Climate sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Editorial |

    The world's soils are under pressure from climate change and population growth. Investors' interest is surging, but scientists have yet to pay soils due tribute.

  • News & Views |

    The organic matter stored in frozen Arctic soils could release significant quantities of carbon dioxide and methane on thawing. Now, laboratory experiments show that re-wetting of previously thawed permafrost could increase nitrous oxide production by 20-fold.

    • Hermann F. Jungkunst

  • Backstory |

    Vladimir Samarkin, Michael Madigan and colleagues travelled to Don Juan Pond in Antarctica, in an attempt to understand life on Mars. Instead, they discovered an unexpected link between the geosphere and atmosphere.

  • News & Views |

    The formation and flow of deep water around Antarctica contributes to the global ocean circulation. New measurements report the strongest flow speeds recorded so far in a current below 3,000 m depth, and help to document a pathway for Antarctic Bottom Water.

    • Alejandro H. Orsi

  • Letter |

    Deep western boundary currents east of the Antarctic Peninsula and the Kerguelen plateau are important pathways for transporting deep Antarctic water masses to the global ocean. An array of moored current meters, used to quantify the water transport in this system, reveals a flow that is stronger than any measured in a deep western boundary current at similar depths so far.

    • Y. Fukamachi
    • , S. R. Rintoul
    •  & M. Wakatsuchi

  • Letter |

    The loss of carbon dioxide from soils increases initially under climate warming, but tends to decline to control levels within a few years. Simulations of the soil-carbon response to warming with a microbial-enzyme model show that a decline in both microbial biomass and the production of degrading enzymes can explain this attenuation response.

    • Steven D. Allison
    • , Matthew D. Wallenstein
    •  & Mark A. Bradford

  • Letter |

    The 100,000-year glacial cycles are generally thought to be driven by the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit. Statistical analyses of climate variability and orbital forcing over the past five million years indicate that the glacial cycles are the result of an internal climate oscillation phase locked to the 100,000-year eccentricity cycle.

    • Lorraine E. Lisiecki

  • Backstory |

    After dodging icebergs and flying fish, Jeff Standish and colleagues collected a suite of basalts from the Southwest Indian Ridge, to try and determine the mechanisms of mid-ocean-ridge formation.

  • News & Views |

    Oceanic crust forms through the addition of volcanic rock to mid-ocean ridges. Widely dispersed, young lavas observed at an ultraslow-spreading ridge provide impetus for the redevelopment of models of oceanic magmatism.

    • John Maclennan

  • Article |

    Stratospheric water vapour affects Earth’s radiation budget. A 19-month record of the hydrogen isotopic composition of water in the tropical stratosphere, collected through remote sensing measurements, shows a clear seasonal cycle in the isotopic composition that propagates upwards in this region, and is most likely created in the tropical tropopause layer.

    • Jörg Steinwagner
    • , Stephan Fueglistaler
    •  & Thomas Röckmann

  • News & Views |

    Decision makers are in need of decadal climate forecasts, for example, to help plan infrastructure investments. When — or whether — climate modellers will be able to deliver is not yet clear.

    • Mark A. Cane

  • Letter |

    Ice clouds in the tropical tropopause layer have a key role in dehydrating air that is entering the stratosphere. Cloud-chamber measurements suggest that their high humidity can be explained if heterogeneous ice nucleation on glassy aerosols is a significant nucleation mechanism in this region.

    • Benjamin J. Murray
    • , Theodore W. Wilson
    •  & Bernd Kärcher

  • News & Views |

    The surface layer of the Southern Ocean connects the atmosphere with the deep subtropical ocean. Ocean observations reveal that the thickness of this layer — important for biological productivity — is controlled by the strength and position of the southern circumpolar winds.

    • Sarah Gille

  • Article |

    Interactions between the atmosphere and ocean are mediated by the mixed layer at the ocean surface. Analyses of ocean temperature and salinity data from Argo floats show that changes in the Southern Annular Mode, including recent and projected trends attributed to human activity, drive variations in mixed-layer depth in the Southern Ocean.

