Atmospheric chemistry articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Editorial |

    Where there is smoke, there are radiative feedbacks. With wildfires becoming a growing problem in the Anthropocene, we need to better understand the influence of fire on the climate system.

  • Article |

    The transitional state between cloudy and clear skies, known as the twilight zone, has a substantial effect on the atmospheric energy budget, according to an analysis of cloud fields using global satellite observations.

    • Eshkol Eytan
    • , Ilan Koren
    •  & Ayala Ronen

  • News & Views |

    Whether Earth’s water was delivered early or late in its formation is debated. The composition of Venus’s atmosphere may indicate that late accretion, the final stage of planet formation, delivered little water to the terrestrial planets.

    • Ramon Brasser

  • Perspective |

    Recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica has not been straightforward, as a result of human activities and climate change. The recovery process might be delayed by up to decades if further mitigation actions are not taken.

    • Xuekun Fang
    • , John A. Pyle
    •  & Ronald G. Prinn

  • Editorial |

    China’s rigorous air-pollution control has greatly reduced the levels of fine particles in the atmosphere. Further progress for air quality more broadly will rely on fully accounting for complex chemical reactions between pollutants.

  • News & Views |

    Nitrogen deposition in China has stabilized over the past decade, thanks to efficient regulation of fertilizer use, suggests an analysis of wet and dry deposition.

    • Maria Kanakidou

  • News & Views |

    Flotation of aerosols as a film on the hydrocarbon lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan may explain the lakes’ stillness, and could influence the atmospheric hydrocarbon cycle.

    • Isabelle Couturier-Tamburelli

  • Article |

    Organic aerosols that sediment from Titan’s atmosphere may float, form a film and damp waves on Titan’s seas, according to computations. This damping effect could explain the observed smoothness of Titan’s seas.

    • Daniel Cordier
    •  & Nathalie Carrasco

  • Article |

    Experiments suggest that magnetite precipitation on early Mars was accompanied by the release of H2 that may have helped to warm the planet and stabilize liquid water at the Martian surface.

    • Nicholas J. Tosca
    • , Imad A. M. Ahmed
    •  & Joel A. Hurowitz

  • Review Article |

    The Cassini mission revealed the complex workings of Titan’s methane-based hydrologic cycle over a range of timescales, providing a potential window into the future of Earth and its water cycle.

    • Alexander G. Hayes
    • , Ralph D. Lorenz
    •  & Jonathan I. Lunine

  • Editorial |

    Whether the climate of early Mars was warm and wet or cold and dry remains unclear, but the debate is overheated. With a growing toolbox and increasing data to tackle the open questions, progress is possible if there is openness to bridging the divide.

  • Article |

    Amplification of the methane cycle by anyoxygenic photosynthesis could have warmed early Earth and countered the faint young Sun, geochemical modelling suggests. A combination of H2-based and Fe2+-based photosynthesis acts to enhance methane fluxes.

    • Kazumi Ozaki
    • , Eiichi Tajika
    •  & Christopher T. Reinhard

  • News & Views |

    Progress in the post-combustion treatment of diesel vehicle exhaust has led to shifting proportions of the constituents of nitrogen oxides. Observations from 61 European cities suggest that the outlook on attaining NO2 standards is more optimistic than expected.

    • Drew R. Gentner
    •  & Fulizi Xiong

  • News & Views |

    The release of methane trapped in Martian subsurface reservoirs following planetary obliquity shifts may have contributed to episodic climate warming between 3.6 and 3 billion years ago, explaining evidence for ancient ice-covered lakes.

    • Alberto G. Fairén

  • Article |

    The strength of the global meridional overturning circulation in the stratosphere is uncertain. An analysis of satellite data, reanalyses and model simulations reveals a strength of 6.3–7.6 × 109 kg s−1, but no convergence at higher altitudes.

    • Marianna Linz
    • , R. Alan Plumb
    •  & Jessica L. Neu

  • Article |

    Ancient Mars may have had an active sulfur cycle. In situ analyses by the Curiosity rover reveal large variations in the current sulfur isotopic composition of Martian sediments that can be explained by geologic and atmospheric processes.

    • H. B. Franz
    • , A. C. McAdam
    •  & B. Sutter

  • Editorial |

    The emerging field of geohealth links human well-being and ecosystem health. A deeper understanding of these linkages can help society mitigate the health costs of economic growth before they become crises.

  • Article |

    Collisions of dust particles with a planet’s atmosphere lead to the accumulation of metallic atoms at high altitudes. MAVEN spacecraft observations reveal a persistent—but temporally variable—metal layer of Mg+ ions in the Martian atmosphere.

    • M. M. J. Crismani
    • , N. M. Schneider
    •  & B. M. Jakosky

  • News & Views |

    Mineral dust particles interact with solar and terrestrial radiation. Statistical analyses of observational data and global simulations reveal that atmospheric dust is coarser than previously thought, and could cause warming of the atmosphere.

    • Paul Ginoux

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