Volume 15 Issue 5, May 2022

Flood basalts are connected to Earth’s most extreme environmental crises, yet warming is sometimes observed before surface eruptions. Modelling reveals that a complex buildup of basalt intrusions into the crust releases enough CO₂ to cause this pre-eruptive warming.

Tree restoration is a popular approach to mitigating climate change, but its hydrological impacts are often overlooked. Tree restoration increases evaporation, as well as increasing downwind precipitation due to enhanced moisture recycling. Our study shows that these combined effects can affect regions’ wetness or dryness, streamflow and water availability.

Mass spectrometry measurements show that the concentration of helium in the atmosphere has risen over the past five decades due to fossil fuel emissions.

Recurring climatic patterns can be used to predict severe winter particulate air pollution over North China, according to an analysis of wintertime particulate concentrations and atmospheric circulation.

Most of the eastern Antarctic Peninsula’s coastline has undergone uninterrupted advance since the early 2000s due to enhanced near-shore sea ice, according to satellite observations and reanalysis data.

Global tree restoration could cause substantial and regionally variable changes in water availability, according to an ensemble of Budyko models and moisture recycling data.

Changes in land use threaten the stability of carbon in Peru’s peatlands, which store almost as much carbon as the entirety of the above-ground Peruvian carbon stock but in 5% of the land area, according to maps of the extent and depth of peat.

Aridity and rainfall seasonality have contrasting effects on global salinization, according to an analysis combining soil observations and ecohydrological modelling.

Enhancing rock weathering across UK croplands could deliver substantial atmospheric carbon dioxide removal alongside agricultural co-benefits, according to coupled climate–carbon–nitrogen cycle model simulations.

Observations suggest early twentieth-century human activities, in the form of canal construction, increased groundwater availability in northwest India and Pakistan, in contrast to recent depletion driven by tubewell development and low rainfall.

Ingression of magmatic gas into a geothermal aquifer generated cyclical deformation and primed the system for the 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption, Iceland, according to a catalogue of 39,500 precursory earthquakes combined with a poroelastic model.

Cratons in central and southern Africa exhibit diverse structures, compositions and responses to geodynamic settings, according to a high-resolution thermochemical regional model constructed from land- and satellite-based geophysical observations.

Pulses of silicic arc magmatism—and associated volatile emissions—helped set the timing and magnitude of the environmental disruptions that caused the end-Permian mass extinction, according to U–Pb zircon dating of silicic volcanic and related tephra sequences in eastern Australia.

Continental flood basalt emplacement is facilitated by basaltic intrusions, which crystalize and release carbon dioxide leading to pre-eruptive global warming, according to numerical models and a comparison with Deccan Traps and Columbia River Basalt records.

Accounting for experimental data on hydrous peridotites reduces the estimated water recycled into the deep mantle during subduction and suggests sea-level stability over geological time, according to subduction zone thermopetrological modelling.