    • J. B. Sallée
    • , K. G. Speer
    •  & S. R. Rintoul

  • News & Views |

    The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the end of the last glacial period has been attributed to a release of carbon from the abyssal ocean. Radiocarbon analyses from the Chilean margin have failed to find evidence that supports this hypothesis.

    • Lowell Stott

  • News & Views |

    About 94.5 million years ago, oxygen levels in the deep ocean dropped while carbon burial rapidly increased. Geochemical analyses suggest that the release of sulphate from extensive volcanism set off a sequence of biogeochemical reactions that led to ocean anoxia.

    • Haydon P. Mort

  • Backstory |

    Fiamma Straneo and colleagues travelled to the heart of a glacial fjord in East Greenland to determine the causes of glacial retreat.

  • News & Views |

    Predicting an El Niño or La Niña event before the preceding spring has proved to be difficult. Taking into account coupled ocean–atmosphere modes in the Indian Ocean region that have a two-year periodicity may provide the basis for longer forecasting lead times.

    • Peter J. Webster
    •  & Carlos D. Hoyos

  • Letter |

    Anomalies of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean Dipole often occur simultaneously. An analysis of observations and models suggests that, in addition, the negative phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole tends to occur 14 months before an El Niño event, with implications for El Niño predictability.

    • Takeshi Izumo
    • , Jérôme Vialard
    •  & Toshio Yamagata

  • Review Article |

    Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have altered, or will alter, in a changing climate has been subject of considerable debate. An overview of recent research indicates that greenhouse warming will cause stronger storms, on average, but a decrease in the frequency of tropical cyclones.

    • Thomas R. Knutson
    • , John L. McBride
    •  & Masato Sugi

  • Letter |

    The onset of fluvial erosion in an area of tectonic uplift is thought to reflect the timing of the uplift. Geomorphological data from the Yellow River in Tibet, indicate that the rapid incision of this river channel occurred as a result of climate change, at least six million years after the onset of plateau uplift.

    • William H. Craddock
    • , Eric Kirby
    •  & Jianhui Liu

  • News & Views |

    Greenland is losing ice through glaciers that flow into deep fjords. New observations highlight the important fjord processes that supply warm ocean waters to the melting glaciers, and thereby affect Greenland's contribution to sea-level rise.

    • Paul Holland

  • Letter |

    Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in sea water are driving a progressive acidification of the ocean, with as yet unclear impacts on marine calcifying organisms. Simulations with an Earth system model suggest that future changes in the marine environment could be more severe than those experienced during the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum, both in the deep ocean and near the surface.

    • Andy Ridgwell
    •  & Daniela N. Schmidt

  • Letter |

    Widespread glacier acceleration has been observed in Greenland in the past few years. Oceanographic observations taken in summer 2008 show that ocean waters melted a substantial fraction of ice along the calving fronts of three West Greenland glaciers, indicating that submarine melting has a profound influence on grounding-line stability.

    • Eric Rignot
    • , Michele Koppes
    •  & Isabella Velicogna

  • Letter |

    The recent rapid increase in mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet is primarily attributed to an acceleration of outlet glaciers. Oceanographic data obtained in summer 2008 show that subtropical waters that reside year-round in the shelf ocean off Greenland continuously enter a large glacial fjord in East Greenland and contribute to melting at the glacier terminus.

    • Fiammetta Straneo
    • , Gordon S. Hamilton
    •  & Aqqalu Rosing-Asvid

  • Article |

    The southwest corner of Western Australia has been subject to a serious drought in recent decades, whose ultimate cause remains unclear. A comparison of precipitation records in the area of drought and an ice core from East Antarctica reveal a significant inverse correlation between precipitation in the two locations, and suggest that the current drought may be highly unusual compared with the past 750 years of variability.

