Earth and environmental sciences

Europe is a heatwave hotspot exhibiting three-to-four times faster upward trends compared to the rest of the northern midlatitudes. Here, this accelerated trend is linked to the increased persistence of Eurasian double jets in the upper troposphere.

The 18 O/16 O ratio of the subcontinental mantle has decreased by 0.2‰, while crustal values increased by 4‰ via fluid transfer since the Archean due to the initiation of plate tectonics and subduction, in line with the crust-upper mantle mass balance

The relationship between new greenspaces and gentrification is an important one for urbanization. Here the authors show a positive relationship for at least one decade between greening in the 1990s–2000s and gentrification that occurred between 2000–2016 in 17 of 28 studied cities in North America and Europe.

Stalagmites from NW Iberia record the rapid demise of large ice sheets during the penultimate deglaciation, and reveal decadal-scale feedbacks between warming and ice melting.

Most porous systems comprise structures characterized by dead-end and transmitting pores. Here, authors show that macroscopic transport through such porous medium is controlled by structure-induced laminar vortices inside each dead-end pore, and such cannot be explained by diffusion alone.

Mineral-organic associations play a key role in soil carbon preservation. Here, Georgiou et al. produce global estimates of mineral-associated soil carbon, providing insight into the world’s soils and their capacity to store carbon

The authors present novel observations providing insights into the formation of extraordinary gold-rich veins. We discovered metal nanoparticles associated with amorphous silica and carbon indicating their essential contribution to efficient gold deposition.

Albedo changes caused by projected future urban land expansion will contribute to global warming without proper mitigation. This warming effect will be larger under higher emission scenarios than under lower emission scenarios.

Spines are an important physical defense for many plant species. Here, the authors describe seven different spine morphologies from the Eocene of central Tibet associated with regional aridification and expansion of herbivorous mammals.

The effects of fertiliser from intensive agriculture are well recognised, but not so well for fine-sediment. Here we show how widespread ingress of agriculturally derived fine-sediment since the 1940s markedly amplifies methane emissions from streams.

This study shows that sea anemones acclimated to high temperatures exhibit increased resistance to thermal stress and that this improved fitness can be transferred by microbiome transplantation. These results indicate that plasticity mediated by the microbiota might be an important factor facilitating thermal adaptations in animals.

Noble gases confirm billion-year groundwater residence times and external fluxes in deep crustal settings globally with implications for subsurface habitability and economic reservoir formation over planetary timescales both on Earth and beyond

Using cold-water corals, this work identifies a deep outflow of Pacific waters via the Tasman Sea during the last ice age, thus highlighting the role of this area for the interoceanic exchange of water masses on climatic time scales.

Li et al. established a liquid-liquid partition model based on ab initio calculations to reveal that He and Ne strongly fractionate during core-mantle separation, which concludes the primitive volatiles seen in hotspots cannot be from the core.

Increased droughts are associated with climate change. Here, the authors reveal an association between long-term drought and an elevated risk of diarrhea in children under five in low- and middle income countries, and suggest that improving water quality, sanitation, and hygiene practices might reduce the risk.

Trace metals have been an important ingredient for life throughout Earth’s history. Here, the authors show that a member of an elusive archaeal lineage (Caldarchaeales or Aigarchaeota) requires tungsten for growth, and provide evidence that tungsten-dependent metabolism played a role in the origin and evolution of this lineage.

The 2021 eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula of Iceland was the first in 800 years and was supplied by melts from diverse mantle source domains with near-identical oxygen isotope ratios, providing a unique insight into the Icelandic mantle plume.

This study presents seismic images across the central Tianshan. The results show that Tianshan’s crust was extensively deformed according to its inherited properties, but was limitedly underthrusted by surrounding blocks

Significant regional disparities exist in the time left to prepare for unprecedented drought and how much we can buy time depending on climate scenarios. Specific regions pass this timing by the middle of 21st century even with stringent mitigation.

While the evaporative water loss from global lakes is invisible, the volume is substantial. In recent decades, lake evaporation volume has been significantly increasing due to enhanced evaporation rate, melting lake ice, and expansion of water extent.

Floods are most devastating for those who can least afford to be hit. Globally, 1.8 billion people face high flood risks; 89% of them live in developing countries; 170 million of them live in extreme poverty making them most vulnerable.

Electronic waste is a global issue brought about by the short lifespan of electronics. Here, the authors report a process to upcycle compact discs into flexible and stretchable bio-electronics.

