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Top 25 Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences Articles of 2022
We are pleased to share with you the 25 most downloaded Nature Communications articles* across Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences published in 2022. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.
Vertical exchange in the ocean is an important conduit connecting the surface to the deep and influences the distributions of gases, nutrients, pollutants, and other tracers. Here the authors using high-resolution observations and numerical simulations of the ocean fronts in the Northern Gulf of Mexico reveal that the interaction between the fronts and land-sea breeze creates slantwise pathways for water parcels and induces significant subduction of surface water and upwelling of bottom water.
Europe is a heatwave hotspot exhibiting three-to-four times faster upward trends compared to the rest of the northern midlatitudes. Here, this accelerated trend is linked to the increased persistence of Eurasian double jets in the upper troposphere.
The crucial first step in the biodegradation of polyethylene plastic is oxidation of the polymer. This has traditionally required abiotic pre-treatment, but now Bertocchini and colleagues report two wax worm enzymes capable of catalyzing this oxidation and subsequent degradation at room temperature.
All DNA/RNA nucleobases were identified in carbonaceous meteorites. Having been provided to the early Earth as a component in carbonaceous meteorites, these molecules might have played a role for the emergence of genetic functions in early life.
Dust devils are common on Mars and understanding their dynamics is important to gain insights about the meteorology of the planet. Here, the authors show characteristics of a Martian dust devil and its sound from Perseverance rover multi-sensor data combined with modelling.
Can AI learn from atmospheric data and improve weather forecasting? The neural network MetNet-2 achieves this by forecasting the fast changing variable of precipitation up to 12 h ahead more accurately and efficiently than traditional models based on hand-coded physics.
This study characterizes the world’s largest seagrass ecosystem in The Bahamas by integrating spatial estimates with remote sensing and performing extensive ground-truthing of benthic habitat with 2,542 diver surveys, as well as data obtained from instrument-equipped tiger sharks, which have strong fidelity to seagrass ecosystems.
A 7,638 yr summer temperature reconstruction based on subfossil trees buried in the Siberian Arctic shows that recent warming is unprecedented and interrupted a multi-millennial cooling trend.
Liu et al. used the NASA GRACE/FO missions to show that since 2019, groundwater depletion in California’s Central Valley has accelerated by 31% compared to recent droughts, and has increased by a nearly a factor of 5 compared to the 60-year average.
A low-carbon energy transition consistent with 1.5 °C of warming may result in substantial carbon emissions. Moreover, the initial push to substitute fossil fuels with low-carbon alternatives will reduce the net energy available to society.
Natural gas and carbon removal can play roles in reaching net-zero emissions in the U.S. electric sector and can lower decarbonization costs, though wind and solar have higher generation shares for most regions and scenarios.
Combining microplastic data from the California Current Ecosystem with high-resolution foraging measurements from 191 tag deployments on blue, fin and humpback whales, this study quantifies plastic ingestion rates and routes of exposure risk in filter-feeding megafauna.
Under global warming, increased variability in El Niño sea surface temperature was projected to be detectable by about 2070. Here the authors show that the increased variability of a type of more impactful El Niño events is likely detectable by 2030.
Palaeomagnetic data from South China and compiled reliable palaeopoles from 4 other continents reveals a ~50˚ true polar wander (TPW) event occurring 450–440 million years ago. Sweeping Gondwana across the South Pole, this TPW event induced the Ordovician glaciation and mass extinction.
The formation of double ridges on Europa is poorly understood. Here the authors analyze airborne radar observations of an analog feature on the Greenland Ice Sheet to show that the refreezing of shallow water sills may produce such ridges.
Mineral-organic associations play a key role in soil carbon preservation. Here, Georgiou et al. produce global estimates of mineral-associated soil carbon, providing insight into the world’s soils and their capacity to store carbon
Dahl et al. present new evidence based on leaf gas-exchange in primitive vascular plants and fossil remains of some of their earliest ancestors. This alters our thinking on how plants impacted the Earth System and climate.
Giant icy volcanos (cryovolcanos) on Pluto are unique in the imaged solar system and provide evidence for unexpected, active geology late in Pluto’s history.
Significant regional disparities exist in the time left to prepare for unprecedented drought and how much we can buy time depending on climate scenarios. Specific regions pass this timing by the middle of 21st century even with stringent mitigation.
Conventional models propose multiple fault systems across a diffuse deformation zone absorbing plate convergence in the western Mediterranean. Here the authors show new data supporting the active development of a single plate boundary fault system, representing an underappreciated seismic and tsunami hazard.
China’s transition path toward carbon neutrality remains uncertain. Here the authors combine Monte Carlo analysis with an energy-environment-economy model to present a probabilistic view of China’s energy transition across 3,000 cases.
Ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry revealed that plastic bags leach labile compounds. Bioassays performed in Scandinavian lakes indicated that these compounds are incorporated into biomass faster and more efficiently than natural organic matter.
Here, the authors describe two opabiniid-like euarthropods with anterior proboscises from the Middle Ordovician Castle Bank Biota, Wales, UK. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that these specimens may be sister to radiodonts and deuteropods.
Lakes are essential components of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycles. Here, Pi et al develop a global lake dataset called GLAKES via high-resolution satellite images and deep learning to examine global lake changes over four decades.
Microbial degradation of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) has previously been reported, but little is known about the degrading strains and enzymes. Here, Zhe et al. isolate a PVC-degrading bacterium from the gut of insect larvae and shed light on the PVC degradation pathway using a multi-omic approach.