Solid Earth sciences articles within Nature

Featured

  • Letter |

    Deep seismic tremor in subduction zones has been suggested to repeat at a regular interval, migrate at various velocities and be modulated by tidal stress. Here, evidence is presented that a time-invariant interface property — possibly the ratio of brittle to ductile areas — controls tremor behaviour in the Nankai subduction zone, Japan. Where tremor duration is short, tremor is more strongly affected by tidal stress and migration is inhibited. Where tremor lasts longer, diffusive migration occurs with a constant diffusivity.

    • Satoshi Ide

  • Letter |

    Diamonds are formed under high pressure more than 150 kilometres deep in the Earth's mantle, and are brought to the surface mainly by volcanic rocks called kimberlites. Here, plate reconstructions and tomographic images have been used to show that the edges of the largest heterogeneities in the deepest mantle, stable for at least 200 million years and possibly for 540 million years, seem to have controlled the eruption of most Phanerozoic kimberlites. This has implications for future exploration for kimberlites.

    • Trond H. Torsvik
    • , Kevin Burke
    •  & Lewis D. Ashwal

  • News & Views |

    Plate reconstructions show that ancient eruptions of diamond-bearing rocks occurred consistently above a ring-like region of plume-generation zones deep in Earth's mantle. Do such zones remain stationary?

    • David A. D. Evans

  • News Feature |

    An imminent swarm of tiny quakes beneath western North America could help seismologists prepare for a big one — but only if they can learn to interpret the tremors, finds Naomi Lubick.

    • Naomi Lubick

  • Letter |

    Emissions of African dust increased sharply in the early 1970s, but the human contribution to land degradation and dust mobilization remains poorly understood. Now, a 3,200-year record of dust deposition off northwest Africa has been constructed. On the basis of this dust record and a proxy record for West African precipitation, it is suggested that human-induced dust emissions from the Sahel region have contributed to the atmospheric dust load for more than 200 years.

    • Stefan Mulitza
    • , David Heslop
    •  & Michael Schulz

  • Letter |

    Hominins colonized Eurasia fairly swiftly after they left Africa around 1.75 million years ago, although it had been thought that they did not penetrate beyond 45° N except in very warm intervals. Now, however, artefacts, fauna and flora dating back more 0.78 million years have been found in a river deposit in Norfolk, England. The findings show that humans were capable of penetrating northern Europe in cooler intervals, and will prompt a re-evaluation of the adaptations and abilities of humans at this early date.

    • Simon A. Parfitt
    • , Nick M. Ashton
    •  & Chris B. Stringer

  • Letter |

    Modern sperm whales have relatively small teeth and feed by suction, but the discovery of large teeth in the fossil record suggests that raptorial sperm whales once existed. Here the authors report the discovery of the teeth and jaws of a fossil raptorial sperm whale from the Middle Miocene of Peru, almost as large as a modern sperm whale but with a three-metre head and jaws full of teeth, some 36cm long.

    • Olivier Lambert
    • , Giovanni Bianucci
    •  & Jelle Reumer

  • Letter |

    Evidence for multicellular life before 1.6–1.0 billion years ago is scarce and controversial. Here the authors report organized, macroscopic structures from Gabon that date to 2.1 billion years ago, have a consistent structure and seem to show evidence of multicellular colonial organization. Coming not long after the rise in atmospheric oxygen concentration, these fossils might be considered harbingers of the multicellular life that drastically expanded about a billion years later.

    • Abderrazak El Albani
    • , Stefan Bengtson
    •  & Alain Meunier

  • News |

    European Space Agency mission provides the first global map of a key climate variable.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • News |

    Neosauropods sought out geothermal vents to keep their eggs warm.

    • Rex Dalton

  • Letter |

    Concentrations of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) decrease in the surface mixed layers during spring and summer in most of the oligotrophic ocean. The missing DIC is thought to be converted to particulate carbon by photosynthesis, but known mechanisms do not seem to supply enough nutrients for the photosynthesis. Here it is shown that short-lived transport events connect deep-water nitrate stocks with nutrient-poor surface waters.

    • Kenneth S. Johnson
    • , Stephen C. Riser
    •  & David M. Karl

  • Letter |

    Rifting and magmatism are fundamental geological processes that shape our planet's surface, but the nature of the relationship between these processes has been controversial. Here a numerical model that explicitly accounts for the effects of earlier episodes of extension has been applied to compare magmatism generated at different locations during continental rifting. The findings show that the volume of rift-related magmatism generated depends not only on the mantle temperature but also on the rift history.

    • John J. Armitage
    • , Jenny S. Collier
    •  & Tim A. Minshull

  • Letter |

    Volcanic eruptions release a large amount of sulphur dioxide. This is oxidized to sulphate and can then form sulphate aerosol, which can affect the Earth's radiation balance. Here, past volcanic eruptions and atmospheric conditions are investigated by using sulphur and triple oxygen isotope measurements of atmospheric sulphate preserved in the rock record. The results show that seven eruption-related sulphate aerosol deposition events occurred in the mid-Cenozoic era in the northern High Plains of North America.

    • Huiming Bao
    • , Shaocai Yu
    •  & Daniel Q. Tong

  • News |

    Most of the Solar System's comets may have been stolen from other stars.

    • Lucas Laursen

  • Letter |

    It has been proposed that the age of the Earth deduced from lead isotopes reflects loss of lead into space at the time of the Moon's formation rather than partitioning into metallic liquids during core formation. Here it is shown that lead partitioning into liquid iron depends strongly on carbon content and that, given a core carbon content of about 0.2%, there is evidence of strong partitioning of lead into the core throughout the Earth's accretion.

