Earth and environmental sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many cities in the US self-report greenhouse gas emissions. Here, the authors find that US cities under-report their own greenhouse gas emissions, on average, by 18.3% because city inventories omit some fuels and source types and estimate transportation emissions differently.

    • Kevin Robert Gurney
    • , Jianming Liang
    •  & Thomas Lauvaux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change may pose a challenge not only for survival of animals but also for their reproduction. Here, Schou et al. analyse how male and female ostrich fertility relates to fluctuating temperature across 20 years, finding reduced fertility away from the thermal optimum, but also individual variation in thermal tolerance.

    • Mads F. Schou
    • , Maud Bonato
    •  & Charlie K. Cornwallis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cloud cover and scarcity of ground-based validation hinder remote sensing of forest dynamics in the Amazon basin. Here, the authors analyse imagery from a high-frequency geostationary satellite sensor to study monthly NDVI patterns in the Amazon forest, finding support for spatially extensive seasonality.

    • Hirofumi Hashimoto
    • , Weile Wang
    •  & Ramakrishna R. Nemani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Clays in soil impact atmospheric CO2 by stabilizing soil organic matter, yet the dynamics of this process under future climate conditions are unknown. Here the authors present a way to observe clay-carbon dynamics within micro-aggregates using 4D imaging and a customized microfluidic chip.

    • Judy Q. Yang
    • , Xinning Zhang
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The regulation of aircraft engine NOx emissions was introduced to improve local air quality and reduce NOx emissions at altitude. Here, the authors find that greater fuel efficiency of aircrafts, and therefore lower CO2 emissions, could be preferable to reducing NOx emissions in terms of the aviation industries future climate impacts.

    • Agnieszka Skowron
    • , David S. Lee
    •  & Bethan Owen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet—a threat for sea level rise—is accelerated by ice algal blooms. Here the authors find a link between mineral phosphorus and glacier algae, indicating that dust-derived nutrients aid bloom development, thereby impacting ice sheet melting.

    • Jenine McCutcheon
    • , Stefanie Lutz
    •  & Liane G. Benning

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest structure depends both on extrinsic factors such as climate and on intrinsic properties such as community composition and diversity. Here, the authors use a dataset of stand structural complexity based on LiDAR measurements to build a global map of structural complexity for primary forests, and find that precipitation variables best explain global patterns of forest structural complexity.

    • Martin Ehbrecht
    • , Dominik Seidel
    •  & Christian Ammer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Globally, new particle formation represents a major source of cloud condensation nuclei. Here, the authors present evidence of frequent occurrence of new particle formation in the upper part of remote marine boundary layer following cold front passages.

    • Guangjie Zheng
    • , Yang Wang
    •  & Jian Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Southern Ocean takes up the most heat and carbon, yet because of its remote and harsh location, it remains relatively sparsely measured. Here the authors use a 25 year temperature series which shows a clear, long term trend in subsurface warming that emerges from interannual variability.

    • Matthis Auger
    • , Rosemary Morrow
    •  & Rebecca Cowley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global oxygen regulation over Earth history has largely depended on variations in organic carbon burial, which includes the suppression of land vegetation due to fires. Here, the authors show that major evolutionary changes in plant ecosystems could have influenced fire regimes and thus affected atmospheric O2.

    • Claire M. Belcher
    • , Benjamin J. W. Mills
    •  & Andrew J. Watson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Rustenburg Layered Suite of the Bushveld Complex, South Africa, has long been regarded as a textbook result of fractional crystallization from a melt-dominated magma chamber. Here, the authors find that the Rustenburg Layered Suite can be derived from crustal assimilation by komatiitic magma to form magmatic mushes without requiring the existence of a magma chamber by using thermodynamic models.

    • Zhuosen Yao
    • , James E. Mungall
    •  & M. Christopher Jenkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors report in-situ formation of jarosite witin the Talos Dome ice core (East Antarctica) and show that this ferric-potassium sulfate mineral is present in ice deeper than 1000 meters and progressively increases with depth. This has implications for the presence and formation mechanisms of jarosite observed on Mars.

    • Giovanni Baccolo
    • , Barbara Delmonte
    •  & Massimo Frezzotti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Online shopping deliveries are booming, but the environmental cost is not always accounted. Here, the authors examine the impact of delivery services in China from 2007 to 2018 and find that Greenhouse gas emissions surged from 0.3 Mt in 2007 to 13.7 Mt of CO2-equivalent in 2018, they predict that emissions could reach 75 MtCO2e by 2035 if no mitigation measures are adopted.

