Climate sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Letter |

    Trace elements and their isotopes have been explored as tracers for the movement of water masses. Measurements of the high-field-strength elements Zr, Hf, Nb and Ta along two meridional sections of the Pacific Ocean suggest higher ratios of Zr/Hf and Nb/Ta than expected, suggesting that these ratios will be useful for tracking water masses.

    • M. Lutfi Firdaus
    • , Tomoharu Minami
    •  & Yoshiki Sohrin

  • Article |

    Submarine melting has been suggested as a trigger for the widespread acceleration of tidewater glaciers in Greenland. An analysis of oceanographic data from the fjord off Helheim Glacier, Greenland, suggests the presence of light Arctic and dense Atlantic waters in the fjord and that the melting circulation is more complex than thought.

    • Fiammetta Straneo
    • , Ruth G. Curry
    •  & Leigh A. Stearns

  • Letter |

    The hydrological balance of the Black Sea is governed by riverine input and by the exchange with the Mediterranean Sea. A speleothem record from a cave in northern Turkey that tracks the isotopic signature of Black Sea surface water suggests an open connection to the Mediterranean Sea in at least twelve periods in the past 670,000 years.

    • S. Badertscher
    • , D. Fleitmann
    •  & O. Tüysüz

  • 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 |

    The contribution of the East Antarctic ice sheet to the 120 m of sea-level rise since the Last Glacial Maximum is unclear. New terrestrial and marine data suggest the thinning of East Antarctic ice was responsible for only a metre of this rise.

    • George H. Denton

  • News & Views |

    Massive amounts of natural gas catastrophically released into the Gulf of Mexico last year are missing. Two investigations suggest that a bloom of tiny specialized bacteria is responsible for this heavy-duty scrubbing job.

    • Gérard Nihous

  • News & Views |

    The neurotoxin methylmercury accumulates in marine biota and their predators. An analysis of seabird egg shells suggests that sea-ice cover reduces the breakdown of this highly toxic compound in sea water.

    • Joel D. Blum

  • 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.

  • Progress Article |

    Hydrothermal vents in the sea floor release large volumes of hot, metal-rich fluids into the deep ocean. Mounting evidence suggests that organic compounds bind to and stabilize metals in hydrothermal fluids, thereby increasing metal flux to the open ocean.

    • Sylvia G. Sander
    •  & Andrea Koschinsky

  • Letter |

    The Early Cretaceous greenhouse interval may have been punctuated by cooler periods. A reconstruction of sea-surface temperatures from low and middle latitudes shows no evidence of such cold events.

    • Kate Littler
    • , Stuart A. Robinson
    •  & Richard D. Pancost

  • 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

  • News & Views |

    Mineral dust and biological particles of terrestrial origin initiate ice formation in the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments suggest that ocean diatoms are another potential source of ice nuclei in clouds.

    • Ottmar Möhler
    •  & Corinna Hoose

  • News & Views |

    The contribution of glaciers and ice caps to global sea-level rise is uncertain: they are incompletely counted and the calculation is challenging. A new estimate from the best available data suggests a contribution of about 12 cm by 2100.

    • Frank Paul

  • Letter |

    The present state and future evolution of Himalayan glaciers has been controversial. An analysis of remotely sensed frontal changes and surface velocities from glaciers in the greater Himalaya between 2000 and 2008 shows large regional variability in the responses of Himalayan glaciers to climate change.

    • Dirk Scherler
    • , Bodo Bookhagen
    •  & Manfred R. Strecker

  • 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

  • Article |

    The East Antarctic ice sheet retreated at the end of the last glacial period. Terrestrial and marine data suggest that the retreat began 14,000 years ago, indicating that the East Antarctic ice sheet probably did not contribute to meltwater pulse 1a 14,700 years ago.

    • Andrew Mackintosh
    • , Nicholas Golledge
    •  & Caroline Lavoie

  • Letter |

    The extent of snow cover and sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere has declined since 1979, suggesting a positive feedback of surface reflectivity on climate. A synthesis of a variety of remote sensing and field measurements suggests that this albedo feedback from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere falls between 0.3 and 1.1 W m−2 K−1.

    • M. G. Flanner
    • , K. M. Shell
    •  & M. A. Tschudi

  • News & Views |

    Unusual wind patterns and the albedo feedback effect played crucial roles in the rapid reduction of Arctic sea-ice cover in recent years. Evidence is now building that a warmer ocean has also contributed to the thinning of Arctic ice.

    • Eddy Carmack
    •  & Humfrey Melling

  • Backstory |

    Massimo Frezzotti and colleagues saw their 17-ton vehicle drop 10 m into an ice crevasse in their quest to recover the climatic history of East Antarctica.

