Volume 15 Issue 8, August 2022

The Research Briefing is a new format for communicating research papers to our readers.

Rocket emissions and debris from spacecraft falling out of orbit are having increasingly detrimental effects on global atmospheric chemistry. Improved monitoring and regulation are urgently needed to create an environmentally sustainable space industry.

Analyses of the 2014 Iceland–Holuhraun volcanic eruption revealed the emitted aerosols induced a 10% increase in cloud coverage above the region, suggesting anthropogenic aerosols might strongly cool the Earth’s climate by increasing the cloud coverage.

Sea level rise causes barrier islands to migrate landward. Coastal evolution modelling reveals a centennial-scale lag in island response time and suggests migration rates will increase by 50% within the next century, even if sea level were to stabilize.

Monitoring of the daily global CO₂ emissions in 2020 reveals the spatial–temporal pattern of the drop in emissions due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The daily CO₂ emission changes also reveal different patterns of human activities and fossil CO₂ emissions across countries, sectors and periods.

Water that has been carried deep into the Earth by oceanic plates in subduction zones, can influence earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Three-dimensional images of electrical resistivity derived from electromagnetic geophysical data provide new constraints on the distribution, transport, and storage of water in the Cascadia subduction zone.

Satellite-based machine-learning analysis of a diffusive volcanic eruption suggests that aerosol climate forcing is dominated by changes in cloud cover, rather than changes in cloud brightness.

Observed daily changes in CO₂ emissions from across the globe reveal the sectors and countries where pandemic-related emissions declines were most pronounced in 2020.

The mercury concentration in the Arctic Ocean is lower and less variable in winter than in summer due to seasonal loss of inorganic mercury on the shelf, according to mercury measurements along a gradient in the northern Barents Sea.

Global in situ observations show greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands are lowest when the water table is near the surface, and therefore rewetting wetlands could substantially reduce future emissions.

Coastal evolution simulations suggest that the modern retreat of coastal barrier islands is controlled by cumulative sea-level rise over the past several centuries and will accelerate by 50% within a century, even if sea-level rise remains at present rates.

Field surveys suggest peatlands in the central Congo Basin are globally significant carbon stocks, storing approximately 28% of the world’s tropical peat carbon.

A machine-learning-based mapping of Antarctic subglacial geology suggests sedimentary basins lie beneath some of the most dynamic ice streams, increasing their vulnerability to rapid ice retreat.

Production and consumption of dissolved organic phosphorus in the surface ocean is controlled by the interplay between phosphate and iron stress, according to global analyses of the distribution of marine nutrients.

Marine carbon isotope patterns point to substantial deep water formation in the North Pacific during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period, according to a synthesis of carbon isotope records and isotope-enabled climate modelling.

Climate sensitivity in the late Miocene was comparable to the late Pleistocene and twenty-first century, with cooling at the time coupled to declining carbon dioxide, according to a CO₂ record determined from boron isotopes in planktic foraminifera

Pulses of Saharan dust have been entering the North Atlantic since at least 11 Ma, a result of astronomically paced cycles between arid and humid conditions in northern Africa, according to a terrigenous input record from an ocean core off west Africa.

The lithology of the overriding plate plays a critical role in determining fluid transport in subduction zones, according to magnetotelluric imaging of the impact of the dry, mafic Siletzia terrane on fluids in the Cascadia subduction zone, North America.