Environmental social sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Commentary |

    Large tracts of agricultural land are being bought up by external investors. Turning the land into a commodity can have detrimental effects, for generations to come, on the local communities that sell or lease the land.

    • Paolo D'Odorico
    •  & Maria Cristina Rulli

  • Commentary |

    Biochar has been heralded as a solution to a number of agricultural and environmental ills. To get the most benefit from its application, environmental and social circumstances should both be considered.

    • S. Abiven
    • , M. W. I. Schmidt
    •  & J. Lehmann

  • Article |

    Ethanol-based vehicles are thought to generate less pollution than gasoline-based vehicles. An analysis of pollutant concentrations in the subtropical megacity of São Paulo, Brazil, reveals that levels of ozone pollution fell, but levels of nitric oxide and carbon monoxide rose, during periods of prevailing gasoline use relative to ethanol use.

    • Alberto Salvo
    •  & Franz M. Geiger

  • Editorial |

    The recent slow-down in the rate of warming, averaged over the surface of the entire planet, has incited much discussion. As climate scientists are tracking down the causes, we must not forget that average surface temperatures are only one indicator of climate change.

  • Commentary |

    Scientific climate information can save lives and livelihoods, yet its application is not always straightforward. Much of the available information does not describe the risk of threshold events, and misunderstandings can leave society less resilient to climate shocks.

    • Erin Coughlan de Perez
    • , Fleur Monasso
    •  & Pablo Suarez

  • Review Article |

    The Indian Ocean Dipole is a key mode of interannual climate variability influencing much of Asia and Australia. A Review suggests that in response to greenhouse warming, mean conditions of the Indian Ocean will shift toward a positive dipole state, but with no overall shift in the frequency of positive and negative events as defined relative to the mean climate state.

    • Wenju Cai
    • , Xiao-Tong Zheng
    •  & Toshio Yamagata

  • News & Views |

    Global temperature rise since industrialization has not been uniform. A statistical analysis suggests that past changes in the rate of warming can be directly attributed to human influences, from economic downturns to the regulations of the Montreal Protocol.

    • Felix Pretis
    •  & Myles Allen

  • Commentary |

    Mineable phosphorus reserves are confined to a handful of countries. Reductions in wastage could free up this resource for low-income, food-deficient countries.

    • Michael Obersteiner
    • , Josep Peñuelas
    •  & Ivan A. Janssens

  • Review Article |

    A substantial amount of atmospheric carbon taken up on land is transported laterally from upland terrestrial ecosystems to the ocean. A synthesis of the available literature suggests that human activities have significantly increased soil carbon inputs to inland waters, but have only slightly affected carbon delivery to the open ocean.

    • Pierre Regnier
    • , Pierre Friedlingstein
    •  & Martin Thullner

  • Commentary |

    In areas of the developing world that have benefited only marginally from the intensification of agriculture, foreign investments can enhance productivity. This could represent a step towards greater food security, but only if we ensure that malnourished people in the host countries benefit.

    • Paolo D'Odorico
    •  & Maria Cristina Rulli

  • Editorial |

    Five years ago, China was struck by the devastating Wenchuan earthquake. From the destruction comes new understanding.

  • Commentary |

    The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake highlights some of the successes of government-led schemes to mitigate the impact of natural disasters. A stronger focus on individuals and local communities could reduce losses even further in the future.

    • Emily Y. Y. Chan

  • Editorial |

    The L'Aquila earthquake trial tragically highlights that risk communication is integral to Earth science training.

  • News & Views |

    Climate change is likely to offset some of the improvements in air quality expected from reductions in pollutant emissions. A comprehensive analysis of future air quality over North America suggests that, on balance, the air will still be cleaner in coming decades.

    • Christian Hogrefe

  • Commentary |

    Human activities increasingly lead to climate change, overuse of water, hazards and the destruction of biodiversity — to name just a few. Earth scientists need to take on the challenge of serving society on these issues, in close collaboration with engineering, social sciences and the humanities.

    • Peter Schlosser
    •  & Stephanie Pfirman

  • Letter |

    The formal detection of climate warming and its attribution to human influence has so far relied on the differences between natural and anthropogenic warming patterns. An alternative and entirely independent attribution method that relies on the principle of conservation of energy instead, confirms greenhouse gas warming by 0.85 °C since the mid-twentieth century, half of which was offset by aerosol cooling.

