News & Views in 2011

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  • Mercury's spin and its orbit around the Sun are tied to each other in a unique arrangement. According to a set of calculations, random asteroid impacts may have aided the planet's evolution into the current spin-orbit pattern.

    • Matija Ćuk
    News & Views
  • Atmospheric CO2 levels were much lower during the last glacial maximum than in the pre-industrial period. Ice-core data and biogeochemical modelling suggest that difference is partly due to the greater mass of inert carbon in glacial terrestrial biomes.

    • Martin Claussen
    News & Views
  • Formic acid exerts a significant influence on atmospheric chemistry and rainwater acidity. Satellite observations and model simulations suggest that terrestrial vegetation accounts for around 90% of the formic acid produced annually.

    • Dylan B. Millet
    News & Views
  • The influence of aerosols on climate is one of the greatest uncertainties in projections of future climate. A long-term observational study suggests that aerosols increase the frequency of rainfall events in convective clouds.

    • Seoung-Soo Lee
    News & Views
  • Inland waters are increasingly recognized as important to the global carbon cycle. Detailed measurements in the United States suggest that significant amounts of carbon dioxide are released from streams and rivers, particularly the smaller ones.

    • John Melack
    News & Views
  • The mechanisms for forming the abundant volcanic islands on ocean floors are debated. The geochemical signature of volcanic rocks from the northeast Indian Ocean suggests that seamounts there formed from melting recycled ancient continental rocks.

    • Sally A. Gibson
    News & Views
  • The ancient Central Asian Orogenic Belt formed during a period of extensive continental crust formation. Comparison with modern continent-building systems suggests that the processes that operate today were already active at that time.

    • Karel Schulmann
    • Scott Paterson
    News & Views
  • A series of extreme cooling episodes, starting 750 million years ago, could have repeatedly turned the planet into an ice-covered snowball. Carbon cycle modelling suggests that the timing of the glaciations can be explained by chemical weathering rates.

    • A. Joshua West
    News & Views
  • Phytoplankton form the base of the marine food web, but their growth in nutrient-depleted surface waters has remained a puzzle. Two complementary studies suggest that ocean eddies help to control phytoplankton growth and distribution in unexpected ways.

    • Richard G. Williams
    News & Views
  • Volcanic activity is much more common beneath the oceans than on land, yet has been observed only rarely. Direct measurements of an eruption in the southwest Pacific Ocean reveal unexpectedly explosive activity at great depths.

    • Richard Arculus
    News & Views
  • The impact of solar activity on climate has been debated heatedly. Simulations with a climate model using new observations of solar variability suggest a substantial influence of the Sun on the winter climate in the Northern Hemisphere.

    • Katja Matthes
    News & Views
  • Proof that purported fossils of early life are truly old and biological is often controversial. Detailed analyses confirm the early evolution of microbial sulphur cycling and reveal microfossils in 3.4-billion-year-old beach sandstones.

    • Emmanuelle J. Javaux
    News & Views
  • The growth of East Africa's high topography during the past 30 million years cannot be explained by typical mountain-building processes. Numerical modelling shows that much of this topography formed in response to upwelling in the underlying mantle.

    • Raphaël Pik
    News & Views
  • Naturally produced hydrocarbons such as isoprene influence air quality and climate. Accounting for circadian control of isoprene emissions helps to bring model simulations of ground-level ozone into closer agreement with observations.

    • Alexander T. Archibald
    News & Views
  • Atmospheric aerosols strongly influence Earth's climate, but how they form has remained a mystery. According to cloud chamber experiments, a mixture of vapours, as well as ions formed by galactic cosmic rays, contribute to the particle formation recipe.

    • Jeffrey Pierce
    News & Views
  • During the last interglacial period, summer temperatures were warmer and the Greenland ice sheet smaller than today. Modelling suggests that the low ice-sheet volume was not simply a consequence of high ambient temperatures.

    • Andrey Ganopolski
    • Alexander Robinson
    News & Views