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Increasing temperatures in the seas around China have a range of physical, biogeochemical and biological impacts. This Review outlines historical and projected changes in these seas and the implications of these changes for marine ecosystems.
Sara Middleton explains how automated image segmentation can be used to rapidly identify objects and regions of interest to enable the monitoring of vegetation changes.
Differentiable modelling is an approach that flexibly integrates the learning capability of machine learning with the interpretability of process-based models. This Perspective highlights the potential of differentiable modelling to improve the representation of processes, parameter estimation, and predictive accuracy in the geosciences.
Methods to integrate Earth system modelling (ESM) with deep learning offer promise for advancing understanding of Earth processes. This Perspective explores the development and applications of hybrid Earth system modelling, a framework that integrates neural networks into ESM throughout the modelling lifecycle.
Decarbonization, circular economy, sustainable finance and sustainable consumption are four main environmental mitigation strategies to solve the triple planetary crisis. This Review explores the role of life-cycle assessment in evaluating and shaping environmental mitigation strategies.
An article in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews highlights improvements in air quality and resulting reduced mortality across 30 metropolitan areas in the USA with widescale adoption of electric vehicles.
An article in Nature Sustainability shows where air pollution, and its associated health impacts, will be highest in year 2100 under a range of global change scenarios.
Modelling of irrigation water withdrawals aims for accurate and relatively objective estimates, but three epistemological obstacles (models’ elusive tie to reality, model plurality and indeterminacy of the target system) make this premise unattainable. However, if used to explore possibilities within the known and unknown, irrigation models can overcome these problems to inform action.
An article in Environmental Research finds that wildfire events in Brazil increased the ambient concentration of air pollutants between 2003–2018, which contributed to air-pollution related deaths.
Soil records information about past environmental and ecological conditions, yet little is known about mechanisms of memory, transmission of information across space and time, and potential consequences for ecosystem functioning. More systematic inclusion of soil memory in Earth system models can account for complex land surface responses to disturbances and changing climate.
An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores whether changes in the contrast and intensity of artwork could reflect air pollution trends throughout the Industrial Revolution.
Earth sciences often investigate the causal relationships between processes and events, but there is confusion about the correct use of methods to learn these relationships from data. This Technical Review explains the application of causal inference techniques to time series and demonstrates its use through two examples of climate and biosphere-related investigations.
Irrigation accounts for a substantial proportion of global water usage and can have biophysical and biogeochemical impacts on Earth systems. This Review outlines key irrigation–Earth system interactions, and discusses the effect of future climate and socioeconomic changes on irrigation patterns and their interaction.
Estimates of plastic input from rivers to ocean vary by up to five orders of magnitude. Harmonization of field data used to calibrate models and a better understanding of transport processes are key to reducing these uncertainties, contributing to meaningful assessments of the effectiveness of environmental regulations against plastic pollution.
The Southern Ocean has a fundamental role in millennial-scale global carbon cycling by regulating the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This Review explores Southern Ocean–atmosphere interactions during glacial–deglacial cycles, suggesting that these were critical in driving the termination of the Last Glacial Maximum.
Dimethylsulfide is produced in the ocean, and its emission drives the formation of atmospheric aerosols that cool the climate. This Review discusses the production of dimethylsulfide, its cycling in the ocean and atmosphere and its broader radiative effects.
