Earth and environmental sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent technological, social, and educational changes are profoundly impacting our work, but what makes labour markets resilient to those labour shocks? Here, the authors show that labour markets resemble ecological systems whose resilience depends critically on the network of skill similarities between different jobs.

    • Esteban Moro
    • , Morgan R. Frank
    •  & Iyad Rahwan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anthropogenic changes, such as eutrophication from lake pollution, can lead to rapid evolution. Comparing Daphnia resurrected from generations adapted to historical pollution to contemporary, post-cleanup populations finds that Daphnia rapidly reversed their evolved resistance to harmful cyanobacteria.

    • Jana Isanta-Navarro
    • , Nelson G. Hairston Jr
    •  & Dominik Martin-Creuzburg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the rainfall intensity of tropical cyclones changes with climate change is not well known. Here, the authors show that while the rain rate in the outer region of TCs is clearly increasing between 1999 and 2018, it decreases significantly in the inner-core of TCs during 1999-2018.

    • Shifei Tu
    • , Jianjun Xu
    •  & Long S. Chiu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Radioactive 137Cs is a fission product remaining in the environment from mid-20th century nuclear testing. Here the authors show that vegetation thousands of kilometers from testing sites continues to cycle 137Cs, and consequently, bees magnify this contaminant in honey in regions with low soil potassium.

    • J. M. Kaste
    • , P. Volante
    •  & A. J. Elmore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of water scarcity depend on physical basin characteristics and global economic dynamics. Here, the authors show scenario assumptions can yield either highly positive or negative economic impacts due to water scarcity, and the drivers of these impacts are basin-specific and cannot be determined a priori.

    • Flannery Dolan
    • , Jonathan Lamontagne
    •  & Jae Edmonds

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how cities respond to extreme weather is critical; as such events are becoming more frequent. Using anonymized mobile phone data for Houston, Texas during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the authors find that mobility behavior exposes neighborhood disparities in resilience capacity and recovery.

    • Boyeong Hong
    • , Bartosz J. Bonczak
    •  & Constantine E. Kontokosta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sea-level rise is an important part of climate change, but most sea-level budgets are global and cannot capture important regional changes. Here the authors estimate sea-level budgets along the U.S. Atlantic coast, finding a faster rate of rise during the 20th century than any time in the past 2000 years.

    • Jennifer S. Walker
    • , Robert E. Kopp
    •  & Benjamin P. Horton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    During geomagnetic substorms, the energy accumulated from solar wind is abruptly transported to ionosphere. Here, the authors show application of community detection on the time-varying networks constructed from all magnetometers collaborating with the SuperMAG initiative.

    • L. Orr
    • , S. C. Chapman
    •  & W. Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors show that Earth and Moon are characterized by different vanadium isotope compositions, which is most likely resulting from vanadium isotope fractionation of the bulk silicate proto-Earth during the main stage of terrestrial core formation—followed by a canonical giant impact scenario, where 80% of the Moon originates from an impactor of chondritic composition.

    • Sune G. Nielsen
    • , David V. Bekaert
    •  & Maureen Auro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fire activity in China and its associations with climate are not well quantified at a local scale. Here, the authors present a detailed fire occurrence dataset for China and find a dipole fire pattern between southwestern and southeastern China that is modulated by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

    • Keyan Fang
    • , Qichao Yao
    •  & Valerie Trouet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chlorine behaviour during complex, polybaric arc magma degassing is poorly understood. Here, the authors show that chemical feedbacks during coeval magma differentiation and degassing account for the Cl record at both volcanoes and ore deposits, and quantify the role of Cl in efficient copper extraction during degassing.

    • B. Tattitch
    • , C. Chelle-Michou
    •  & R. R. Loucks

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inland waters emit greenhouse gases, but robust estimations are hampered by a dearth of spatio-temporally resolved measurements. Here the authors present annual fluxes of CO2 from Chinese inland waters over the past several decades, showing that emission fluxes have significantly declined since the 80s.

    • Lishan Ran
    • , David E. Butman
    •  & Shaoda Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sunlight can change the composition of atmospheric aerosol particles, but the mechanisms through which this happens are not well known. Here, the authors show that fast radical reaction and slow diffusion near viscous organic particle surfaces can cause oxygen depletion, radical trapping and humidity dependent oxidation.

    • Peter A. Alpert
    • , Jing Dou
    •  & Markus Ammann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study proposes a method to differentiate between local plutonium-based contamination in soils versus trace plutonium stemming from global dispersion in the past, such as fallout from detonation and atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

    • Chris Tighe
    • , Maxi Castrillejo
    •  & Malcolm J. Joyce

  • Article
    | Open Access

    BIPP with biochar sequestration is a ready-to-implement negative emission technology in China. Here, the authors show that its national deployment could contribute to a 61% reduction of carbon emissions per GDP in 2030 compared to 2005, and contribute 13–31% of the global biomass-based negative emission goal by 2050.

    • Qing Yang
    • , Hewen Zhou
    •  & Michael B. McElroy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A key strategy for meeting China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 °C climate goal is to rapidly shift away from unabated coal use. Here, the authors detail how to structure a high-ambition, plant-by-plant coal phaseout in China while balancing multiple national needs.

    • Ryna Yiyun Cui
    • , Nathan Hultman
    •  & Mengye Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents hourly data from a thermistor string in Lake Michigan, inspecting its response at depth to surface warming. Based on the data, the study suggests bottom lake temperatures respond to changes in turnover and re-stratification, with the ultimate possibility of the lake shifting from dimictic to monomictic.

