Volume 15 Issue 7, July 2022

The bulk crustal porosity of the lunar highland may have been generated early in the Moon’s history by basin-forming impacts and then declined exponentially. A new porosity evolution model constrains the timing and sequence of basin formation.

For decades, ozone pollution mitigation efforts relied on two chemical regimes. A global modelling analysis has revealed a third regime involving aerosols that would help with the concurrent control of both ozone and particulate pollution.

Shrubs act as thermal bridges to conduct heat through the tundra snowpack, fostering heat loss from the ground in winter and heat gain in the spring.

Unrest episodes observed in basaltic systems indicate magma influx rates may be key to generating long-term eruption forecasts. The findings predict that, if a critical flow rate is surpassed, a volcano will erupt within a year.

Ozone depletion is not only a serious health threat but can also affect the climate. Atmospheric chemistry models reveal that springtime Arctic ozone depletion can have major consequences for the seasonal climate in the Northern Hemisphere, including warming over Eurasia and drying across central Europe.

Climate change is exacerbating geohazards in High Mountain Asia that pose a growing risk to hydropower and water infrastructure across the region.

Constraints on the cratering history of the Moon from the modelled production and removal of crustal porosity by impacts are inconsistent with an extended period of bombardment.

Global chemical transport simulations reveal an ozone photochemistry regime where the uptake of hydroperoxyl radicals onto aerosol particles dominates ozone production.

Ozone depletion in the Arctic stratosphere consistently disrupts surface temperature and precipitation patterns across the Northern Hemisphere, according to atmospheric chemistry–climate modelling and observations.

The Azores High over the North Atlantic has expanded due to anthropogenic climate change, disrupting precipitation patterns in western Europe, according to climate modelling and precipitation proxy records spanning the past millennium.

Arctic shrubs cool permafrost in winter by acting as a thermal bridge through the snowpack, according to ground temperature observations and heat transfer simulations.

Direct measurements of carbon fixation rates in groundwater suggest a substantial contribution of in situ primary production to subsurface ecosystem processes.

The Pine Island Glacier, a locus of ice loss from the modern West Antarctic Ice Sheet, had previously been stable since at least the mid-Holocene, according to records tracking ice extent based on radiocarbon and cosmogenic exposure dating.

A change in the style of rifting in the North Atlantic led to carbon fluxes from subcrustal melting that helped trigger the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, according to geochemical analyses of volcanic sequences as well as melting and tectonic modelling.

Using magma inflow rate improves eruption forecasting on timescales of weeks to months for basaltic caldera systems, compared with using surface deformation alone, according to analysis of 45 unrest case studies and viscoelastic modelling.

A reduction in olivine grain size can cause weakening of mantle lithosphere, facilitating continental rifting, according to coupled grain-size-evolution thermo-mechanical modelling of a mantle dynamics.

The lower oceanic crust forms through the accretion of injected melt that cools and crystallizes in situ over hundreds of thousands of years, according to seismic data from the slow-spreading equatorial Mid-Atlantic Ridge.