Earth and environmental sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the Central American mountains influence tropical cyclone (TC) development in the eastern North Pacific is not well understood. Here, the authors use model simulations to show that on a seasonal timescale, these mountains interrupt moisture transport from the Caribbean Sea and as a result, reduce TC activity by up to 35%.

    • Dan Fu
    • , Ping Chang
    •  & Hylke E. Beck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plastics are major marine pollutants, and while research suggests that they can release potential harmful additives into seawater, how environmental conditions influence this is unknown. Here the authors determine that byproducts released from microplastics are less under deep-sea conditions versus surface.

    • Vincent Fauvelle
    • , Marc Garel
    •  & Richard Sempéré

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Many different methods have been developed to forecast climate phenomena like the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which makes a fair comparison of their capabilities crucial. In this perspective, the authors discuss how choices in the evaluation method can lead to an overestimated perceived skill of ENSO forecasts.

    • James S. Risbey
    • , Dougal T. Squire
    •  & Carly R. Tozer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The deep North Pacific is the end of the road for global ocean circulation, but the circulation patterns and ventilation are poorly understood. Here the authors show that diffusive transports both along and across density layers play a leading role in returning 1,400 year old water to the surface.

    • Mark Holzer
    • , Tim DeVries
    •  & Casimir de Lavergne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forests can influence climate by affecting low cloud formation, but where and when this occurs is not well known. Here, the authors provide a global-scale assessment, based on satellite remote sensing observations, suggesting afforestation mostly increases low cloud cover which could potentially cool surface temperatures.

    • Gregory Duveiller
    • , Federico Filipponi
    •  & Alessandro Cescatti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Meteorites from space often include denser polymorphs of their minerals, providing records of past hypervelocity collisions. An olivine mineral crystal was shock-compressed by a high-power laser, and its transformation into denser ringwoodite was time-resolved using an X-ray free electron laser.

    • Takuo Okuchi
    • , Yusuke Seto
    •  & Norimasa Ozaki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbonate mineral aqueous solubility decreases as carbonates become more Mg-rich during subduction. Coupled with regional variations in amounts of carbon and water subducted, this explains discrepancies in estimates of carbon recycling, suggesting that only around a third returns to the surface.

    • Stefan Farsang
    • , Marion Louvel
    •  & Simon A. T. Redfern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How tropical cyclones have varied in intensity and frequency in the past is not well known as longer records are rare. Here, the authors show that changes in observing practices explain the recorded century scale increase in Atlantic major hurricane frequency, and recent increases are not part of a century-scale trend.

    • Gabriel A. Vecchi
    • , Christopher Landsea
    •  & Thomas Knutson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lead toxicity poses a big hurdle for the commercialization of perovskite optoelectronics, hence reducing the environmental impact holds the answer for its future application. To tackle this challenge, the authors utilize germanium to reduce the lead content, enabling highly luminescent eco-friendly compound for LEDs.

    • Dexin Yang
    • , Guoling Zhang
    •  & Dawei Di

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Seismic imaging of subducted plates offers a way to improve plate tectonic reconstructions. Here, Braszus et al. use new ocean-bottom seismometer data from the Lesser Antilles to locate subducted spreading centres and faults thus providing a new understanding of the evolution of the Caribbean plate.

    • Benedikt Braszus
    • , Saskia Goes
    •  & Marjorie Wilson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Freshwater salinisation is a growing water quality problem, but impacts and drivers across regional to global scales have been lacking. A new assessment of inter-regional freshwater salinisation demonstrates the importance of irrigation as a driver of salinisation.

    • Josefin Thorslund
    • , Marc F. P. Bierkens
    •  & Michelle T. H. van Vliet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reconciling the Snowball Earth hypothesis with sedimentological cyclicity has been a persistent challenge. A new cyclostratigraphic climate record for a Cryogenian banded iron formation in Australia provides evidence for orbital forcing of ice sheet advance and retreat cycles during Snowball Earth.

