2021 Top 25 Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences Articles

Research highlights

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  Emergence of a neopelagic community through the establishment of coastal species on the high seas

  Discoveries of persistent coastal species in the open ocean shift our understanding of biogeographic barriers. Floating plastic debris from pollution now supports a novel sea surface community composed of coastal and oceanic species at sea that might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment.

  • Linsey E. Haram
  • James T. Carlton
  • Gregory M. Ruiz

  CommentOpen Access2 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Bird population declines and species turnover are changing the acoustic properties of spring soundscapes

  Birdsong has long connected humans to nature. Historical reconstructions using bird monitoring and song recordings collected by citizen scientists reveal that the soundscape of birdsong in North America and Europe is both quieter and less varied, mirroring declines in bird diversity and abundance.

  • C. A. Morrison
  • A. Auniņš
  • S. J. Butler

  ArticleOpen Access2 Nov 2021 Nature Communications
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  The mortality cost of carbon

  Climate change is expected to have impacts on human mortality, e.g. through increases in heat waves. Here, the author proposes a new metric to account for excess deaths from additional CO2 emissions, which allows to assess the mortality impacts of marginal emissions and leads to a substantial increase in the social costs of carbon.

  • R. Daniel Bressler

  ArticleOpen Access29 Jul 2021 Nature Communications
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  1.5 °C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways

  Established climate mitigation modelling relies on controversial negative emissions and unprecedented technological change, but neglects to consider degrowth scenarios. Here the authors show that degrowth scenarios minimize many key risks for feasibility and sustainability and thus need to be thoroughly assessed.

  • Lorenz T. Keyßer
  • Manfred Lenzen

  ArticleOpen Access11 May 2021 Nature Communications
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  A space hurricane over the Earth’s polar ionosphere

  Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are known, but not detected in the upper atmosphere earlier. Here, the authors show a long-lasting hurricane in the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere with large energy and momentum deposition despite otherwise extremely quiet conditions.

  • Qing-He Zhang
  • Yong-Liang Zhang
  • Li-Dong Xia

  ArticleOpen Access22 Feb 2021 Nature Communications
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  New climate models reveal faster and larger increases in Arctic precipitation than previously projected

  The Arctic warms faster than other areas of the planet, which also influences precipitation. Here, the authors show that the latest CMIP6 model ensemble shows a faster Arctic warming and sea-ice loss, causing an earlier transition from a snow- to a rain-dominated Arctic than previously thought.

  • Michelle R. McCrystall
  • Julienne Stroeve
  • James A. Screen

  ArticleOpen Access30 Nov 2021 Nature Communications
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  Thresholds of temperature change for mass extinctions

  The linkage between temperature change and extinction rates in the fossil record is well-known qualitatively but little explored quantitatively. Here the authors investigate the relationship of marine animal extinctions with rate and magnitude of temperature change across the last 450 million years, and identify thresholds in climate change linked to mass extinctions.

  • Haijun Song
  • David B. Kemp
  • Xu Dai

  ArticleOpen Access4 Aug 2021 Nature Communications
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  Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction

  Snakes are one of the most successful groups of living vertebrates, but the timing of their diversification is unclear. Combining molecular clocks, fossils, and biogeography, Klein et al. show that snakes experienced a diversification, and underwent dispersal, around the time of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

  • Catherine G. Klein
  • Davide Pisani
  • Nicholas R. Longrich

  ArticleOpen Access14 Sep 2021 Nature Communications
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  Global land use changes are four times greater than previously estimated

  Quantifying land use change is critical in tackling global challenges related to food, climate and biodiversity. Here the authors show that land use change has affected 32 % of the global land area in six decades (1960- 2019) by combining multiple open datasets to create the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment +.

  • Karina Winkler
  • Richard Fuchs
  • Martin Herold

  ArticleOpen Access11 May 2021 Nature Communications
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  Different environmental variables predict body and brain size evolution in Homo

  Increasing body and brain size constitutes a key pattern in human evolution, but the mechanisms driving these changes remain debated. Using a large fossil dataset combined with global paleoclimatic reconstructions, the authors show that different environmental variables influenced the evolution of brain and body size in Homo.

  • Manuel Will
  • Mario Krapp
  • Andrea Manica

  ArticleOpen Access8 Jul 2021 Nature Communications
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  Evidence of free tropospheric and long-range transport of microplastic at Pic du Midi Observatory

  Microplastics are found in the environment globally, but their atmospheric transport is not well understood. Here the authors report atmospheric microplastic pollution at the Pic du Midi Observatory, suggesting free long range transport in the troposphere.

  • S. Allen
  • D. Allen
  • J. E. Sonke

  ArticleOpen Access21 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Lethal microbial blooms delayed freshwater ecosystem recovery following the end-Permian extinction

  Harmful algal and bacterial blooms are increasingly frequent in lakes and rivers. From the Sydney Basin, Australia, this study uses fossil, sedimentary and geochemical data to reveal bloom events following forest ecosystem collapse during the end-Permian event and that blooms have consistently followed warming-related extinction events, inhibiting the recovery of freshwater ecosystems for millennia.

  • Chris Mays
  • Stephen McLoughlin
  • Vivi Vajda

  ArticleOpen Access17 Sep 2021 Nature Communications
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  Widespread homogenization of plant communities in the Anthropocene

  Human-driven movements and extinctions of species have made plant communities across biomes more homogenous. Here the authors quantify plant vascular species and phylogenetic homogenization across the globe, finding that non-native species naturalisations have been a major driver.

