Reviews & Analysis

The mantle of the Earth influences many dynamic processes such as crust formation, recycling and mantle convection. This Review describes modern isotopic methods used to characterize plume-derived basalts and gain insight into the composition of the mantle.

Coupled Fe–C cycles are important considerations for carbon sequestration, soil fertility and ecosystem functions. This Review explores the role of Fe minerals in stabilizing and degrading organic matter and the role of organic matter in enhancing reactivity of Fe minerals under different conditions.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key process connecting the land to the atmosphere. This Review details the characteristics and drivers of ET changes since the 1980s, noting a positive and accelerating ET trend arising from global greening.

Seafloor turbidity currents form Earth’s largest sediment accumulations, deepest canyons and longest channels, but their destructive nature makes them notoriously difficult to measure in action. This Review explores how insights from detailed direct measurements have advanced understanding of turbidity currents.

Integrating impacts and cascading hazards to drought monitoring could improve prediction and mitigation of drought events. This Perspective discusses the limitations of existing indicators, the cascading hazards associated with drought and the importance of assessing drought impacts.

The terrestrial biosphere stores carbon in a land carbon sink, offsetting emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. This Review demonstrates that the magnitude of the land carbon sink has increased over time, but that its stability in the future is less clear and depends on climate impacts and effective implementation of nature-based solutions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Geomorphic and ecological factors shape the effects of sea level rise on the coastal carbon sink. This Review discusses how reductions in greenhouse gas emissions compensate for losses in carbon sequestration as ecosystem boundaries change rapidly in the coastal zone.

Gyres, jets and waves are thought to have an important role in Earth’s core dynamics. This Review explores these core processes, based on satellite observations and numerical simulations, and discusses the implications for deep-Earth coupling and forecasting geomagnetic field changes.

Although model projections indicate increased El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability in the future, contemporary impacts of anthropogenic forcing on ENSO variability have been difficult to ascertain. This Perspective discusses these contemporary effects, outlining that an increase in post-1960 ENSO variability is likely related to greenhouse gas forcing.

A digital twin of Earth would fully integrate Big Data observations within an Earth–human system model, to assess the interactions between these subsystems. This Review explores the current progress in Big Data manipulation in Earth sciences providing pathways toward digital twins of Earth.

Extreme weather and climate events could increase ecosystem disturbances and, potentially, destabilize ecosystems, but different feedbacks between climate and ecosystems are often not accounted for. This Perspective proposes a framework to characterize ecoclimatic events and understand the role of human activities in driving them.

Ultrahigh-temperature (UHT) metamorphism represents the most extreme thermal conditions that the continental crust is capable of sustaining at 15–55 km depth. This Review assesses the characteristics of UHT metamorphism, the tectonic mechanisms, and the implications for metamorphism in present-day orogens.