    • Ross N. Mitchell
    • , Thomas M. Gernon
    •  & Xiaofang He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper placed the identified Mariana type ophiolite within a global tectonic re-organization at ca. 530-520 Ma. Similar ophiolites, together with other geological and chemical proxies, newly constrained the timing of establishment of modern plate tectonics, along with its links to surficial changes that characterize the contemporary Earth.

    • Jinlong Yao
    • , Peter A. Cawood
    •  & Peng Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been suggested that younger people care more about climate change than older people. Here, the authors present ten year panel data from New Zealand and show that despite a generation gap in starting levels, climate change beliefs have increased at similar rates across ages over the 2009-2018 period.

    • Taciano L. Milfont
    • , Elena Zubielevitch
    •  & Chris G. Sibley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate models project an intensification of extreme precipitation under climate change, but this effect is difficult to detect in the observational record. Here, the authors show that a physically interpretable anthropogenic impact on extreme precipitation is detectable in global observational data sets.

    • Gavin D. Madakumbura
    • , Chad W. Thackeray
    •  & Alex Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nitrogen fixation by diazotrophs is critical for marine primary production. Using Tara Oceans datasets, this study combines a quantitative image analysis pipeline with metagenomic mining to provide an improved global overview of diazotroph abundance, diversity and distribution.

    • Juan José Pierella Karlusich
    • , Eric Pelletier
    •  & Rachel A. Foster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fate of soil carbon is controlled by plant inputs, microbial activity, and the soil matrix. Here the authors extend the notion of plant-derived particulate organic matter, from an easily available and labile carbon substrate, to a functional component at which persistence of soil carbon is determined.

    • Kristina Witzgall
    • , Alix Vidal
    •  & Carsten W. Mueller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Elevated Zn isotope compositions occur in K-Pg sedimentary layers of three different depositional environments across North America and the Caribbean. The data indicate a volatilization event, and act as a robust mechanistic indicator of the meteorite impact at the end of the Cretaceous.

    • Ryan Mathur
    • , Brandon Mahan
    •  & Francisca E. Oboh-Ikuenobe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Warmer and drier conditions are increasing the frequency of forest fires, which in turn produce pyrogenic carbon. Here the authors show that accumulation of pyrogenic carbon can suppress post-fire methane production in northern peatlands and can effectively buffer fire-derived greenhouse gas emissions.

    • Tianran Sun
    • , Juan J. L. Guzman
    •  & Largus T. Angenent

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Estimating velocities in gas liquid flows is of importance in many engineering applications. Hohermuth et al. show that previous bubble velocities obtained from intrusive probes have been underestimated and provide a correction scheme for more accurate velocity measurements.

    • B. Hohermuth
    • , M. Kramer
    •  & D. Valero

  • Article
    | Open Access

    N2 fixation by heterotrophic bacteria has recently been found to take place on sinking marine particles, but an understanding of its regulation and importance is lacking. Here the authors develop a trait-based model for this N2 fixation, finding that this once overlooked process could have global importance.

    • Subhendu Chakraborty
    • , Ken H. Andersen
    •  & Lasse Riemann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Arc olivines are commonly explained through a paradigm of core-to-rim sequential growth and oscillatory zoning is interpreted to represent magma mixing. Here the authors show Fo–Ni–P oscillatory zoned olivines can grow as out-of-sequence crystal frames and complex zoning can occur in closed systems.

    • Pablo Salas
    • , Philipp Ruprecht
    •  & Osvaldo Rabbia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Access to low cost finance is vital for developing economies’ transition to green energy. Here the authors show how modelled decarbonization pathways for developing economies are disproportionately impacted by different weighted average cost of capital (WACC) assumptions.

    • Nadia Ameli
    • , Olivier Dessens
    •  & Michael Grubb

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predicting the risk of flooding in coastal environments relies on accurate land elevation data, but this is not available in many parts of the world. Here the authors apply a global lowland digital terrain model derived from satellite LiDAR and determine that the regions most vulnerable to sea-level rise are in the tropics.