  • Barnabas H. Daru
  • T. Jonathan Davies
  • Charles C. Davis

  ArticleOpen Access6 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Global LiDAR land elevation data reveal greatest sea-level rise vulnerability in the tropics

  Predicting the risk of flooding in coastal environments relies on accurate land elevation data, but this is not available in many parts of the world. Here the authors apply a global lowland digital terrain model derived from satellite LiDAR and determine that the regions most vulnerable to sea-level rise are in the tropics.

  • A. Hooijer
  • R. Vernimmen

  ArticleOpen Access29 Jun 2021 Nature Communications
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  The global loss of floristic uniqueness

  Humans have altered plant biogeography by introducing species from one region to another, but an analysis of how naturalized plant species affect the uniqueness of regional floras around the world was missing. This study presents an analysis using data from native and naturalized alien floras in 658 regions, finding strong taxonomic and phylogenetic floristic homogenization overall.

  • Qiang Yang
  • Patrick Weigelt
  • Mark van Kleunen

  ArticleOpen Access15 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Imaging low-mass planets within the habitable zone of α Centauri

  Imaging of low-mass exoplanets can be achieved once the thermal background in the mid-infrared (MIR) wavelengths can be mitigated. Here, the authors present a ground-based MIR observing approach enabling imaging low-mass temperate exoplanets around nearby stars.

  • K. Wagner
  • A. Boehle
  • T. de Zeeuw

  ArticleOpen Access10 Feb 2021 Nature Communications
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  Comparison of potential drinking water source contamination across one hundred U.S. cities

  In the U.S. today nearly no surface waters are drinkable without treatment. Here, the authors demonstrate that four-fifths of cities that withdraw surface water are supplying water that includes a portion of treated wastewater, concentrated in the Midwest, the South, and Texas.

  • Sean W. D. Turner
  • Jennie S. Rice
  • Landon Marston

  ArticleOpen Access13 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  The shallow structure of Mars at the InSight landing site from inversion of ambient vibrations

  We invert Rayleigh wave ellipticity curves extracted from ambient seismic vibrations at the InSight landing site to resolve, for the first time on Mars, the shallow subsurface to around 200 m depth. While our seismic velocity model is largely consistent with the expected stacks of lava flows, we find a seismic low velocity zone at about 30 to 75 m depth that we interpret as a sedimentary layer sandwiched between layers of basalt flows.

  • M. Hobiger
  • M. Hallo
  • W. B. Banerdt

  ArticleOpen Access23 Nov 2021 Nature Communications
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  Decadal-scale onset and termination of Antarctic ice-mass loss during the last deglaciation

  It may have taken only a decade to repeatedly destabilize the Antarctic Ice Sheet after the last Ice Age as shown by a new data-model study. The ice sheet lost ice for centuries each time before it abruptly re-stabilized again.

  • Michael E. Weber
  • Nicholas R. Golledge
  • Zoë A. Thomas

  ArticleOpen Access18 Nov 2021 Nature Communications
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  Anthropogenic forcing and response yield observed positive trend in Earth’s energy imbalance

  Satellite observations reveal a significant positive trend in Earth’s energy imbalance, but the contributing drivers have yet to be understood. Here, the authors show that it is exceptionally unlikely that this trend can be explained by internal variability; instead, anthropogenic forcing and feedbacks cause the trend.

  • Shiv Priyam Raghuraman
  • David Paynter
  • V. Ramaswamy

  ArticleOpen Access28 Jul 2021 Nature Communications
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  The widespread and unjust drinking water and clean water crisis in the United States

  Proper water and sanitation access remains an issue for many in the United States. Here the authors estimate and map the full scope of water hardship, including both incomplete plumbing and water quality across the country.

  • J. Tom Mueller
  • Stephen Gasteyer

  ArticleOpen Access22 Jun 2021 Nature Communications
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  Thawing Yedoma permafrost is a neglected nitrous oxide source

  During permafrost thaw, nitrogen can be released as the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, but the magnitude of this flux is unknown. Nitrous oxide emissions from ice-rich permafrost deposits are reported here, showing that emissions increase after thawing and stabilization and could represent an unappreciated positive climate feedback in the Arctic.

  • M. E. Marushchak
  • J. Kerttula
  • C. Biasi

  ArticleOpen Access7 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Particulate organic matter as a functional soil component for persistent soil organic carbon

  The fate of soil carbon is controlled by plant inputs, microbial activity, and the soil matrix. Here the authors extend the notion of plant-derived particulate organic matter, from an easily available and labile carbon substrate, to a functional component at which persistence of soil carbon is determined.

  • Kristina Witzgall
  • Alix Vidal
  • Carsten W. Mueller

  ArticleOpen Access5 Jul 2021 Nature Communications
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  Seasonal Arctic sea ice forecasting with probabilistic deep learning

  Accurate seasonal forecasts of sea ice are highly valuable, particularly in the context of sea ice loss due to global warming. A new machine learning tool for sea ice forecasting offers a substantial increase in accuracy over current physics-based dynamical model predictions.

  • Tom R. Andersson
  • J. Scott Hosking
  • Emily Shuckburgh

  ArticleOpen Access26 Aug 2021 Nature Communications
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  A GeV-TeV particle component and the barrier of cosmic-ray sea in the Central Molecular Zone

  Galactic center is one of the most important cosmic-ray sources. Here, the authors show GeV-TeV cosmic ray density in the central molecular zone is lower than the cosmic ray sea component, suggesting presence of high energy particle accelerator at the galactic center and existence of barrier.

  • Xiaoyuan Huang
  • Qiang Yuan
  • Yi-Zhong Fan

  ArticleOpen Access9 Nov 2021 Nature Communications