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Three decades of meteorological observations show that Himalayan glaciers have been cooling because of intensified downslope winds, in contrast to the warming observed elsewhere in the region.
Spatially distinct ice-sheet growth on the Antarctic Peninsula through the Pleistocene was the result of dynamic topography and pre-glacial landscape evolution, not climate, according to a palaeotopographic reconstruction and ice-sheet modelling.
High-elevation meteorological observations and reanalysis data indicate local cooling and drying near Himalayan glaciers due to enhanced katabatic winds in response to global warming.
Plant diversity stabilizes grassland soil temperature by boosting soil organic carbon and increasing plant leaf area, according to an 18-year plant diversity experiment.
Weathering of mafic and ultramafic lithologies in ophiolites can enhance the preservation of organic carbon through the formation of smectite clays and modulate Earth’s climate, according to a coupled mineral weathering and carbon box model.
A geochemical study of an ancient mass-extinction event shows that only moderate expansion of oxygen-deficient waters along continental margins is needed to decimate marine biodiversity. This finding provides a stark warning of the possible consequences of human-driven ocean deoxygenation on life in Earth’s shallow oceans.
While global ocean redox patterns during the end Triassic were similar to today, pulses of localized anoxia were probably linked to mass extinctions on continental shelves, according to analysis of molybdenum records.
Abrupt changes in atmospheric methane through the last deglaciation were largely the result of tropical sources responding to shifting rainfall patterns, according to a comparison of precisely dated ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica.
The century-scale marine sequestration flux of biogenic inorganic carbon driven by the biological pump over the whole water column may be several times higher than previous estimates.
Analysis of sea temperatures using a four-dimensional spatio-temporal framework has revealed a great number of marine heatwaves occurring globally below the sea surface. These extreme events, which threaten the ecologically important epipelagic zone, have occurred increasingly frequently during the past three decades owing to ocean warming.
Convection-permitting simulations suggest that the radiative impact of aerosol–cloud interactions is enhanced by adjustments to large-scale circulation, which increase cloudiness.
Identifying the metal micronutrients required by early life could help to illuminate how primitive organisms arose, but which metals were biologically available in ancient seawater has not been determined. A new experimental framework suggests how the precipitation of iron minerals from seawater reduced the availability of key metals, particularly zinc, copper and vanadium.
Mineral precipitation experiments suggest the formation of greenalite, an iron silicate mineral, limited zinc, copper and vanadium levels in the Archaean ocean, making them unavailable to early microbial life.
Reconstructions of Tibetan Plateau streamflow over the last millennia reveal close associations with dry season vegetation and major population shifts in Southeast Asia.
Wildfires have caused widespread and increasingly severe losses within timber-producing forests in recent decades, according to maps of logging activity and wildfires.
