Volume 2 Issue 2, February 2009

Competition from the New World, a changing climate and technological advances have threatened the Burgundian notion that the quality of wine depends on regional geography and culture. Only flexibility can keep the concept of terroir alive.

Within just three years, a 2,000-km stretch of the plate boundary tracing the Indonesian archipelago slipped in four earthquakes. Studies of past and present seismic activity in the region show a complex, but organized pattern of earthquake supercycles, the latest of which has not been completed.

Surface ozone levels are expected to be high in polluted regions during summer months. Observations from Wyoming in February 2008 indicate that equally high concentrations of ozone can be produced during winter.

Ice ages in the North Pacific Ocean and the Southern Ocean were marked by low productivity. Accumulating evidence indicates that strong stratification restricted the supply of nutrients from the deep ocean to the algae of the sunlit surface in these regions.

The exact mechanism used by microorganisms to produce the neurotoxin methyl mercury is unclear. The latest laboratory studies point to the amino acid cysteine as an important aid for the uptake of inorganic mercury and its transformation to methyl mercury in Geobacter sulfurreducens.

The causes of recent dynamic thinning of Greenland's outlet glaciers have been debated. Realistic simulations suggest that changes at the marine fronts of these glaciers are to blame, implying that dynamic thinning will cease once the glaciers retreat to higher ground.

Field studies and experimental research during the past two decades have provided considerable evidence for a significant influence of climate on tectonics. Recent advances suggest that model predictions can guide future fieldwork aimed at substantiating this view.

Continued global warming could persist far into the future, because natural processes require decades to hundreds of thousands of years to remove carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuel burning from the atmosphere. A 100,000-year simulation indicates that severe ocean oxygen depletion could last for thousands of years.

The recent, dramatic retreat of many outlet glaciers of the Greenland ice sheet has raised concerns over Greenland’s contribution to future sea-level rise. Simulations with a numerical ice-flow model indicate that the recent rates of mass loss in Greenland’s outlet glaciers are transient and should not be extrapolated into the future.

Surface solar radiation has undergone decadal variations, producing global ‘dimming’ and ‘brightening’ effects, probably owing to changes in aerosol burden and clouds. An analysis of multidecadal data of horizontal visibility shows that the occurrence of fog, mist and haze has declined in Europe over the past 30 years.

Photochemical ozone production near the Earth’s surface is considered to be a summertime, urban phenomenon. However, air-quality measurements in the rural Upper Green River Basin, Wyoming, show rapid, diurnal photochemical production of ozone during air temperatures as low as −17 ^∘C.

Methylmercury bioaccumulates in aquatic food chains and can cross the blood–brain barrier, making this organometallic compound a much more worrisome pollutant than inorganic mercury. Experimental evidence now indicates that mercury methylation by the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens can be greatly enhanced in the presence of the amino-acid cysteine.

A quantitative reconstruction of the global climate during the last glacial maximum was published in the early 1980s. A synthesis of global sea-surface temperature reconstructions shows global cooling of the tropical oceans and strong longitudinal temperature-gradients.

The primitive Moon was covered with a thick layer of melt known as the lunar magma ocean, whose crystallization resulted in the Moon’s surface as it is observed today. Dating of the oldest zircon so far in lunar rocks indicates that much of the magma was probably crystallized within 100 million years of the Moon’s formation.

The conditions leading to rock failure during intermediate-depth earthquakes in subduction zones are not clear, particularly in the absence of free fluid. Field observations and numerical simulations indicate that thermal weakening due to high-temperature shear instabilities may trigger earthquakes under such circumstances.

Stress accumulation between earthquakes results from slip that is insufficient to fully accommodate plate movement. An inverse analysis of GPS data from the Kuril–Japan trench reveals a trench-parallel belt of stress accumulation with six peaks in the depth range of 10–40 km, suggesting potential source regions for future earthquakes.

The carbon cycle plays a central role in climate change. An analytical framework shows that the influence of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations on climate is more sensitive to carbon perturbations now than it has been over much of the preceding 400 million years.

Russell Schnell and colleagues trawled through meteorological datasets to solve the mystery of the winter ozone anomalies in Wyoming.

Timm John and colleagues soaked up the beauty, and rain, of Western Norway while attempting to unlock the secrets of deep earthquakes.