Climate change articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Article |

    Peatlands store vast amounts of organic carbon, owing to anoxic conditions, which prevent decay. Laboratory and field experiments suggest that drought-induced increases in oxygen stimulate microbial growth and the breakdown of peatland carbon.

    • Nathalie Fenner
    •  & Chris Freeman

  • Review Article |

    Anthropogenic emissions of ozone-depleting gases cause marked changes in surface climate, in addition to rising levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. A Review of the influence of the Antarctic ozone hole on Southern Hemisphere surface climate finds that its signature closely resembles the negative phase of the southern annular mode.

    • David W. J. Thompson
    • , Susan Solomon
    •  & David J. Karoly

  • Letter |

    Pronounced warming in the Arctic region is an important feature of observed and modelled climate change. Simulations with a coupled climate model show that the thermal inversion at the surface that predominates in Arctic winter amplifies Arctic warming by lowering the ability of the warming surface layer to radiate to space.

    • R. Bintanja
    • , R. G. Graversen
    •  & W. Hazeleger

  • Letter |

    The Ganges–Brahmaputra drainage basin represents one of the largest sources of terrestrial biospheric carbon to the ocean. Radiocarbon analyses suggest that 20% of the carbon exported from this system has an average age of more than 15,000 years.

    • Valier Galy
    •  & Timothy Eglinton

  • News & Views |

    The impact of solar activity on climate has been debated heatedly. Simulations with a climate model using new observations of solar variability suggest a substantial influence of the Sun on the winter climate in the Northern Hemisphere.

    • Katja Matthes

  • News & Views |

    Hydroelectric energy is renewable, but reservoirs contribute to climate change by releasing carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere. A global estimate suggests that young reservoirs in low latitudes produce the largest emissions.

    • Bernhard Wehrli

  • Editorial |

    A substantial amount of the Earth's surface water moves between ice sheets and oceans as the climate oscillates on geological timescales. Ocean warming, as well as atmospheric temperature rise, affects the current redistribution in response to climate change.

  • News & Views |

    Forests affect climate not only by taking up carbon, but also by absorbing solar radiation and enhancing evaporation. In the tropics, the climate benefit of afforestation may be nearly double that expected from carbon budgets alone.

    • Richard A. Betts

  • Letter |

    The Australian–Indonesian monsoon is an important component of the climate system in the tropical Indo-Pacific region. High-resolution records of monsoon-controlled austral winter upwelling during the past 22,000 years reveal that glacial–interglacial variations in the Australian–Indonesian winter monsoon have been in phase with the Indian summer monsoon system.

    • Mahyar Mohtadi
    • , Delia W. Oppo
    •  & Andreas Lückge

  • Review Article |

    Ice sheets, and in particular the West Antarctic ice sheet, are expected to shrink in size as the world warms, which in turn will raise sea level. A Review of the literature suggests that much of this ice sheet will survive beyond this century, but confident estimates of the likelihood of future collapse require further work.

    • Ian Joughin
    •  & Richard B. Alley

  • Letter |

    Accurate projections of global sea-level rise require information of future ocean warming in the vicinity of the large ice sheets. An analysis of 19 climate model projections suggests that subsurface ocean warming near both polar ice sheets will be substantial, with the potential to lead to significant increases in ice-mass loss.

    • Jianjun Yin
    • , Jonathan T. Overpeck
    •  & Ronald J. Stouffer

  • Editorial |

    Earth's climate is changing rapidly. A closer look at the planet's distant past can help determine its sensitivity to changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

  • Commentary |

    Accurate prediction of Earth's future warming hinges on our understanding of climate sensitivity. Palaeoclimatology will help solve the problem if the feedbacks included in palaeoclimate sensitivity are properly identified and reconstructions of past atmospheric CO2 can be improved.

    • Richard E. Zeebe

  • Commentary |

    State-of-the-art climate models are largely untested against actual occurrences of abrupt change. It is a huge leap of faith to assume that simulations of the coming century with these models will provide reliable warning of sudden, catastrophic events.

