Cryospheric science articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Article |

    Ahuna Mons dome on Ceres formed by extrusion of a mixture of brine and solids sourced from a muddy mantle plume, according to numerical modelling of slurry rheology and a gravity anomaly found by the Dawn mission.

    • Ottaviano Ruesch
    • , Antonio Genova
    •  & Maria T. Zuber

  • Article |

    Pluto’s subsurface ocean and thickness variation in its ice shell may be maintained by a layer of methane clathrates forming an insulating cap to the ocean, according to calculations of thermal evolution and viscous relaxation.

    • Shunichi Kamata
    • , Francis Nimmo
    •  & Atsushi Tani

  • News & Views |

    Thinning and retreat of Jakobshavn Isbræ has reversed in 2016, in tandem with regional ocean cooling.

    • Rebecca H. Jackson

  • Article |

    The ice volume of glaciers outside the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets totals about 158,000 km3, with about 27% less ice in High Mountain Asia than thought, according to multiple models that estimate ice thickness from surface characteristics.

    • Daniel Farinotti
    • , Matthias Huss
    •  & Ankur Pandit

  • Article |

    Glacial meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet causes buoyancy-driven upwelling of nutrient-rich, subtropical waters from depth to the continental shelf. This nutrient transport may exceed the direct ice sheet inputs, according to geochemical analyses of transect samples from Sermilik Fjord.

    • Mattias R. Cape
    • , Fiammetta Straneo
    •  & Matthew A. Charette

  • News & Views |

    Ice buried deep within the ice sheet on Antarctica preserves clues to past climatic change dating back more than a million years. A recent workshop discussed the challenges — and hopes — of drilling to these buried treasures.

    • Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

  • Comment |

    January 2018 was an unusually warm and wet month across the Western Alps, with widespread landslides at low elevations and massive snowfall higher up. This extreme month yields lessons for how mountain communities can prepare for a warmer future.

    • Markus Stoffel
    •  & Christophe Corona

  • News & Views |

    A comprehensive assessment of grounding-line migration rates around Antarctica, covering a third of the coast, suggests retreat in considerable portions of the continent, beyond the rates expected from adjustment following the Last Glacial Maximum.

    • Ryan T. Walker

  • Article |

    Grounding lines in parts of West Antarctica, East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula retreated faster than typical post-glacial pace, according to satellite observations and ice geometry measurements.

    • Hannes Konrad
    • , Andrew Shepherd
    •  & Thomas Slater

  • Editorial |

    The East Antarctic ice sheet may be gaining mass in the current, warming climate. The palaeoclimate record shows, however, that it has retreated during previous episodes of prolonged warmth.

  • Comment |

    The exploration of ocean worlds in the outer Solar System offers the opportunity to search for an independent origin of life, and also to advance our capabilities for exploring and understanding life in Earth’s oceans.

    • Kevin Peter Hand
    •  & Christopher R. German

  • Article |

    Iceberg melt is the largest annual freshwater source in a south Greenland fjord, with release largely below 20 m depth, according to iceberg-model simulations. Furthermore, iceberg melt peaks later in the year than other sources of freshwater.

    • T. Moon
    • , D. A. Sutherland
    •  & F. Straneo

  • News & Views |

    Satellite measurements indicate that Greenland's meltwater rivers are exporting one billion tons of sediment annually, a process that is controlled by the sliding rate of glaciers. This rate is nearly 10% of the fluvial sediment discharge to the ocean.

    • Matthew A. Charette

  • 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 Martian atmosphere hosts water-ice clouds, but it is thought that any snow precipitation settles slowly, rather than in storms. Martian meteorology simulations suggest that localized convective snowstorms can occur on Mars during the night.

    • Aymeric Spiga
    • , David P. Hinson
    •  & Franck Montmessin

  • News & Views |

    Mass changes in High Mountain Asia's glaciers have been under dispute for almost a decade. An analysis of satellite data archives provides an observation-based mass budget for every single glacier in the region.

    • Daniel Farinotti

  • Article |

    Subglacial lakes contain active microbial ecosystems capable of cycling methane. In a subglacial lake in West Antarctica, methane that is produced is subsequently consumed, limiting the potential for methane emissions during lake drainage.

    • Alexander B. Michaud
    • , John E. Dore
    •  & John C. Priscu

  • News & Views |

    Warm conditions in the Arctic Ocean have been linked to cold mid-latitude winters. Observations and simulations suggest that warm Arctic anomalies lead to a dip in CO2 uptake capacity in North American ecosystems and to low crop productivity.

    • Ana Bastos

  • News & Views |

    Relatively flat, low-relief plateaus contrast with glacially carved, deep fjords. Computational experiments suggest that these astonishing landscapes are formed exclusively by glaciers.

    • Annina Margreth

  • Article |

    Plateaus separated by deeply incised fjords are hallmarks of glaciated passive continental margins. Computational experiments show that they arise from evolving feedbacks between topography, ice dynamics and erosion over millions of years.

    • David L. Egholm
    • , John D. Jansen
    •  & Mads F. Knudsen

  • Article |

    Greenland’s ice loss depends on propagation of mass loss from the marine glacier termini to the interior. An analysis of surface elevation change in 16 glacier catchments shows that the up-glacier extent of thinning is limited by glacier geometry.

    • Denis Felikson
    • , Timothy C. Bartholomaus
    •  & Jonathan D. Nash

  • Article |

    Despite evidence for an ice-rich outer shell, little water ice has been observed on the surface of Ceres. Lobate morphologies observed on Ceres that are increasingly prevalent towards the dwarf planet’s poles are consistent with ice-rich flows.

    • Britney E. Schmidt
    • , Kynan H. G. Hughson
    •  & Carol A. Raymond

  • News & Views |

    Organic carbon fluxes from glaciers are a key control on biogeochemical cycles in polar regions. Two analyses of carbon cycling in glaciers show the importance of glacier–surface microbial communities in setting these inputs.

    • Elizabeth B. Kujawinski

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