Earth and environmental sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • All Minerals Considered |

    Recording 4.3 billion years of Earth’s history, Jesse Reimink explores the many ways that zircon allows geologists to keep track of the past.

    • Jesse Reimink

  • Research Briefing |

    There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of oceanic plateaus: plume versus plate. Thermodynamic modelling of magmatism at Shatsky Rise, in the Pacific Ocean, now suggests that neither mechanism is adequate on its own and in fact plume–ridge interaction is required to explain the formation of this ocean plateau.

  • Research Briefing |

    From a stalagmite that grew 14,000–8,500 years ago, isotopic data provide a detailed history of groundwater infiltration associated with a strengthening North American monsoon, as the climate transitioned from a cool dry late-glacial period into a warmer and wetter Early Holocene.

  • Research Briefing |

    Accurate estimates of the land carbon sink are vital for informing climate projections and net-zero policies. Application of a strict filtering method to microwave satellite data enabled the evaluation of global vegetation biomass carbon dynamics for 2010–2019. The results highlight the role of demography in driving forest carbon gains and losses.

  • Perspective |

    Exoenzymes produced by heterotrophic microorganisms early in Earth history helped unlock previously unavailable organic matter and transformed ocean geochemistry.

    • Nagissa Mahmoudi
    • , Andrew D. Steen
    •  & Kurt O. Konhauser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The widespread occurrence of young grabens associated with larger compressional structures on Mercury’s surface suggests contractional tectonism has continued on the planet into geologically recent times.

    • Benjamin Man
    • , David A. Rothery
    •  & Jack Wright

  • Article |

    Early Holocene groundwater recharge rates were higher than modern in the Grand Canyon region, probably due to an expanded North American Monsoon, according to a speleothem record and isotope-enabled palaeoclimate modelling.

    • Matthew S. Lachniet
    • , Xiaojing Du
    •  & Benjamin W. Tobin

  • Article |

    Sustained emission reductions have altered the prevailing regime for ozone formation over China, weakening the trade-off in pollution control between aerosols and ozone, according to analyses of ozone pollution chemistry between 2013 and 2021.

    • Yutong Wang
    • , Yu Zhao
    •  & Chris P. Nielsen

  • Research Briefing |

    Phosphorus from intensive agriculture contributes to increased algal blooms, threatening ecosystems and drinking water sources. We found increasing dissolved phosphorus concentrations in more than 170 Great Lakes Basin streams, despite stable or decreasing total phosphorus levels. Higher latitudes experienced greater relative increases, potentially due to warmer winters and altered flow pathways.

  • Research Briefing |

    Glacier ice contains high-pressure air bubbles, which burst into seawater as ice melts at tidewater glacier termini. Laboratory measurements found that these bubbles double the rate of ice melt. Theoretically, this effect could be even larger in a real glacier. However, bursting bubbles are currently neglected in models projecting sea level rise.

  • All Minerals Considered |

    From pressure indicator to paint brightener, Alicia Cruz-Uribe examines the many uses of rutile.

    • Alicia M. Cruz-Uribe

  • Editorial |

    Climate change together with the recent onset of El Niño this year has led to widespread heatwaves. As these events become increasingly commonplace, cities around the world urgently need to build resilience to heat.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Laboratory experiments suggest that bursting bubbles enhance ice melt from tidewater glaciers, and consequently, glacier-ice structure needs to be accounted for in projections of ice loss and sea-level rise.

    • Meagan E. Wengrove
    • , Erin C. Pettit
    •  & Eric D. Skyllingstad

  • News & Views |

    Measurements from a yearlong drift in sea ice across the Central Arctic show that large amounts of fine sea salt particles are produced during blowing snow events, affecting cloud properties and warming the surface.

    • Lyatt Jaeglé

  • Article |

    While generally tracking Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, the Earth gained energy during cold millennial scale events throughout the past 150,000 years, according to an analysis of benthic oxygen isotopes.

    • Sarah Shackleton
    • , Alan Seltzer
    •  & Lorraine E. Lisiecki

  • News & Views |

    The chemical signatures of granitic continental crust from the earliest Archean are consistent with formation during subduction, indicating some form of plate tectonics was active at the time.

    • Allen P. Nutman

  • News & Views |

    Improving air quality by reducing atmospheric aerosols can bring valuable health benefits, but also generally leads to warming. Now, research suggests that in cleaner air the local cooling effect of planting trees may be stronger in middle and low latitude regions.

    • Liang Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The temporal evolution of the net global climate feedback in recent decades has been governed by sea surface temperature patterns in the Southern Ocean, according to climate model simulations.

    • Sarah M. Kang
    • , Paulo Ceppi
    •  & In-Sik Kang

  • News & Views |

    Two decades of measurements across large Arctic rivers reveal unexpectedly divergent biogeochemical changes that have important implications for the Arctic Ocean. This calls for an improved understanding of current disruptions over the boundless Arctic landscape.

    • Fabrice Lacroix

  • News & Views |

    A 3-year field experiment suggests plant responses to elevated CO2 in phosphorus-limited grasslands depends on the biogeochemical interplay between soil microbes and plants.

    • Benjamin L. Turner

  • Research Briefing |

    There is a large discrepancy between estimates of oceanic plastic input and the amount of plastic measured floating at the ocean surface. Model results show that this can be explained by large objects being underestimated in previous mass budget analyses, combined with lower input estimates.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A 3D global marine plastic mass budget suggests that larger items contribute more than 95% of buoyant plastics by mass and are longer lived than previously estimated, which suggests there is no missing sink of marine plastic pollution.

    • Mikael L. A. Kaandorp
    • , Delphine Lobelle
    •  & Erik van Sebille

  • Research Briefing |

    Two contrasting sinuosity patterns were identified in lowland rivers on Earth and Mars. The channel sinuosity either substantially increases or remains constant towards the coast. These bimodal patterns reflect the age of the channels and their lateral migration rates, which are associated with sediment supply and discharge variability.

  • Research Briefing |

    Analysis of the microfossil content of sediment cores from areas where thick Arctic sea ice persists today reveals that a subpolar species associated with Atlantic water expanded deep into the Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial. This finding implies that summers in the Arctic were likely sea-ice-free during this period.

  • Research Briefing |

    The post-garnet transition has been found to have a curved phase boundary, with negative slopes in cold regions and positive slopes in hot regions of the Earth’s mantle. This varying slope could be a reason for the puzzling dynamics of subducting slabs and upwelling plumes observed seismically in the upper part of the lower mantle.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The warm Last Interglacial led to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean and a transformation to Atlantic conditions, according to planktic foraminifera records from central Arctic Ocean sediment cores.

    • Flor Vermassen
    • , Matt O’Regan
    •  & Helen K. Coxall

  • News & Views |

    The chemical weathering of silicate rocks plays a central role in stabilizing our climate through CO2 drawdown. Li isotopic evidence from a prolonged Eocene warming event suggests clay formation may disrupt this feedback on intermediate timescales.

    • Michael J. Henehan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The long duration of the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum, compared with other transient Eocene warming events, can be explained by an increase in clays forming from the weathering of silicate minerals, according to lithium isotope records of marine carbonates.

    • Alexander J. Krause
    • , Appy Sluijs
    •  & Philip A. E. Pogge von Strandmann

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