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Monitoring of the daily global CO₂ emissions in 2020 reveals the spatial–temporal pattern of the drop in emissions due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The daily CO₂ emission changes also reveal different patterns of human activities and fossil CO₂ emissions across countries, sectors and periods.

Observed daily changes in CO₂ emissions from across the globe reveal the sectors and countries where pandemic-related emissions declines were most pronounced in 2020.

Direct measurements of carbon fixation rates in groundwater suggest a substantial contribution of in situ primary production to subsurface ecosystem processes.

Unrest episodes observed in basaltic systems indicate magma influx rates may be key to generating long-term eruption forecasts. The findings predict that, if a critical flow rate is surpassed, a volcano will erupt within a year.

Climate change is exacerbating geohazards in High Mountain Asia that pose a growing risk to hydropower and water infrastructure across the region.

Using magma inflow rate improves eruption forecasting on timescales of weeks to months for basaltic caldera systems, compared with using surface deformation alone, according to analysis of 45 unrest case studies and viscoelastic modelling.

A change in the style of rifting in the North Atlantic led to carbon fluxes from subcrustal melting that helped trigger the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, according to geochemical analyses of volcanic sequences as well as melting and tectonic modelling.

A reduction in olivine grain size can cause weakening of mantle lithosphere, facilitating continental rifting, according to coupled grain-size-evolution thermo-mechanical modelling of a mantle dynamics.

Megathrust aftershocks can be highly destructive if they strike close to shore. Here, we show that aftershocks on the rupture surface have an initially high rate but shut down within several years, potentially for centuries. However, aftershocks also surround the rupture, where they persist for up to 60 years.

The lower oceanic crust forms through the accretion of injected melt that cools and crystallizes in situ over hundreds of thousands of years, according to seismic data from the slow-spreading equatorial Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Recent missions to the rubble-pile asteroids Bennu and Ryugu have revealed asteroid surfaces that continue to be actively modified by a variety of processes while also recording the geologic history of these small bodies.

Seismicity close to the rupture surface can shut down for centuries following a megathrust earthquake, while a much larger area surrounding it is activated for decades, according to numerical modelling of the 2011 Tohoku and other megathrust earthquakes.

In a simulation with a state-of-the-art climate model, obstruction of the ocean gateways in the Canadian archipelago due to ice-sheet growth reroutes currents and alters North Atlantic Ocean conditions, permitting glacial inception in Scandinavia. This mechanism could help to explain periods of rapid ice-sheet growth in Earth’s history.

The Pine Island Glacier, a locus of ice loss from the modern West Antarctic Ice Sheet, had previously been stable since at least the mid-Holocene, according to records tracking ice extent based on radiocarbon and cosmogenic exposure dating.

Infilling of Canadian Arctic ocean gateways by the Laurentide Ice Sheet probably triggered Scandinavian glaciation during the last glacial inception by increasing North Atlantic freshwater inputs, according to coupled ice-sheet–climate-model simulations.

The ocean during Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth episodes did not have an ice-free belt in the tropics when likely cloud conditions are taken into account, according to climate and energy-balance modelling.

Temperature observations from across Alaska show widespread talik formation in the discontinuous permafrost zone due to higher air temperatures and above-average snowfall in recent years.

Tropical Pacific islands enhance phytoplankton biomass, productivity and biodiversity at both local and basin scales, according to ocean colour satellite observations used to identify island-enriched waters.

Preferential P retention emerges in almost 90% of global lakes. This retention leads to a strong elevation in the N:P ratios in lakes outflow, exacerbates the imbalance of the nutrient cycles and can potentially result in biodiversity losses and algal blooms in lakes and downstream ecosystems.

Lakes preferentially retain phosphorous over nitrogen, amplifying the imbalance of nutrient cycles caused by anthropogenic inputs, according to analyses of more than 5,000 lakes globally.