Social sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Marine microfossil assemblages refine sea surface temperature patterns and yield insights into discrepancies between paleoclimate models of the last ice age and observations.

    • Marci M. Robinson

  • Comment |

    Inclusive and equitable geoscience requires identification and removal of structural barriers to participation. Replacing the leaky pipeline metaphor with that of a hostile obstacle course demands that those with power take the lead.

    • Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
    • , Rebecca T. Barnes
    •  & Erika Marín-Spiotta

  • Comment |

    Social scientists and geoscientists must work together to critically evaluate and develop feasible visions for a sustainable future. Is a clean-energy economy more viable than a degrowth future?

    • Thomas Franssen
    •  & Mandy de Wilde

  • Comment |

    Geoscientists in the United States are predominantly White. Progress towards diversification can only come with a concerted shift in mindsets and a deeper understanding of the complexities of race.

    • Kuheli Dutt

  • Comment |

    Governments disagree even on the current state of climate change engineering governance, as became clear at the 2019 United Nations Environment Assembly negotiations. They must develop mechanisms to provide policy-relevant knowledge, clarify uncertainties and head off potential distributional impacts.

    • Sikina Jinnah
    •  & Simon Nicholson

  • Perspective |

    Recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica has not been straightforward, as a result of human activities and climate change. The recovery process might be delayed by up to decades if further mitigation actions are not taken.

    • Xuekun Fang
    • , John A. Pyle
    •  & Ronald G. Prinn

  • News & Views |

    Atmospheric levels of chloroform, an ozone-depleting substance not part of the Montreal Protocol, have risen. The increase may be attributable to industrial emissions in Eastern China.

    • Susann Tegtmeier

  • Comment |

    Field work is an important and valued part of geoscience research, but can also serve as a source of stress. Careful planning can help support the mental health and wellness of participants at all career stages.

    • Cédric Michaël John
    •  & Saira Bano Khan

  • Comment |

    The remaining carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C allows 20 more years of current emissions according to one study, but is already exhausted according to another. Both are defensible. We need to move on from a unique carbon budget, and face the nuances.

    • Glen P. Peters

  • Comment |

    Upward estimates for carbon budgets are unlikely to lead to action-focused climate policy. Climate researchers need to understand processes and incentives in policymaking and politics to communicate effectively.

    • Oliver Geden

  • News & Views |

    The annual quantity of metal being used by humans has been on the rise. A new analysis of 43 major economies reveals the extent to which year-to-year fluctuations in metal footprints have been in lockstep with countries’ economic growth and changes in investment spending.

    • Paul J. Burke

  • Comment |

    Temperature overshoot scenarios that make the 1.5 °C climate target feasible could turn into sources of political flexibility. Climate scientists must provide clear constraints on overshoot magnitude, duration and timing, to ensure accountability.

    • Oliver Geden
    •  & Andreas Löschel

  • News & Views |

    Debate rages over which water bodies in the US are protected under federal law by the Clean Water Act. Science shows that isolated wetlands and headwater systems provide essential downstream services, but convincing politicians is another matter.

    • Mark A. Ryan

  • Perspective |

    Enhanced protection is needed for freshwater bodies in the United States — in particular impermanent streams and wetlands outside floodplains — according to an assessment of their value and vulnerability.

    • Irena F. Creed
    • , Charles R. Lane
    •  & Lora Smith

  • Commentary |

    Developments in attribution science are improving our ability to detect human influence on extreme weather events. By implication, the legal duties of government, business and others to manage foreseeable harms are broadening, and may lead to more climate change litigation.

    • Sophie Marjanac
    • , Lindene Patton
    •  & James Thornton

  • Editorial |

    Natural disasters can devastate local communities. However, these rare events also often trigger new ways of thinking, and provide a treasure trove of data that must be used to reduce vulnerability.

  • Editorial |

    Asking people to trust scientists is not enough in times of doubt. Scientists must trust the people too: to make decisions for themselves, once they know the best available evidence.

  • News & Views |

    The climatic response to the eruption of the Samalas Volcano in 1257 has been elusive. Medieval archives tell of a spatially variable reaction, with Europe and Japan experiencing severe cold compared to relative warmth in North America.