    • A. Hooijer
    •  & R. Vernimmen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How sea-level in the western Mediterranean reacts to climate changes is not well known. Here, the authors present a regional reconstruction and show that temperatures influenced sea-level change rates during the Holocene, while recent sea-level rise is happening faster than during any other period of the last 4000 years.

    • Matteo Vacchi
    • , Kristen M. Joyse
    •  & Alessio Rovere

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The drivers of monsoon systems in the past are not well known. Here, the authors present a model-based reconstruction of the last 30 million years and show that the south east Asian monsoon evolution is dominated by orographic development while the strength of the Indian Summer monsoon is controlled by a combination of factors.

    • James R. Thomson
    • , Philip B. Holden
    •  & Nigel B. W. Harris

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbes that colonise ice sheet surfaces are important to the carbon cycle, but their biomass and transport remains unquantified. Here, the authors reveal substantial microbial carbon fluxes across Greenland’s ice surface, in quantities that may sustain subglacial heterotrophs and fuel methanogenesis.

    • T. D. L. Irvine-Fynn
    • , A. Edwards
    •  & A. Hubbard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Release of freshwater into the oceans as a result of ice sheet melting could impact the distribution of climate-sensitive diseases. Here, the authors show that a rapid ice sheet melting in Greenland could cause an emergence of malaria in Southern Africa whilst transmission risks in West Africa may decline.

    • Alizée Chemison
    • , Gilles Ramstein
    •  & Cyril Caminade

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Subduction zone volcanoes are underlain by extensive magma plumbing systems, which can obscure original mantle source signals. Here, the authors show that intra-crystal oxygen isotope analysis of clinopyroxenes from the Sunda arc (Indonesia) reveal the δ18 O value of the sub-arc mantle.

    • Frances M. Deegan
    • , Martin J. Whitehouse
    •  & Osvaldo González-Maurel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) changed on glacial-interglacial time scales is not well known. Here, the authors present a 140,000 year long sediment record from the Drake passage and show both glacial-interglacial as well as millennial-scale variability which are linked to Atlantic variability and marine carbon storage.

    • Shuzhuang Wu
    • , Lester Lembke-Jene
    •  & Gerhard Kuhn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anomalously slow earthquakes play a critical role in the earthquake cycle and fault sliding. Here, the authors detect continuous seismic radiation from a glacier sliding over its bed and show persistent coastal shaking to represent an addition to the family of slow earthquakes.

    • Evgeny A. Podolskiy
    • , Yoshio Murai
    •  & Shin Sugiyama

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Land use intensification is a major driver of biodiversity change. Here the authors measure diversity across multiple trophic levels in agricultural grassland landscapes of varying management, finding decoupled responses of above- and belowground taxa to local factors and a strong impact of landscape-level land use.

    • Gaëtane Le Provost
    • , Jan Thiele
    •  & Peter Manning

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates can be used to estimate past demography, but methods to test for associations with environmental change are lacking. Here, DiNapoli et al. propose an approach using Approximate Bayesian Computation and illustrate it in a case study of Rapa Nui.

    • Robert J. DiNapoli
    • , Enrico R. Crema
    •  & Terry L. Hunt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Earth degassing is a critical carbon source, but its contribution to Cenozoic atmospheric CO2 variations is not well known. Here, the authors analyse CO2 fluxes on the Tibetan Plateau and suggest that the India-Asia collision was the primary driver of changes in atmospheric CO2 over the past 65 Ma.”

    • Zhengfu Guo
    • , Marjorie Wilson
    •  & Jiaqi Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite a ban on ozone depleting substances, ozone depletion during cold winters in the Arctic stratosphere has been increasing in recent decades. Here, the authors show conditions favourable for Arctic ozone depletion could worsen as a response of stratospheric temperature and water to continued release of greenhouse gases.

    • Peter von der Gathen
    • , Rigel Kivi
    •  & Markus Rex

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