    • Markus Huber
    •  & Reto Knutti

  • 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 |

    Afforestation, the conversion of croplands or marginal lands into forests, is considered one of the key climate-change mitigation strategies available to governments. Model simulations suggest that the temperature benefits of realistic afforestation efforts are marginal.

    • Vivek K. Arora
    •  & Alvaro Montenegro

  • News & Views |

    Gaseous pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide from Asia are lifted to altitudes of more than 10 km during the summer monsoon season. Satellite observations show that aerosol particles, too, can rise high and spread across thousands of kilometres.

    • Mark G. Lawrence

  • Commentary |

    Research into the biological threat of reduced ocean pH has yielded many insights over the past decade. Further progress requires a better understanding of how the interplay between ocean acidification and other anthropogenic stresses impacts marine biota.

    • Philip W. Boyd

  • News & Views |

    Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is important and achievable. However, cutting emissions to meet the UK's legal targets for 2050 will bring technical and political challenges, and may affect food production.

    • Chris Pollock

  • Letter |

    The areal extent of mangrove forests has declined by 30–50% over the past half century. An analysis of mangrove forests across the Indo-Pacific suggests that mangrove deforestation generates losses of 0.02–0.12 Pg C yr−1, equivalent to up to 10% of carbon emissions from global deforestation.

    • Daniel C. Donato
    • , J. Boone Kauffman
    •  & Markku Kanninen

  • Backstory |

    Brett Carpenter and colleagues got more than they bargained for when cleaning the mud off a metre-long piece of core from the San Andreas Fault.

  • 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

  • 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

  • Letter |

    Following a hypothesized complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions, global climate models simulate approximately constant global mean temperatures for centuries. Long-term simulations with the Canadian Earth System Model suggest that, on these timescales, regional changes in temperature and precipitation are nevertheless significant, and that Southern Ocean warming at intermediate depths could affect the stability of Antarctic ice.

    • Nathan P. Gillett
    • , Vivek K. Arora
    •  & William J. Merryfield

  • Editorial |

    Mitigation of climate change is increasingly being portrayed as technologically feasible, if only political support was adequate. But there are good reasons to be unsure.

  • Commentary |

    The 2010 Haiti earthquake showed that building codes must be adopted and strictly enforced. Furthermore, timely disaster recovery requires these codes to be supplemented by comprehensive hazard-insurance programmes.

    • Michael K. Lindell

  • Backstory |

    John S. Pallister and Wendy A. McCausland rushed to the aid of their Saudi Arabian colleagues to advise on an emerging earthquake emergency.

  • Editorial |

    The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake illustrates catastrophic shortcomings in the flow of information between scientists and the public.

  • Commentary |

    Accusations by sceptics have steered climate researchers into an unproductive battle. They should now rise above the debate and help develop models of the coupled climate–socioeconomic system to advise policymakers.

    • Klaus Hasselmann

  • Commentary |

    Short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Curbing their emissions and quantifying the forcing by all short-lived components could both mitigate climate change in the short term and help to refine projections of global warming.

    • Joyce E. Penner
    • , Michael J. Prather
    •  & David S. Stevenson

  • Commentary |

    Science has successfully established the discussion of climate change in the global arena. Following the Copenhagen crisis in climate policy, attention needs to be shifted from global goals to societally relevant, local and pragmatic countermeasures.

    • Werner Krauss

  • Letter |

    Modelling studies suggest that management of solar radiation could produce stabilized global temperatures and reduced global precipitation. An analysis of a large-ensemble simulation of 54 temperature-stabilization scenarios suggests that it may not be possible to achieve climate stabilization through management of solar radiation simultaneously in all regions.

    • Katharine L. Ricke
    • , M. Granger Morgan
    •  & Myles R. Allen

  • Letter |

    Sequestration of carbon dioxide has been proposed for the mitigation of ongoing global warming. Projections with an Earth system model over 100,000 years suggest that leakage from carbon-storage reservoirs of no more than 1% per thousand years, or continuous resequestration, would be required to maintain conditions similar to a low-emissions scenario.

    • Gary Shaffer

  • Editorial |

    Two environmental disasters in April 2010 have ranked high on the public agenda. The coming months will clarify the extent of the damage, and demand Earth scientists' expertise.

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