Editorials in 2023

Air pollution is a leading cause of death globally. Efforts to clean the air will not only save lives but contribute to addressing broader environmental and socioeconomic challenges.

Sample return missions to asteroids provide critical pristine materials lacking from meteorite collections.

Climate change together with the recent onset of El Niño this year has led to widespread heatwaves. As these events become increasingly commonplace, cities around the world urgently need to build resilience to heat.

Tackling plastic pollution not only requires improved understanding of environmental dynamics of plastics, but also needs turning scientific insights into actions.

One journal’s reject may be another journal’s gem. Our editors aim to direct rejected manuscripts towards a more suitable destination journal in our transfer network.

Temporarily overshooting climate targets is a distinct possibility given our current emissions trajectory. It is crucial that we understand which of the associated impacts are reversible, and to what extent.

Ecosystems have long been shaped by phosphorus limitation. We need to better understand how natural and human-caused shifts in the phosphorus cycle disrupt the Earth system.

There is much science to extract from mission data if China’s growing planetary science community is supported.

Night-time chemistry has an important contribution to air pollution over China and India. Understanding the chemical evolution of pollution in the atmosphere at night is needed for effective solutions to improve air quality.

Progress in understanding and modelling ENSO complexity provides a promising opportunity to both improve seasonal climate prediction and constrain future anthropogenic warming.

This month marks the 15-year anniversary of Nature Geoscience, a milestone reached after weathering three years of pandemic-related global disruption. We reflect on the burden on peer review over this period and the resilience of the geoscience community.