    • Peng Kang
    • , Guanghan Song
    •  & Huabo Duan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    China announced a ban on its import of most plastic waste in 2017, resulting in an impact on global environmental sustainability. Here the authors quantify the environmental impacts of changes in the flow patterns and treatment methods of 6 types of plastic waste in 18 countries subsequent to the ban.

    • Zongguo Wen
    • , Yiling Xie
    •  & Christian Doh Dinga

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global flood risk is assessed in this study; in particular, the authors describe, based on a modeling approach, the positive effect of river dams on mitigating flood hazards to people.

    • Julien Boulange
    • , Naota Hanasaki
    •  & Yadu Pokhrel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The expansion of oceanic anoxia during the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum has important implications for faunal turnover patterns and global biogeochemical cycles. Here the authors use uranium isotopes and a biogeochemical model to suggest that the areal expansion of anoxia must have been limited to 10-fold.

    • Matthew O. Clarkson
    • , Timothy M. Lenton
    •  & Derek Vance

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soils hold massive amounts of carbon that hangs in the balance of microbial respiration and climate warming. Here the authors analyze a global dataset starting in 1987 and find through modeling that though soil respiration change had flatlined, recently it has resumed increasing owing to global warming.

    • Jiesi Lei
    • , Xue Guo
    •  & Yunfeng Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relative roles of the ocean and atmosphere for the Atlantic Niño is poorly understood. Here, we show that its seasonality is governed by atmospheric diabatic heating that is associated with the seasonal migration of the inter-tropical convergence zone.

    • Hyacinth C. Nnamchi
    • , Mojib Latif
    •  & Ingo Richter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Governments may struggle to impose costly polices on vital industries, resulting in a greater need for negative emissions. Here, the authors model a direct air capture crash deployment program, finding it can remove 2.3 GtCO2 yr–1 in 2050, 13–20 GtCO2 yr–1 in 2075, and 570–840 GtCO2 cumulative over 2025–2100.

    • Ryan Hanna
    • , Ahmed Abdulla
    •  & David G. Victor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Constraining the rise in atmospheric oxygen through the early Earth is important to understand the evolution of complex life. Here, the authors find that a major rise in atmospheric oxygen level occurred after the Great Oxidation Event, followed by pO2 within 1% of present atmospheric level through most of the Proterozoic Eon (2.4 to 0.65 Ga).

    • Xiao-Ming Liu
    • , Linda C. Kah
    •  & Robert M. Hazen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nature and evolution of Earth’s crust during the Hadean and Eoarchean is largely unknown due to the lack of preserved material from this period. Here, the authors document a period of crustal rejuvenation between 3.2 and 3.0 Ga, coincident with peak mantle potential temperatures that imply greater degrees of mantle melting and injection of hot mafic-ultramafic magmas into older Hadean-to-Eoarchean felsic crust at this time.

    • C. L. Kirkland
    • , M. I. H. Hartnady
    •  & J. A. Hollis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Burial of organic material in marine sediments can sequester massive amounts of carbon, but the dynamics of this carbon sink are poorly understood. Here the authors investigate the so-called rusty carbon sink in Arctic shelf sediments, finding that organic carbon-iron associations are stable for 1000 s of years.

    • Johan C. Faust
    • , Allyson Tessin
    •  & Christian März

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microplastics have spread across the globe and reached even the most remote locations, but an understanding of their origins remains largely elusive. Here the authors quantify and characterise microplastics across the North Pole, finding that synthetic fibers like polyester are dominant and likely sourced from the Atlantic Ocean.

    • Peter S. Ross
    • , Stephen Chastain
    •  & Bill Williams

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors simulate bubble nucleation in silica-rich magma with conditions appropriate for Plinian eruptions. They demonstrate that the gap between decompression rate estimates from bubble number density and independent geospeedometers can be largely closed if nucleation is heterogenous facilitated by magnetite crystals and decompression rate is calculated as time-averaged values.

    • Sahand Hajimirza
    • , Helge M. Gonnermann
    •  & James E. Gardner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wildfires produce aerosols known to impact the climate, but the wider-reaching effects of this biomass burning are poorly constrained in models. Here the authors use a suite of observations from 12 campaigns around the globe to determine that the values used by most climate models overestimate the contribution of biomass burning aerosols.

    • Hunter Brown
    • , Xiaohong Liu
    •  & Duli Chand

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study investigates in the importance of non-fossil fuel NOx emissions in the surface-earth-nitrogen cycle. The study shows how changes of regional human activities directly influence δ15N signatures of deposited NOx to terrestrial environments and that emissions have largely been underestimated.

