Volume 17 Issue 9, September 2024

The processes that control the deformation and eventual destruction of Earth’s oldest continental crust are unclear. Mantle flow models suggest subduction played a role in the deformation of the North China Craton.

Clinopyroxene offers clues about the inner workings of volcanic systems, as Teresa Ubide explains. Its ability to track where and when magma is stored may also help forecast eruptions.

Deformation experiments and piezoelectric modelling show that the electric charge generated by quartz crystals is capable of depositing dissolved gold. These results suggest that the piezoelectric activity of quartz might drive gold nugget formation from hydrothermal solutions in earthquake settings.

Humid heatwaves are often limited by the onset of convective rain, such as thunderstorms. Observational reanalysis data and climate models indicate that dry air 1–3 km above the Earth’s surface can curtail convective storms, allowing humid heatwaves to intensify on the ground. This effect is likely to be exacerbated by increasing global temperatures.

Wildfires are a natural disturbance in Arctic and boreal regions, but unprecedented wildfire extremes over the past decade have been linked to climate warming. Tracking fires at high temporal resolution reveals a large spatial variability in Arctic–boreal fire regimes driven by environmental and anthropogenic factors, which also modulate the climate sensitivity of different regions.

A re-evaluation of global land-to-ocean carbon exports using a multi-model ensemble and a database of observations reveals that the export of carbon by rivers is 20% higher than that reported in the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. These findings underscore the important contribution of riverine carbon to the carbon budget.

A global analysis of post-fire vegetation productivity recovery reveals that the recovery time shows spatial variations across vegetation types and regions. The dominant factors that influence the recovery time in the majority of the global burned area are the post-fire climate conditions, such as soil moisture, vapour pressure deficit and air temperature.

The increasing use of manufactured sand in China since 2010 has greatly reduced the proportion of natural sand in the country’s total sand supply, from 80% in 1995 to 21% in 2020, according to a material flow analysis of sand in China.

Climate model simulations and reanalysis data suggest that inhibition of atmospheric convection by dry air intensifies moist heatwaves, and this process may further increase moist heatwaves under climate warming.

Large-ensemble simulations suggest that strong regional trends in precipitation and temperature extremes will be common over the next two decades, even under stringent mitigation measures.

About 6% of the total uptake of carbon dioxide by the ocean is due to rainfall, according to an analysis of satellite observations and ERA5 reanalysis data from 2008 to 2018.

Subtropical and extratropical sea surface temperature changes can explain recent observed Walker circulation strengthening, according to climate model experiments.

Arctic–boreal biomes vary regionally in the sensitivity of their fire regime to climate, according to an analysis of properties of individual fires measured by satellite radiometry.

More than 80% of vegetation burned globally regained its pre-fire level of productivity within 2 years, according to an assessment of post-fire vegetation productivity from 2004 to 2021.

Increasing the number of global changes reduces the resistance of ecosystem services worldwide, according to an analysis of global available observational data and field experiments.

Linear aeolian dunes aligned in the direction of snow drift are widespread across Antarctica, indicating a limited supply of mobile snow particles controlled by snow sintering, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.

Global riverine carbon export to the ocean may exceed previous estimates, underscoring the important role of riverine carbon to the carbon budget, according to a multi-model ensemble assessment constrained by a global dataset.

Soil moisture greatly affects the response of soil respiration to warming, according to 13 years of warming experiments in a boreal forest.

Genomes recovered from a Tibetan Plateau ice core extending back 41,000 years show that preserved viral communities varied substantially with cold-to-warm climate cycles.

Quartz emits a piezoelectric charge during deformation that may promote the formation of gold nuggets within veins in orogenic settings that experience earthquakes, according to a study using quartz deformation experiments and piezoelectric modelling.

Enhanced chemical weathering following continental breakup may have driven a succession of Mesozoic oceanic anoxic events, according to tectonic and biogeochemical modelling.

Mesozoic deformation of the North China Craton occurred via lithospheric thickening followed by thinning and extension triggered by flat-slab subduction and rollback, according to four-dimensional mantle flow models of the plate–mantle system.