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.
Modelling indicates that a return to fully normal marine conditions in the Mediterranean following the flooding that ended the Messinian Salinity Crisis was delayed by salt transfers and temporarily enhanced stratification.
Flooding of the desiccated Mediterranean ~5 Myr ago resulted in east–west differences in salinity stratification, which delayed the return of normal marine conditions throughout the basin, according to proxy records and model simulations.
Suppressed El Niño/Southern Oscillation variability during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period was caused mainly by a northward displacement of the intertropical convergence zone, according to an analysis of a large ensemble of climate model simulations.
Decoupled fault slip and opening, leading to rapid fluid pressurization after initial failure, drives high-pressure fluid migration in low-permeability faults, according to modelling and in situ observations from a borehole fluid-injection experiment.
Rocket emissions and debris from spacecraft falling out of orbit are having increasingly detrimental effects on global atmospheric chemistry. Improved monitoring and regulation are urgently needed to create an environmentally sustainable space industry.
Sea level rise causes barrier islands to migrate landward. Coastal evolution modelling reveals a centennial-scale lag in island response time and suggests migration rates will increase by 50% within the next century, even if sea level were to stabilize.
Geochemical analyses of an andesitic meteorite suggest the continental-crust-like composition is due to partial melting after core formation on a differentiated parent body.
Analyses of the 2014 Iceland–Holuhraun volcanic eruption revealed the emitted aerosols induced a 10% increase in cloud coverage above the region, suggesting anthropogenic aerosols might strongly cool the Earth’s climate by increasing the cloud coverage.
Satellite-based machine-learning analysis of a diffusive volcanic eruption suggests that aerosol climate forcing is dominated by changes in cloud cover, rather than changes in cloud brightness.
Global in situ observations show greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands are lowest when the water table is near the surface, and therefore rewetting wetlands could substantially reduce future emissions.
A machine-learning-based mapping of Antarctic subglacial geology suggests sedimentary basins lie beneath some of the most dynamic ice streams, increasing their vulnerability to rapid ice retreat.
Climate sensitivity in the late Miocene was comparable to the late Pleistocene and twenty-first century, with cooling at the time coupled to declining carbon dioxide, according to a CO2 record determined from boron isotopes in planktic foraminifera
Pulses of Saharan dust have been entering the North Atlantic since at least 11 Ma, a result of astronomically paced cycles between arid and humid conditions in northern Africa, according to a terrigenous input record from an ocean core off west Africa.
Field surveys suggest peatlands in the central Congo Basin are globally significant carbon stocks, storing approximately 28% of the world’s tropical peat carbon.