Browse Articles

The triple oxygen isotope composition of quartz veins indicates that the southern Tibetan Plateau was already around 3.5 km high by 60 million years ago, showing that substantial surface uplift started before collision of the Eurasian and Indian plates.

A 3-year field experiment suggests plant responses to elevated CO₂ in phosphorus-limited grasslands depends on the biogeochemical interplay between soil microbes and plants.

Tackling plastic pollution not only requires improved understanding of environmental dynamics of plastics, but also needs turning scientific insights into actions.

There is a large discrepancy between estimates of oceanic plastic input and the amount of plastic measured floating at the ocean surface. Model results show that this can be explained by large objects being underestimated in previous mass budget analyses, combined with lower input estimates.

A 3D global marine plastic mass budget suggests that larger items contribute more than 95% of buoyant plastics by mass and are longer lived than previously estimated, which suggests there is no missing sink of marine plastic pollution.

Atmospheric short-wave absorption due to wildfire smoke is caused predominantly by dark brown carbon particles, according to observations from smoke plumes in the United States.

Analysis of the microfossil content of sediment cores from areas where thick Arctic sea ice persists today reveals that a subpolar species associated with Atlantic water expanded deep into the Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial. This finding implies that summers in the Arctic were likely sea-ice-free during this period.

Two contrasting sinuosity patterns were identified in lowland rivers on Earth and Mars. The channel sinuosity either substantially increases or remains constant towards the coast. These bimodal patterns reflect the age of the channels and their lateral migration rates, which are associated with sediment supply and discharge variability.

The post-garnet transition has been found to have a curved phase boundary, with negative slopes in cold regions and positive slopes in hot regions of the Earth’s mantle. This varying slope could be a reason for the puzzling dynamics of subducting slabs and upwelling plumes observed seismically in the upper part of the lower mantle.

Admission to doctoral study is a crucial step in the academic pipeline, but discriminatory procedures can disproportionately impact students from ethnic minority backgrounds. We show how these policies contribute to inequity in the geosciences and propose strategies for change.

Spatial patterns of channel sinuosity near river outlets reflect the interplay between the channel migration rate and the avulsion timescale, according to sinuosity measurements of lowland rivers on Earth and Mars and channel evolution simulations.

The warm Last Interglacial led to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean and a transformation to Atlantic conditions, according to planktic foraminifera records from central Arctic Ocean sediment cores.

Widespread shallow-water hydrothermal venting in the North Atlantic, probably a source of methane, coincided with the onset of the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, according to borehole proxy records and seismic imaging.

The chemical weathering of silicate rocks plays a central role in stabilizing our climate through CO₂ drawdown. Li isotopic evidence from a prolonged Eocene warming event suggests clay formation may disrupt this feedback on intermediate timescales.

Himalayan valley-floor widths are controlled by long-term tectonically driven exhumation, rather than by water discharge, according to an analysis of valley-floor width and exhumation rate observations.

The long duration of the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum, compared with other transient Eocene warming events, can be explained by an increase in clays forming from the weathering of silicate minerals, according to lithium isotope records of marine carbonates.

Experimental determination of how the post-garnet phase transition pressure varies with temperature suggests a downward-convex phase boundary with potential implications for mantle dynamics.

Orbital precession played a more important role than obliquity during Late Pleistocene swings in ice-sheet extent, according to an analysis of benthic oxygen isotope records with precise age constraints.

Grasses contribute more than half of the soil organic carbon across tropical savannas, according to a case study in South Africa combined with a synthesis of data from tropical savannas globally.