Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Following the destruction of a bridge segment at the Kakhovka Dam on November 11, 2022, irregular operation of the spillway gates led to a prolonged overflow, causing erosion of the spillway foundation, as indicated by satellite data, meteorological reanalysis, and dam design criteria analysis.
An ultra-weak magnetic field from Earth’s core lasting for at least 26 million years may have contributed to Earth’s oxygenation and further diversification of the Ediacaran fauna, according to single-crystal paleointensity data from igneous rocks in South Africa and Brazil.
The Southern Ocean carbon sink is projected to move poleward under a high emission scenario with increases in the Revelle Factor and carbon uptake that are biologically-driven in summertime and solubility-driven in wintertime linked to sea-ice melt, suggest CMIP6 Earth system model simulations.
Four extreme hydrometeorological events in the Pacific Northwest of North America in 2021, including two cold waves, a heat wave and a major flood, impacted freshwater temperatures by as much as 8 °C in parts of the region, according to an analysis of hourly water temperatures at 554 sites.
A large algal bloom in Lake Geneva in 2021 was triggered by a sequence of heavy rainfall followed by wind-induced coastal upwelling, and a prolonged period of warm, calm weather, according to a combination of satellite remote sensing, in-situ measurements and three-dimensional numerical modeling.
Our health and active life depend critically on nutritious food. While agriculture and food production increased over the past decades, millions of people are still unable to meet their dietary needs, starkly contrasting the overconsumption and the enormous amount of food wasted daily.
Responses of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to prompts to list a country’s vulnerability to climate hazards overall agree for floods and cyclones but less for droughts, with fewer errors from GPT-4, indicating a potential to enhance climate literacy, suggests a comparison of responses to hazard risk indices based on data from the IPCC.
Drought-wildfire compound events are increasing in frequency and reduce gross primary production by double compared to drought-only events, suggests a global scale compound analysis of satellite-derived data on drought indicators, wildfire and gross primary production between 2002 and 2020.
The stability of the ice margin in Baffin Bay led to active decentering of sediments in the deep basin and slopes 25,000−15,000 years ago, but as the ice sheet retreated 13,000-11,000 years ago, deposition moved largely toward the shelf, according to radiocarbon records from 79 sediment cores.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations remained below 840 parts per million and polar regions were glaciated throughout much of the Early Cretaceous except during episodic volcanism, according to an analysis of stable isotope composition of plants and biogenic carbonate data.
The summary of Common Era temperature reconstructions in the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change insufficiently characterizes reconstruction uncertainties associated with estimating global mean temperatures.
Intense rainfall events resulting from strong atmospheric river activity two and three millennia ago exceeded those of the 20th century around Leonard Lake, California, according to a 3,200-year reconstruction of integrated vapor transport derived from sediment geochemical data.
Reductions in groundwater level due to El Niño-induced drought events changed an undrained tropical peat swamp forest from a carbon dioxide sink to a source with cumulative impacts of drainage and smoke haze further enhancing long term emissions, suggest long-term field experiments in Indonesia.
Uncertainties associated with the choice of dry indicators impact future projections of compound hot-dry extremes and are greater than scenario uncertainty in some regions, according to an analysis of different indices from multi-model ensemble simulations.
Iceflow acceleration in Greenland has propagated deep inland, even outside fast-flowing channels, in the region upstream of Jakobshavn Isbrae, according to in-situ measurements at eleven locations with measurements going back to 1959.
Plasticity and evolutionary changes in phytoplankton phenotypes in the ocean can be better represented by integrating statistical and multi-trait-based numerical models which will help improve predictions of future ecosystem states and ocean carbon cycling.
Oceanic deoxygenation began about one million years earlier than the marine End-Permian mass extinction, as indicated by variations in magnetic mineral assemblages and geochemical anomalies.
A total of 114,000 ± 9,400 km3 of precipitation falls on land each year with high dataset consensus over tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions, and low agreement over arid and mountain regions, according to an analysis of 17 precipitation datasets over the period 2000-2019.
Attribution of the record-shattering global annual heat in 2023 to human and/or natural factors is fundamentally required for reliable predictions of upcoming global warming and its impacts. An observation-model comparison of global hot areas supports a key role for human-induced climate change, with a small contribution from El Niño.
Climate change effects magnified an intense heat dome over western North America leading to record breaking fire-conducive weather, widespread burning and extreme fire activity in Canada and the United States in July 2021, suggest an analysis of upper air and surface weather.