The lightning's nature is that different-polarity leaders extend in air. Only negative leaders' development was previously associated to floating plasma. We found that the floating plasma could also lead the positive leader stepwise development.

CH₄ inputs to Arctic lakes via groundwater discharge are an important pathway that links CH₄ production in thawing permafrost to emission via lakes. Here the authors unravel the role and drivers of groundwater inflows for CH₄ emissions from Arctic lakes.

Earth’s largest dune fields are set to become less dynamic on average over this century due to anthropogenic climate change, with no future action able to mitigate this effect, as predicted by the newest iteration of CMIP models.

An ethically-based method for allocating climate change mitigation effort among subsidiaries, applicable worldwide, is proposed. Applied to the EU Green Deal, this results in a wider range of targets than the Commission’s proposal of 2021.

New study concludes that environmental tradeoffs of direct air capture and sequestration technologies are linked to the energy system in which they will operate, and their deployment should not equate to a relaxation of decarbonization or resource use efficiency targets.

A new analysis of Rosetta mass spectra reveals an ensemble of complex organic molecules with striking similarities to other organic reservoirs in the Solar System, including Saturn’s ring rain material, pointing at a likely joint prestellar history.

New study shows how region-specific policy under the Avoid–Shift–Improve framework may aid in realizing a deep decarbonization in the transport sector and assist in achieving China’s carbon neutrality goals.

Without targeted climate adaptation, impacts of climate change threaten achievement of all 169 SDG targets. Fuldauer et al. provide an actionable framework to assess these impacts and help systematically align national adaptation plans with the SDGs.

Microbes are intimately linked with the fate of organic matter. Here the authors develop an ecological network framework and show how microbes and dissolved organic matter interact along global change drivers of temperature and nutrient enrichment via manipulative field experiments on mountains.

Record-breaking rates of increasing atmospheric methane concentrations in 2020 and 2021 are alarming, but puzzling, in view of declining methane emissions from fossil fuel in 2020. The authors show that interannual variation of both positive and negative feedbacks contribute positively to the rising methane concentration.

Plant-wax isotope and dust flux records reveal that the long-term variability of the Northwest African monsoon is controlled by tropical solar radiation gradients. Grasslands expand into the Sahara during strong monsoons, but the ultimate composition of the ecosystem is controlled by CO₂.

Hot cubic ice is shown to retain dissolved salt in its lattice, suggesting the mantle of water-rich exoplanets is more permeable to electrolytes than assumed, which has implications on its properties and on the element cycles inside such planets.

A horizon scan was used to explore possible impacts of robotics and automated systems on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Positive effects are likely. Iterative regulatory processes and continued dialogue could help avoid environmental damages and increases in inequality.

The Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on Earth. Interactions between clouds and aerosols play a role in these changes. We report how the quantities and origins of aerosols that affect cloud ice formation change over a full sea ice cycle

The widespread disappearance of siliceous life sustained extreme temperatures in the wake of Earth’s most severe mass extinction event.

Co-optimization of renewable power and water desalination systems for Neom, a futuristic seaside city in an arid region, results in more pronounced cost investment savings for a high share of renewable sources.

Postfire sagebrush seeding treatments are widely applied across the western USA but evidence for the success of this restoration approach has been variable. Examining >1500 wildfires, this study shows that positive treatment effects were only detected after considering systematic differences between treated and untreated sites due to effects of selection biases in restoration.

Mantle rocks can efficiently bind carbon by reaction with CO₂ if fluid pathways remain open. This study of samples from Oman demonstrates that coupling of synchronous reaction and deformation facilitates fluid flow and massive carbon sequestration.

The dominant driver of variations in global land carbon sink remains unclear. Here the authors show that the seasonal compensation of temperature effects on land carbon sink in the Northern Hemisphere could induce a global water dominance.

Powerful avalanches were recorded for the first time in an underwater canyon that lies 100 s of km from land. This challenges a long-held view and indicates > 1000 similar canyons worldwide actively pump sediment and pollutants into the deep-sea.

The metabolisms proposed for hypothetical life in the clouds of Venus cannot explain the planet’s atmospheric chemistry and thus a limit can be placed on the maximum allowed biomass.

Weddell Sea dense water formation facilitates carbon sequestration on centennial time scales. The authors show that for a high-emission scenario, carbon sequestration is reduced by 2100 due to water-mass property changes on the continental shelf.