    • Paul Valdes

  • News & Views |

    Oxygen isotope variations in Chinese cave deposits have been interpreted as proxies for the East Asian summer monsoon. Numerical simulations suggest the deposits may instead record remote climate changes over India and the Indian Ocean.

    • Kathleen R. Johnson

  • Article |

    Cave deposits from China are commonly used to reconstruct the intensity of the East Asian monsoon precipitation. Numerical modelling indicates that these deposits may instead reflect changes in the strength of Indian monsoon precipitation and the isotopic signature of water vapour exported from India to China.

    • Francesco S. R. Pausata
    • , David S. Battisti
    •  & Cecilia M. Bitz

  • News & Views |

    The relationship between soil moisture and rainfall has proved tricky to pin down. An analysis of close to 4,000 Sahelian storms suggests that certain soil-moisture patterns enhance the likelihood of rainfall.

    • Randal D. Koster

  • Letter |

    Evapotranspiration of soil moisture can affect rainfall and the development of convective storms. Satellite observations of cloud and land-surface temperatures over the Sahel suggest that convective storms are more likely to form over strong mesoscale gradients in soil moisture.

    • Christopher M. Taylor
    • , Amanda Gounou
    •  & Martin De Kauwe

  • News & Views |

    Sulphur aerosols contribute to the regulation of the Earth's climate. Biogenic sulphur emissions from the Southern Ocean have been underestimated, and could be further enhanced owing to climate warming, according to observations and model simulations.

    • Maurice Levasseur

  • Letter |

    Mixing in the Southern Ocean plays an important part in large-scale ocean circulation and in climate. An analysis of high-resolution hydrographic profiles from the Argo float programme reveals that the seasonal cycle of mixing in the Southern Ocean is controlled by seasonal variations in the wind stress, in particular over flat topography.

    • Lixin Wu
    • , Zhao Jing
    •  & Martin Visbeck

  • News & Views |

    Estimates of sea level during the mid-Pliocene warm period three million years ago vary by 35 m. Model simulations of glacial isostatic adjustment reconcile these values and indicate little to no melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet during this time.

    • Ian Shennan

  • Article |

    The Pacific sector of Antarctica has experienced substantial warming in the past 30 years. Observations of global surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation data show that the warming in continental West Antarctica is linked to sea surface temperature changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

    • Qinghua Ding
    • , Eric J. Steig
    •  & Marcel Küttel

  • Commentary |

    Crops are at risk in a changing climate. Farmers in the developing world will be able to insure against harvest failure if robust insurance packages, based on a geophysical index rather than individual loss, become widely available.

    • Molly E. Brown
    • , Daniel E. Osgood
    •  & Miguel A. Carriquiry

  • Editorial |

    The launch of Nature Climate Change provides a new outlet for climate researchers' work, while Nature Geoscience and Nature will continue to publish climate studies.

  • News & Views |

    Extreme climate events can cause widespread damage and have been projected to become more frequent as the world warms. Yet as discussed at an interdisciplinary workshop, it is often not clear which extremes matter the most, and how and why they are changing.

    • Gabriele C. Hegerl
    • , Helen Hanlon
    •  & Carl Beierkuhnlein

  • Editorial |

    As the science of attributing climatic extremes to human actions matures, lawyers are working through the implications for their trade.

  • Letter |

    Seasonal and interannual variations of the equatorial cold tongue are defining features of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. An analysis of bias-corrected observations suggests that cold-tongue variability has weakened over the past six decades.

    • Hiroki Tokinaga
    •  & Shang-Ping Xie

  • Letter |

    The impact of external influences on European temperatures before 1900 has been thought to be negligible. An analysis of reconstructions of seasonal European land temperatures and simulations from three global climate models instead suggests that external forcing is responsible for a best guess of 75% of the observed winter warming since the late seventeenth century.

    • Gabriele Hegerl
    • , Juerg Luterbacher
    •  & Elena Xoplaki

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