Volume 15 Issue 11, November 2022

Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Qingyang Hu, a high-pressure mineralogist at HPSTAR; Prof. Suzan van der Lee, a geophysicist at Northwestern University; and Prof. Katherine Kelley, a geochemist at the University of Rhode Island about their work and what the future of deep-water research might bring.

Submarine gas hydrates in temperate and tropical oceans are probably not large sources of atmospheric methane emissions at present, suggests a study of methane sources along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the USA.

In rare and sometimes highly destructive cases, faults rupture faster than the seismic waves generated can travel. A global investigation of earthquake rupture speeds reveals that these events occur much more frequently than previously thought.

Jörg Hermann suggests that as the process of serpentinization leads to clean energy generation, metal separation and carbon sequestration, it could serve as a natural analogue for a sequential economy.

Delving into recent and historical discoveries, Ananya Mallik explains how diamonds track the workings of the deep Earth that are hidden from view.

Satellite measurements show that dust emission is enhanced following large wildfires, producing considerable dust loadings for days to weeks over normally dust-free regions. These sequential fire and dust extremes will likely become more frequent and severe under global warming, having increased societal and ecological impacts.

Large channels of meltwater snake beneath the ice in the Weddell Sea region of Antarctica. This water affects the speed of ice flow above and the melt rate of the ice when it reaches the ocean, having a direct role in the response of Antarctica to climate change.

Numerical simulations of the exhumation of basin-filling river deposits suggest that ridge networks observed in Martian landscapes may represent erosional windows into sedimentary basins on Mars.

Enhanced dust emissions are associated with more than half of the global large wildfire events occurring between 2003 and 2020, according to analyses of satellite measurements of aerosol abundance following more than 150,000 global wildfires.

Methane hydrates decomposing beneath mid-latitude ocean basins are unlikely to be a source of atmospheric methane, according to direct measurements of dissolved methane in the water column from seep fields along the US Atlantic and Pacific margins.

A 400-km-long subglacial dendritic river system in Antarctica transports freshwater at high pressures, potentially enhancing ice flow and ice-shelf melt, according to numerical modelling and geophysical data.

Temperature variability over land is enhanced by ocean temperature fluctuations on millennial timescales, with implications for regional-scale climate change, according to an analysis of Northern Hemisphere proxy records and observations.

Biological uptake in the surface and release in the deep ocean contribute to oceanic nickel distribution, including the residual surface Ni pool, according to culture experiments, field data and global biogeochemical circulation modelling

Carbon loss from coastal wetlands in eastern North America due to sea-level rise is being offset by warming-driven greening of adjacent upland forests, with a net increase in carbon stored in coastal vegetation, according to an analysis of remote sensing data.

Organic carbon burial rates in an Upper Cretaceous river delta are similar to those in modern deltas, suggesting that high burial rates can persist over geological timescales in these common settings, according to stratigraphic and geochemical analysis of exhumed delta sediments.

Deep-water formation in the Nordic Seas that helps to drive the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation was vigorous during the last glacial maximum, much as it is today, and declined during deglaciation, according to neodymium isotope records.

The rise of secondary-endosymbiont-bearing algal groups—better adapted to low nutrient conditions than the green algae they supplanted—was tied to a fall in marine trace metal concentrations during the Mesozoic, according to a comparative genomic analysis.

Supershear earthquakes occur more frequently than previously thought, as suggested by the identification of four oceanic events from a global analysis of large shallow strike-slip earthquakes.

Hydrous conditions extend across the 660 km discontinuity between Earth’s mantle transition zone and lower mantle, according to analysis of a polyphase mineral inclusion in a gem diamond from the Karowe mine, Botswana