty-first century.
C. These increasing impacts are driven not only by the increasing severity of extreme rainstorms, but also by rapid urbanization10, booming population densities and the dramatic expan- sion of highly connected transportation and infrastructure networks in flood-prone areas.
D. Rapid urbanization has substantially altered the natural water cycle through the proliferation of impervious surfaces, inhibiting rainfall infiltration and resulting in elevated surface runoff.
E. The disruption of natural drainage pathways has rendered urban areas increasingly susceptible to inundation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a scientific research paper, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    State-of-the-science urban flood modeling can accurately simulate the motion of flood waves over the surface and within stormwater infrastructure, while accounting for the complexities of surface conditions (vegetation, roads, bridges, buildings and so on). Augmented by the growing volumes of high-resolution geospatial data for urbanscapes, it is now possible to explore flooding behaviors in urban environments with far fewer simplifying assumptions. ...

    Options:
    A. As pointed out already, previous studies have primarily focused on model developments of specific physical processes37 and have thus lacked comprehensive insights regarding the connectivity of floods in urban domains as shaped by natural drainage elements and gray infrastructure.
B. Further research is required to advance such understanding.
C. By investigating flood propagation through a complex urban environment with multiple process interactions, our study provides novel insights into emergent flood behaviors shaped by both natural and man-made drainage systems.
D. The knowledge gained and capabilities demonstrated in this research could help to provide sustainable and resilient approaches to addressing the intensification of global urban flood hazards.
E. Specifically, we investigate the following.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A