Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Tracking biodiversity potential is time-sensitive under climate change, especially in the most remote areas. A new analysis fulfils a long-standing need to map the terrestrial vegetation across Antarctica — a crucial step to identify carbon and nutrient cycling hotspots.
Computational simulations of Venus’s geodynamics show the formation of large tessera plateaus. Matching of the models with spacecraft orbiter data constrains the mechanism that may have formed the topography of Ishtar Terra and other plateaus on Venus, suggesting that these features might have formed by a mechanism similar to that of the early continents on Earth.
Observations from the Labrador Coast indicate the presence of subsea permafrost landforms outside of the Arctic, suggesting a potential underestimation of subsea permafrost in the world’s oceans.
Venusian highland terrains such as Ishtar Terra formed from melting beneath thinned lithosphere that created a stiff mantle root in a mechanism akin to craton formation on the early Earth, according to three-dimensional computational simulations.
Climate model simulations and reanalysis data suggest that inhibition of atmospheric convection by dry air intensifies moist heatwaves, and this process may further increase moist heatwaves under climate warming.
Mooring observations suggest that deep-sea currents exhibit substantial variability over tidal and seasonal timescales, driving a complex pattern of sediment transport.
Late Pliocene warmth did not lead to substantial deep water formation in the North Pacific as previously proposed, according to benthic foraminifera carbon isotope transects.
Oxygen is generated abiotically at the abyssal seafloor in the presence of polymetallic nodules, potentially by seawater electrolysis, according to in situ chamber and ex situ incubation experiments.
Groundwater supplies about 59% of global river flow, suggesting a larger contribution of groundwater to the global water cycle than currently appreciated, according to an analysis integrating estimates from models and observations.
The increasing use of manufactured sand in China since 2010 has greatly reduced the proportion of natural sand in the country’s total sand supply, from 80% in 1995 to 21% in 2020, according to a material flow analysis of sand in China.
The melting behaviour of Earth’s primitive mantle was strongly sensitive to changes in oxygen fugacity, according to high-pressure experiments on pyrolite under different redox conditions.
Earth system models project that lake temperatures will warm beyond the range of natural variability to which aquatic ecosystems are adapted in the coming decades, with conditions exceeding natural analogues sooner at lower latitudes.
Core processes, dynamically linked to mantle and climate-related surface processes, contribute to both the long-term trend and shorter-term fluctuations observed in Earth’s polar motion, according to predictions from physics-informed neural networks.