    • Wei Song
    • , Xue-Yan Liu
    •  & Cong-Qiang Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human emissions are thought to have caused an increase in wildfire risk, but how different emission sources contribute is less well known. Here, the authors show that the increase due to greenhouse gas emissions was balanced by aerosol-driven cooling, an effect that is projected to disappear during the 21st century.

    • Danielle Touma
    • , Samantha Stevenson
    •  & Sloan Coats

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanisms that drive highly explosive eruptions of low-viscosity magmas, such as at Sunset Crater volcano, remain uncertain. Here, the authors present evidence for an exsolved CO2 phase ~15 km beneath Sunset Crater that was the critical driver of rapid magma ascent leading to the explosive eruption.

    • Chelsea M. Allison
    • , Kurt Roggensack
    •  & Amanda B. Clarke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Groundwater discharge is a mechanism that transports chemicals from inland systems to the ocean, but it has been considered of secondary influence compared to rivers. Here the authors assess the global significance of groundwater discharge, finding that it has a unique and important contribution to ocean chemistry and Earth-system models.

    • Kimberley K. Mayfield
    • , Anton Eisenhauer
    •  & Adina Paytan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Arctic Ocean is influenced by carbon and nutrients from rivers and erosion, but how this affects phytoplankton productivity is not understood. Here, the authors use a spatio-temporally resolved biogeochemical model to estimate that the input of carbon and nutrients fuels 28–51% of annual Arctic Ocean productivity.

    • Jens Terhaar
    • , Ronny Lauerwald
    •  & Laurent Bopp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The 2012–2016 drought and western pine beetle outbreaks caused unprecedented mortality of ponderosa pine in the Sierra Nevada, California. Here, the authors analyse drone-based data from almost half a million trees and find an interaction between host size and climatic water deficit, with higher mortality for large trees in dry, warm conditions but not in cooler or wetter conditions.

    • Michael J. Koontz
    • , Andrew M. Latimer
    •  & Malcolm P. North

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether disasters spur policy change remains contested. Here, the authors utilize a dataset of 10,976 natural hazard events and multiple disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy indicators across 85 countries over eight years to show that frequency and severity factors are unassociated with improved DRR policy.

    • Daniel Nohrstedt
    • , Maurizio Mazzoleni
    •  & Giuliano Di Baldassarre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Seasonally averaged energy input into the ionosphere from geospace is generally considered to be symmetric. Here, the authors show preference for electromagnetic energy input at 450 km altitude into the northern hemisphere, on both the dayside and the nightside, when averaged over season.

    • I. P. Pakhotin
    • , I. R. Mann
    •  & D. J. Knudsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Control of mosquito populations using pesticides is important for malaria elimination, but effects of pesticides on humans aren’t well understood. Here, Prahl et al. show in a cohort of pregnant Ugandan women and their infants that household spraying with bendiocarb affects the fetal immune system and response to vaccination in infancy.

    • Mary Prahl
    • , Pamela Odorizzi
    •  & Margaret E. Feeney

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Grasslands, and the livestock that live there, are dynamic sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, but what controls these fluxes remains poorly characterized. Here the authors show that on the global level, grasslands are climate neutral owing to the cancelling effects of managed vs. natural systems.

    • Jinfeng Chang
    • , Philippe Ciais
    •  & Dan Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ice arches that form along Nares Strait, which separates Greenland and Ellesmere Island, act to reduce the export of thick multi-year ice out of the Arctic. Here, we show that there has been a recent trend towards shorter duration arch formation that has resulted in enhanced transport of ice along the strait.

    • G. W. K. Moore
    • , S. E. L. Howell
    •  & K. McNeil

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Amazonian Dark Earth is soil that has had mysteriously high fertility since ancient times, despite the fact that surrounding soils have very low nutrients. Here the authors’ use of isotope reconstructions indicate that these soils predate human settlement and could have alluvial and burning origins.

    • Lucas C. R. Silva
    • , Rodrigo Studart Corrêa
    •  & Roberto Ventura Santos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some algae produce compounds called alkenones that can reconstruct sea surface temperature through geological time, but in high latitudes unknown species complicate use of this proxy. Here the authors find a lineage of sea ice algae that produces alkenones and can be used as a paleo-sensor for sea ice abundance.

    • Karen Jiaxi Wang
    • , Yongsong Huang
    •  & Patricia Cabedo-Sanz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global energy transformation requires quantifying the "price of energy" and studying its evolution. Here the authors present a predictive framework that calculates the average US price of energy, estimating future energy demands for up to four years with excellent accuracy, designing and optimizing energy and monetary policies.

    • Stefanos G. Baratsas
    • , Alexander M. Niziolek
    •  & Efstratios N. Pistikopoulos

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