Chemistry articles within Nature Geoscience

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• Editorial | 27 June 2019

  Cleaner air for China

  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 | 21 August 2017

  Enriched carbon source detected

  Estimates of carbon in the deep mantle vary by more than an order of magnitude. Coupled volcanic CO₂ emission data and magma supply rates reveal a carbon-rich mantle plume source region beneath Hawai'i with 40% more carbon than previous estimates.

  • Peter H. Barry

• News & Views | 14 November 2016

  Ocean dissolved organics matter

  Large quantities of organic carbon are stored in the ocean, but its biogeochemical behaviour is elusive. Size–age–composition relations now quantify the production of tiny organic molecules as a major pathway for carbon sequestration.

  • Rainer M. W. Amon

• News & Views | 13 June 2016

  Carbon losses in the Alps

  Soil carbon stocks depend on inputs from decomposing vegetation and return to the atmosphere as CO₂. Monitoring of carbon stocks in German alpine soils has shown large losses linked to climate change and a possible positive feedback loop.

  • Guy Kirk

• News & Views | 11 May 2014

  Bacterial bloom and crash

  Microbes quickly consumed much of the methane released in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Time-series measurements now suggest that, after a steep rise, methane oxidation rates crashed while hydrocarbon discharge was still continuing at the wellhead.

  • Evan A. Solomon

• Review Article | 26 September 2010

  The biogeochemical cycle of iron in the ocean

  Iron controls phytoplankton growth in large tracts of the global ocean, and thereby influences carbon dioxide drawdown. Recent advances reveal the importance of iron-binding ligands and organic matter remineralization in regulating ocean iron levels.

  • P. W. Boyd
  •  & M. J. Ellwood

• Letter | 27 June 2010

  Photolytic degradation of methylmercury enhanced by binding to natural organic ligands

  Methylmercury is a neurotoxin that accumulates in food webs and poses a significant risk to human health. Laboratory experiments suggest that complexation of methylmercury with sulphur-containing ligands can stimulate its degradation.

  • Tong Zhang
  •  & Heileen Hsu-Kim

• Letter | 07 February 2010

  Mass-independent fractionation of mercury isotopes in Arctic snow driven by sunlight

  In the Arctic spring, sunlight-induced reactions convert gaseous elemental mercury into compounds that are rapidly deposited on the snowpack. Analysis of the isotopic composition of mercury in snow samples collected during an atmospheric mercury depletion event suggests that sunlight triggers the re-emission of mercury from the snowpack.

  • Laura S. Sherman
  • , Joel D. Blum
  •  & Thomas A. Douglas