    • Eric J. Anderson
    • , Craig A. Stow
    •  & Nathan Hawley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Determining the origins of life on Earth is confounded by the fact that the sources of nutrients necessary to create early life forms remain mysterious. Here the authors show that lightning strikes could have supplied a major source of essential phosphorus on early Earth.

    • Benjamin L. Hess
    • , Sandra Piazolo
    •  & Jason Harvey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Temperature changes as a result of climate change are expected to impact electric capacity and investment. Here, the authors show that in the United States under socioeconomic pathway 2 and RCP 8.5 mean temperature rises will drive increased electricity demand (0.5-8%) by 2100, along increases in capital investments by 3-22%.

    • Zarrar Khan
    • , Gokul Iyer
    •  & Marshall Wise

  • Article
    | Open Access

    El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key mode of climate variability with worldwide climate impacts. Here, the authors show that improved representation of summer equatorial Atlantic variability and its lagged teleconnection mechanism with the Pacific, relates to enhanced predictive capacity of autumn/winter ENSO.

    • Eleftheria Exarchou
    • , Pablo Ortega
    •  & Chloé Prodhomme

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study investigates the underlying physical mechanisms of turbidity currents travelling thousands of miles in confined submarine settings, rather than diffusing after short distance. Using high resolution simulations with up to a billion grid points helps to understand the evolving layered structure of a current.

    • Jorge S. Salinas
    • , S. Balachandar
    •  & M. I. Cantero

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is expected that tropical deforestation and related increases in heat exposure have negative impacts on labour productivity, but the size of the effect is not well known. Here, the authors show that deforestation reduces productivity by 8.22% in rural Indonesia and causes behavioural adaptation responses like more work breaks.

    • Yuta J. Masuda
    • , Teevrat Garg
    •  & June T. Spector

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors follow a new approach using analytic solutions for Poiseuille-Couette channel flow to compute asthenospheric viscosities under the Caribbean. Active asthenospheric flow observed under the Caribbean contradicts the traditional view that the asthenosphere is only a passive lubricating layer for Earth’s tectonic plates.

    • Yi-Wei Chen
    • , Lorenzo Colli
    •  & Hejun Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anoxic marine zones are expanding and intensifying with climate change. Here the authors show that microbial dark carbon fixation influences the carbonate system and the stable isotope composition in waters off Chile, contributing up to 35% of the organic carbon reaching the mesopelagic region.

    • Cristian A. Vargas
    • , Sebastian I. Cantarero
    •  & Joe Salisbury

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Synthetic metagenomics could potentially unravel the complexities of microbial ecosystems by revealing the simplicity of microbial communities captured in a single cell. Conceptionally, a yeast cell carrying a representative synthetic metagenome could uncover the complexity of multi-species interactions, illustrated here with wine ferments.

    • Ignacio Belda
    • , Thomas C. Williams
    •  & Isak S. Pretorius

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of climate change on highland malaria transmission remains unclear because of increasing and decreasing trends. Here, Rodó et al. analyze malaria case data and climate data for the Ethiopian highlands from 1968 to 2008 and find that changes in temperature and associated climate variability facilitated the effect of interventions at the beginning of the 21st century.

    • Xavier Rodó
    • , Pamela P. Martinez
    •  & Mercedes Pascual

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recently triggered seismic events such as the Pohang earthquake have exceeded predictions of average energy releases by a factor of 1000. A new framework is proposed to define maximum event magnitudes as a function of pre-existing critical stresses and fluid injection volume.

    • Ziyan Li
    • , Derek Elsworth
    •  & M. W. McClure

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether tropical forest fragments within plantation landscapes are resilient to drought. Here the authors analyse LiDAR and ground-based data from the 2015-16 El Niño event across a logging intensity gradient in Borneo. Although regenerating forests continued to grow, canopy height near oil palm plantations decreased, and a strong edge effect extended up to at least 300 m away.

    • Matheus Henrique Nunes
    • , Tommaso Jucker
    •  & David A. Coomes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Both ecological opportunity and phenotypic modularity have been suggested to facilitate adaptive radiations. Feiner et al. show that Anolis lizards evolved a new modularity structure in their island adaptive radiation, but that this modularity did not produce the same extreme diversification when Anolis returned to the mainland.

    • Nathalie Feiner
    • , Illiam S. C. Jackson
    •  & Tobias Uller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tropical cyclones can cause severe damage and can thus have devastating impacts on societies. Here, the authors use Medicare data to show that tropical cyclone exposure in the United States is associated with increased hospitalization rates for older adults from many different acute causes.

    • Robbie M. Parks
    • , G. Brooke Anderson
    •  & Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Antarctic Peninsula sees some of the strongest warming of the whole continent over the last decades, the drivers of which are not well known. Here, the authors show that winter sea surface temperature increases in the Tasman sea lead to changes in Southern Ocean storm tracks that in turn warm the Antarctic Peninsula.

    • Kazutoshi Sato
    • , Jun Inoue
    •  & Irina Rudeva

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The interplay between continental subduction exhumation dynamics and the obduction of ophiolite sheets remains enigmatic. Here, the authors show that the extrusion of the subducted continental upper crust triggers the necking and breaking of the oceanic upper plate and leads to far-travelled ophiolite sheet emplacement.

    • Kristóf Porkoláb
    • , Thibault Duretz
    •  & Ernst Willingshofer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Along the cold subduction geotherm, glaucophane remains stable down to pressure and temperature (P–T) conditions of ca. 240 km depth, whereas under the warm subduction geotherm, it dehydrates and breaks down into pyroxenes and silica between ca. 50 and 100 km depths.

    • Yoonah Bang
    • , Huijeong Hwang
    •  & Yongjae Lee

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