  • Editorial |

    The sea floor is emerging as a source of carbon to the overlying ocean. Scientific exploration of the sea bed is essential for a full understanding of the global carbon budget and the safety of deep-sea carbon storage proposals.

  • Commentary |

    Ocean drilling is the most successful long-standing international collaboration in the geosciences. The invaluable archive of samples and data that has been built underpins our understanding of the Earth, its surface environment and climate. Planning the next phase is at an advanced stage.

    • Mike J. Bickle
    • , Heiko Pälike
    •  & Damon A. H. Teagle

  • News & Views |

    Bromine facilitates the oxidation of elemental mercury in the lower atmosphere in polar and subpolar regions. Measurements over the Dead Sea suggest that bromine also generates large quantities of oxidized mercury in the mid-latitudes.

    • Parisa A. Ariya

  • Letter |

    Biogenic aerosol particles of terrestrial origin, including bacteria and pollen, trigger ice formation in the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments reveal that biogenic particles of marine origin also initiate ice formation under typical tropospheric conditions.

    • D. A. Knopf
    • , P. A. Alpert
    •  & J. Y. Aller

  • News & Views |

    Climate models suggest that deficits in soil moisture can lead to more frequent and severe hot summer temperatures. Observations confirm this effect, but only for relatively dry regions, where evaporation is limited by available moisture.

    • Lisa Alexander

  • Letter |

    The tropical African rainbelt is an important component of atmospheric circulation and the global hydrological cycle. Reconstructions of vegetation in tropical Africa over the past 23,000 years suggest that the rainbelt expanded and contracted in response to changes in high-latitude climate conditions.

    • James A. Collins
    • , Enno Schefuß
    •  & Gerold Wefer

  • Letter |

    Modelling studies have postulated a possible impact of soil-moisture deficit and drought on hot extremes. An analysis of observational indices from central and southeastern Europe confirms that summer hot extremes are linked to soil-moisture deficits in southeastern Europe but does not detect a similar effect in central Europe.

    • Martin Hirschi
    • , Sonia I. Seneviratne
    •  & Petr Stepanek

  • Letter |

    During the last deglaciation, climate changes over Greenland and Antarctica on millennial timescales were asynchronous. A temperature record from the Talos Dome in Antarctica confirms this asynchrony and shows clear regional differences in deglacial warming between the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic sectors of Antarctica.

    • B. Stenni
    • , D. Buiron
    •  & R. Udisti

  • Commentary |

    Sea-level rise is progressively changing coastlines. The legal implications for the seaward boundaries between neighbouring coastal states are neither straightforward nor foreseeable.

    • Katherine J. Houghton
    • , Athanasios T. Vafeidis
    •  & Alexander Proelss

  • News & Views |

    Controversy has surrounded projections of tropical temperatures aloft in a changing climate. An analysis of sea surface temperatures and rainfall over the past decades suggests amplified warming in the upper atmosphere, consistent with theory and models.

    • Adam Sobel

  • Letter |

    Marine sediments contain large quantities of carbon, primarily in the form of gas hydrate. Isotopic analyses suggest that carbon derived from fossil methane accounts for up to 28% of the dissolved organic carbon in sea water overlying hydrate-bearing seeps in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

    • John W. Pohlman
    • , James E. Bauer
    •  & N. Ross Chapman

  • News & Views |

    The Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago was triggered by the sudden release of carbon to the ocean–atmosphere system. The carbon may have been removed almost as abruptly 100,000 years later, in the form of organic carbon.

    • David Archer

  • Letter |

    The Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warm event about 56 million years ago was caused by the release of large amounts of carbon to the ocean and atmosphere. Estimates of the rate of recovery from the event suggest that about 2,000 Pg of the carbon released was sequestered as organic carbon.

    • Gabriel J. Bowen
    •  & James C. Zachos

  • Letter |

    Climate change could potentially destabilize marine ice sheets such as the West Antarctic ice sheet. A suite of predictions of sea-level change following grounding-line migration suggests that the gravitational effects of melting on local sea levels can exert a stabilizing influence on marine ice sheets on a reverse slope.

    • Natalya Gomez
    • , Jerry X. Mitrovica
    •  & Peter U. Clark

  • Letter |

    Deep convection in the tropics is observed generally above a threshold for sea surface temperatures of about 26–28 °C. An analysis of satellite observations of tropical rainfall shows that the threshold has varied in the past 30 years in parallel with tropical mean sea surface temperatures.

    • Nathaniel C. Johnson
    •  & Shang-Ping Xie

  • Letter |

    Skilful predictions of hurricane frequency have been limited to lead times of one season, and evidence for external forcing has been indirect. Simulations with nine variants of one global climate model show an influence of external forcing on hurricane frequency, and predictability on multi-year timescales.

    • Doug M. Smith
    • , Rosie Eade
    •  & Adam A. Scaife

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