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The Antarctic ice sheet is fringed by ice shelves. Remote imagery identifies extensive basal channels in these shelves that grow and deepen on decadal timescales.
The rise and fall of civilizations over the past two millennia was set against a backdrop of climate change. High-resolution climate records evince a link between societal change and a period of cooling in the sixth and seventh centuries.
Large earthquakes cause other quakes near and far. Analyses of quakes in Pakistan and Chile suggest that such triggering can occur almost instantaneously, making triggered events hard to detect, and potentially enhancing the associated hazards.
Economic-grade deposits of copper are hard to find. The aluminium content of magmatic rocks at the surface may provide an indicator of ore deposits buried deep below.
Natural seafloor hydrocarbon seeps are responsible for roughly half of the oil released into the ocean. As these oils and gases rise to the surface, they transport nutrients upwards, benefiting phytoplankton in the upper sunlit layer.
Humanity's nitrogen pollution footprint has increased by a factor of six since the 1930s. A global analysis reveals that a quarter of this nitrogen pollution is associated with the production of internationally traded products.
Mercury is a toxic element with no known biological function. Laboratory studies demonstrate that mercury can be beneficial to microbial growth by acting as an electron acceptor during photosynthesis.
Volcanic eruptions at ocean ridges produce large volumes of glass that is rapidly leached by seawater. Geochemical calculations suggest that this process helps to explain the deposition of carbonates at the end of extreme ice ages.
The volcanic eruption that created the Ontong Java Plateau released large quantities of carbon dioxide. A reconstruction of CO2 concentrations suggests that the eruption promoted climate change and the expansion of ocean anoxia.
Martian gullies have been seen as evidence for past surface water runoff. However, numerical modelling now suggests that accumulation and sublimation of carbon dioxide ice, rather than overland flow of liquid water, may be driving modern gully formation.
Clear evidence for subduction-induced metamorphism, and thus the operation of plate tectonics on the ancient Earth has been lacking. Theoretical calculations indicate that we may have been looking for something that cannot exist.
The structure of atmospheric aerosol particles affects their reactivity and growth rates. Measurements of aerosol properties over the Amazon rainforest indicate that organic particles above tropical rainforests are simple liquid drops.
A global picture of the age structure and flow path of groundwater is lacking. Tritium concentrations and numerical modelling shed light on both the most recently replenished and the longest stored groundwater within Earth's continents.
Compared to Earth, the Moon is depleted in volatile species like water, sodium and potassium. Simulations suggest that much of the Moon formed from hot, volatile-poor melt in a disk of debris after initially amassing cooler, volatile-rich melt.
Plate tectonics is the surface expression of mantle convection. Seismic observations at the Cascadia subduction zone show that coupling between tectonic plate motion and mantle flow may depend on the size of the plate.
In the United States, hurricanes have been causing more and more economic damage. A reanalysis of the disaster database using a statistical method that accounts for improvements in resilience opens the possibility that climate change has played a role.