    • Francis Ludlow

  • Commentary |

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a report on keeping global warming below 1.5 °C. How the panel chooses to deal with the option of solar geoengineering will test the integrity of scientific climate policy advice.

    • Andy Parker
    •  & Oliver Geden

  • Commentary |

    To keep global warming below 2 °C, countries need long-term strategies for low-emission development. Without these, immediate emissions reductions may lock-in high-emitting infrastructure, hamper collaboration and make climate goals unachievable.

    • Jeffrey D. Sachs
    • , Guido Schmidt-Traub
    •  & Jim Williams

  • Editorial |

    Economic development in a sustainable fashion is metals-intensive. If we cannot afford to ban mining, regulation must be more effective.

  • Letter |

    Biomass turnover time is a key parameter in the global carbon cycle. An analysis of global land-use data reveals that biomass turnover is almost twice as fast when the land is used to enhance terrestrial ecosystem services.

    • Karl-Heinz Erb
    • , Tamara Fetzel
    •  & Helmut Haberl

  • Commentary |

    The Paris Agreement introduced three mitigation targets. In the future, the main focus should not be on temperature targets such as 2 or 1.5 °C, but on the target with the greatest potential to effectively guide policy: net zero emissions.

    • Oliver Geden

  • Commentary |

    The need to mitigate climate change opens up a key role for cities. Bristol's year as a Green Capital led to great strides forward, but it also revealed that a creative and determined partnership across cultural divides will be necessary.

    • Richard D. Pancost

  • Editorial |

    The Paris Agreement on climate change has shifted international focus to more stringent mitigation, and asked the scientific community to work out what that means on a tight timeline. The challenge is steep, but well worth a go.

  • Commentary |

    The adoption of the Paris Agreement is a historic milestone for the global response to the threat of climate change. Scientists are now being challenged to investigate a 1.5 °C world — which will require an accelerated effort from the geoscience community.

    • Joeri Rogelj
    •  & Reto Knutti

  • News & Views |

    The rise and fall of civilizations over the past two millennia was set against a backdrop of climate change. High-resolution climate records evince a link between societal change and a period of cooling in the sixth and seventh centuries.

    • John Haldon

  • News & Views |

    Humanity's nitrogen pollution footprint has increased by a factor of six since the 1930s. A global analysis reveals that a quarter of this nitrogen pollution is associated with the production of internationally traded products.

    • James N. Galloway
    •  & Allison M. Leach

  • News & Views |

    In the United States, hurricanes have been causing more and more economic damage. A reanalysis of the disaster database using a statistical method that accounts for improvements in resilience opens the possibility that climate change has played a role.

    • Stéphane Hallegatte

  • Commentary |

    Delivery of palatable 2 °C mitigation scenarios depends on speculative negative emissions or changing the past. Scientists must make their assumptions transparent and defensible, however politically uncomfortable the conclusions.

    • Kevin Anderson

  • Commentary |

    Since 1999, China's Grain for Green project has greatly increased the vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau. Now that erosion levels have returned to historic values, vegetation should be maintained but not expanded further as planned.

    • Yiping Chen
    • , Kaibo Wang
    •  & Xinhua He

  • News & Views |

    Anthropogenic climate change alters the risk of some extreme weather events. High-resolution computer simulations suggest that Black Sea warming made the devastating 2012 Krymsk flood possible — a virtually impossible event just 30 years ago.

    • Friederike E. L. Otto

  • Commentary |

    Natural landscapes are shaped by frequent moderate-sized events, except for the rare catastrophe. Human modifications to the Earth's surface are, compared with natural processes, increasingly catastrophic.

    • Richard Guthrie

  • News & Views |

    Global surface warming has slowed since the start of the twenty-first century, while Pacific heat uptake was enhanced. Analyses of ocean heat content suggest that the warm water was transferred to the Indian Ocean, through the Indonesian straits.

    • Jérôme Vialard

  • News & Views |

    Analyses of ice-core carbon isotopes show that variations in atmospheric CO2 levels during the past millennium are controlled by changes in land reservoirs. But whether climate variations or human activity were mainly responsible is uncertain.

    • Jed O. Kaplan

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Social sciences across other nature.com journals