Volume 3 Issue 8, August 2010

Climate science at the University of East Anglia is sound but lacking in transparency, according to the three official reports. But making data accessible will not be sufficient to guard against future attacks.

Accusations by sceptics have steered climate researchers into an unproductive battle. They should now rise above the debate and help develop models of the coupled climate–socioeconomic system to advise policymakers.

Science has successfully established the discussion of climate change in the global arena. Following the Copenhagen crisis in climate policy, attention needs to be shifted from global goals to societally relevant, local and pragmatic countermeasures.

The composition of the rocks brought back from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts still poses a conundrum. Spectroscopic measurements of the lunar surface may offer a resolution while providing a glimpse at the evolution of the lunar mantle.

Eastern Indonesia hosts one of the most complex and fascinating tectonic systems on the planet. Palaeogeographical reconstructions indicate that subduction and deformation of a single slab of oceanic crust created the complicated configuration.

The formation and burial of calcium phosphate minerals removes large quantities of phosphorus from the ocean. Radiotracer experiments reveal that bacteria in marine sediments mediate the production of these mineral phases at remarkably fast rates.

Reconstructions of atmospheric chemistry and microbial life early in the Earth's history have been contentious. Observations increasingly point to the evolution of complex and variable environments earlier in time.

The terrestrial biosphere is a key regulator of atmospheric chemistry and climate. Total positive radiative forcing resulting from biogeochemical feedbacks between the terrestrial biosphere and atmosphere could be equally as important as that resulting from physical feedbacks.

The composition, structure and evolution of the Moon’s mantle is poorly constrained. A global survey of the Moon’s surface, using the spectral profiler onboard the lunar explorer SELENE/Kaguya, identifies a number of exposures of olivine in concentric regions around lunar craters, with a possible mantle origin.

Modelling studies suggest that management of solar radiation could produce stabilized global temperatures and reduced global precipitation. An analysis of a large-ensemble simulation of 54 temperature-stabilization scenarios suggests that it may not be possible to achieve climate stabilization through management of solar radiation simultaneously in all regions.

Black-carbon aerosols absorb solar radiation and are thought to be a significant source of global warming. Surface and aircraft measurements of aerosol plumes in China suggest that solar absorption increases with the ratio of black carbon to sulphate.

Sea-level rise is not globally uniform. A combination of observations and climate-model simulations reveals a pattern of sea-level changes in the Indian Ocean, with a decrease in the southern tropical Indian Ocean and a rise elsewhere, that can be attributed to changes in the atmospheric overturning circulation.

Dense water that formed over the Antarctic continental shelf spreads throughout the global ocean as Antarctic Bottom Water. Observations over eight years reveal a strong seasonal cycle in the flow of Weddell Sea bottom water northwards that is linked to winds over the western margin of the Weddell Sea.

Organic phosphorus is removed from the ocean by its conversion to phosphorite. Laboratory incubations suggest that bacteria catalyse phosphorite formation, and that the rate of conversion is greatest under anoxic conditions.

The reason for the spectacular curvature of the Banda subduction zone is debated. Tomographic images and plate reconstructions reveal subduction of a single slab. The ancient geometry of the Australian plate, as well as the interaction between the slab and the mantle, caused the deformation of the slab.

The termination of the last glacial period was punctuated by the collapse and resumption of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Sedimentary records from the South Atlantic Ocean indicate that an unusually deep limb of North Atlantic Deep Water formed after the resumption of overturning circulation during the Bølling–Allerød warm event.

Ice ages during the Palaeozoic era are marked by glacial–interglacial cycles thought to be driven by variations in the Earth’s orbit. Numerical simulations suggest that the response of vegetation to the varying insolation may be an important factor in the associated climate response.

The western Pacific warm pool and the Indonesian throughflow affect tropical climate and atmospheric convection. Marine sediment records reveal uniformly elevated temperatures from 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, despite the initiation of modern Indonesian throughflow circulation about 9,500 years ago.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, James Schauer, Hung Nguyen and colleagues found the Beijing Olympics to be conducive to international collaboration in science, as well as sport, as they attempted to assess the effect of emission restrictions on climate forcing.