Volume 11 Issue 6, June 2018

The remaining carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C allows 20 more years of current emissions according to one study, but is already exhausted according to another. Both are defensible. We need to move on from a unique carbon budget, and face the nuances.

Upward estimates for carbon budgets are unlikely to lead to action-focused climate policy. Climate researchers need to understand processes and incentives in policymaking and politics to communicate effectively.

Higher stream temperatures as the climate warms could lead to lower ecosystem productivity and higher CO₂ emissions in streams. An analysis of stream ecosystems finds that such changes will be greatest in the warmest and most productive streams.

The heat driving Yellowstone’s volcanism originates from a depth of at least 700 km, according to images of the mantle created using novel seismic methods.

Tall trees are more resilient to drought than short trees, suggests a comparison of the sensitivity of photosynthesis to soil moisture in Amazon forests.

The creation of an energetic framework for monsoon systems is needed to fully understand past and future variations in tropical rainfall, according to a literature review.

Some iron meteorite parent bodies may have formed beyond Mars under oxidizing conditions, according to analyses of chromium isotopes.

Tall trees are less sensitive to variation in precipitation than short trees, according to analyses of photosynthetic sensitivity to drought in tall and short Amazon forests. The results demonstrate higher resilience of tall trees to drought.

Lake evaporation could increase substantially despite modest changes in incoming solar radiation at the surface, as a result of changes in energy partitioning and shorter periods of ice cover, according to numerical simulations.

An increase in stream temperature leads to a convergence of metabolic balance, overall decline in net ecosystem productivity, and higher CO₂ emissions from streams, according to analyses of temperature sensitivity of stream metabolism across six biomes.

Much of the methane produced by the deep subseafloor biosphere is consumed by anaerobic methane oxidation with sulfate in continental shelf sediments, according to a global map and calculated budgets of methane fluxes and degradation.

The Great Barrier Reef has migrated rapidly in response to sea-level changes since the last glacial period, suggesting resilience to environmental stress over this interval, according to a reconstruction of reef accretion.

Crustal stress in the interior of the United States is spatially variable and largely controlled by local forces, rather than those transmitted from tectonic plate boundaries, according to a map of the continental stress field.

Extensive flooding of the North American continent during the Cambrian occurred more recently and more rapidly than previously thought, according to analyses of detrital zircons sampled from the Grand Canyon region.

Lithosphere at ultraslow-spreading mid-ocean ridges can form via a combination of serpentinized mantle exhumation and magmatism, according to analyses of seismic surveys from the Cayman Trough.

The mantle transition zone in the western United States is perturbed along a path that mirrors the line of the Yellowstone hotspot track at the surface, according to analysis of tomographic data.

Budgets of carbon emissions that are consistent with limiting warming to no more than 1.5 °C over preindustrial temperatures have been hotly debated, following the Paris Agreement on climate change targets. Read more on these discussions in our web focus.