    • Tas D. van Ommen
    •  & Vin Morgan

  • News & Views |

    Hydrologists have thought of soil as a kind of giant sponge that soaks up precipitation and slowly releases it to streams. But according to new evidence the soil water used by vegetation may be largely decoupled from the water that flows through soils to streams.

    • Fred M. Phillips

  • Letter |

    The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum has been attributed to the release of carbon dioxide from the deep Southern Ocean. However, reconstructions of the radiocarbon signature of Chilean margin intermediate waters during the glacial termination do not reflect the influence of such a release.

    • Ricardo De Pol-Holz
    • , Lloyd Keigwin
    •  & Mahyar Mohtadi

  • Letter |

    The last glacial period was characterized by large, rapid climate fluctuations. An analysis of a speleothem from New Mexico shows that the coldest conditions over Greenland coincide with increased winter precipitation in the southwestern United States, which can be attributed to a southward displacement of the polar jet stream and the North American storm track.

    • Yemane Asmerom
    • , Victor J. Polyak
    •  & Stephen J. Burns

  • Progress Article |

    Arsenic levels in shallow groundwater in the Bengal Basin exceed thresholds for safe drinking water. Groundwater modelling indicates that deep wells that reach safe water below 150 m could remain safe for centuries if used for domestic water only, whereas the intensive use of deep groundwater for irrigation could contaminate this resource within decades.

    • W. G. Burgess
    • , M. A. Hoque
    •  & K. M. Ahmed

  • Letter |

    Periodic iceberg discharges during the last glacial period led to a slowdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Sediment records from the Portuguese margin show that similar events punctuated the penultimate glacial period as well, although their duration and broader climatic impacts were modified by different background climate conditions.

    • V. Margari
    • , L. C. Skinner
    •  & N. J. Shackleton

  • Letter |

    Over the past 50 years, retreating glaciers and ice caps have contributed 0.5 mm yr−1 to sea-level rise, and one third of this contribution is believed to come from ice masses bordering the Gulf of Alaska. A combination of a comprehensive glacier inventory with high-resolution elevation data indicates that the ice loss from Alaskan glaciers is 34% less than previously thought.

    • E. Berthier
    • , E. Schiefer
    •  & F. Rémy

  • Letter |

    Oil spilt from the tanker Exxon Valdez more than 20 years ago still persists in the gravel beaches of Prince William Sound, Alaska. Field data and numerical modelling indicate that some of the oil was trapped in the anoxic environment of the lower layers of the beaches when the water table was low.

    • Hailong Li
    •  & Michel C. Boufadel

  • Letter |

    The atmospheric response to millennial-scale circulation changes in the North Atlantic Ocean during the last glacial period has been difficult to constrain. Cave deposits from southwestern North America reveal that atmospheric moisture in this region increased in response to slowdowns of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

    • J. D. M. Wagner
    • , J. E. Cole
    •  & H. R. Barnett

  • Letter |

    Throughout the most recent glacial period sea level fluctuated by 20–30 m. Climate model simulations indicate that the barrier to water exchange between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans posed by the Bering Strait during low sea levels could have been instrumental in generating these fluctuations.

    • Aixue Hu
    • , Gerald A. Meehl
    •  & Nan Rosenbloom

  • Editorial |

    Self-censorship of private scientific e-mail-exchanges cannot be the solution to the threat from hackers.

  • News & Views |

    Arsenic occurs naturally in the groundwater of southern Asia. Analyses of an agricultural site in Bangladesh suggest that human activities, including widespread farming practices, can dictate where elevated arsenic is found.

    • Shawn Benner

  • News & Views |

    The effect of rising greenhouse-gas emissions on climate is not uniform across the globe. An analysis of the mechanisms behind model-projected changes in ocean temperature gives greater confidence in the pattern of tropical warming and its potential impacts.

    • Amy C. Clement
    • , Andrew C. Baker
    •  & Julie Leloup

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