    • Bernard J. Wood
    •  & Alex N. Halliday

  • Letter |

    Here, global mantle flow is computed on the basis of recent, high-resolution seismic tomography, to investigate the role of buoyancy-driven and plate-motion-induced mantle circulation in the Mediterranean region. The findings show that mantle flow explains much of the observed dynamic topography and microplate motion in the region. Small-scale convection in the uppermost mantle may also hold the key to understanding complex mobile belts elsewhere.

    • Claudio Faccenna
    •  & Thorsten W. Becker

  • News & Views |

    Density variations within Earth's mantle may be a significant driver of both horizontal and vertical surface movements. The fingerprints of such mantle processes have been found in the Mediterranean region.

    • Rinus Wortel
    •  & Rob Govers

  • News Feature |

    The Icelandic eruption has given researchers the opportunity of a lifetime. Katharine Sanderson talks to scientists working around the clock to study the volcano and its effects.

    • Katharine Sanderson

  • Letter |

    Here, first-principles methods have been applied to calculate diffusion rates in the mineral post-perovskite under the conditions found in the Earth's lower mantle. The results show that the diffusion of Mg2+ and Si4+ in post-perovskite is extremely anisotropic. This could render post-perovskite up to four orders of magnitude weaker than perovskite, and might reconcile seismic observations of a D” reflector with recent experiments showing that the perovskite to post-perovskite transition is too wide to cause sharp reflectors.

    • M. W. Ammann
    • , J. P. Brodholt
    •  & D. P. Dobson

  • News & Views |

    The influence of the region where the lower mantle meets the core extends to Earth's surface. A computational study of mineral properties shows one way forward in understanding this enigmatic zone.

    • James A. Van Orman

  • Letter |

    The direction of tectonic plate motion at the Earth's surface and the flow field of the mantle inferred from seismic anisotropy are well correlated globally, implying large-scale coupling between the mantle and surface plates. But the fit is poor at subduction zones. Here, three-dimensional numerical models of buoyancy-driven deformation for the Alaska subduction–transform system are used to find the origin of the regional decoupling of flow. The results imply local rapid transport of geochemical signatures through subduction zones.

    • Margarete A. Jadamec
    •  & Magali I. Billen

  • Letter |

    The upper 300 m of the world's oceans act as a giant heat sink and have absorbed the majority of the excess energy generated by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. But the magnitude of the oceanic heat uptake is uncertain, and differing estimates have led to questions regarding the closure of the global energy budget. Here, a comparison of ocean heat content estimates is presented; the conclusion is that a robust warming of 0.64 W m−2 occurred from 1993 to 2008.

    • John M. Lyman
    • , Simon A. Good
    •  & Josh K. Willis

  • Letter |

    The Burgess Shales of British Columbia are famous for having yielded fossils of soft-bodied creatures from the Middle Cambrian period. Although similar faunas are now known from localities as far apart as China and Greenland, they seem to have died out before the end of the Cambrian. Or did they? Here, the discovery of a Burgess Shale-type fauna from the Ordovician period in Morocco is reported, showing that creatures of this type persisted beyond the end of the Cambrian.

    • Peter Van Roy
    • , Patrick J. Orr
    •  & Derek E. G. Briggs

  • Letter |

    Accelerated uplift and global cooling have been suggested as possible causes for a fourfold increase in global sedimentation rates, and by inference in erosion rates or weathering fluxes, during the past 5 million years. Here, proxy evidence is provided that indicates stable weathering fluxes in the late-Cenozoic era. It is proposed that processes different from an increase in denudation caused Cenozoic global cooling.

    • Jane K. Willenbring
    •  & Friedhelm von Blanckenburg

  • News & Views |

    Increased erosion associated with the rise of the world's great mountain ranges has been held to be the cause of a prolonged episode of past climate cooling. That connection is now brought into doubt.

    • Yves Goddéris

  • News |

    The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 left an indelible mark on the field of volcanology. Janet Fang reports.

    • Janet Fang

  • Letter |

    The magnetic field inside the Earth's outer core cannot be directly probed. The intensity of the magnetic field at the core–mantle boundary is estimated to be 0.3 mT, and geodynamo models predict a value about ten times larger (3 mT) for the core's interior. Other data, however, indicate an internal field of only around 0.2 mT. This discrepancy has now been resolved: an ensemble inversion of core flow models finds a torsional wave recurring every 6 years, leading to an estimated field strength of around 4 mT inside the core.

    • Nicolas Gillet
    • , Dominique Jault
    •  & Alexandre Fournier

  • Letter |

    Slip on a subduction megathrust can occur during an earthquake or aseismically. The size, location and frequency of earthquakes that a megathrust can generate depend on where and when aseismic creep is taking place, and what fraction of the long-term slip it accounts for. Here this issue is addressed by looking at the central Peru megathrust, and specifically at the Pisco earthquake of 2007. The findings show that aseismic creep accounts for 50–70% of the slip budget on the seismogenic portion of the megathrust.

    • Hugo Perfettini
    • , Jean-Philippe Avouac
    •  & Pierre Soler

  • News & Views |

    Earth's spin rate varies with time. A six-year periodic signal in the planet's core is partly responsible, and increases the interior magnetic-field strength to much higher levels than previously thought.

    • Andy Jackson

  • Column |

    A small non-profit organization shows how to reduce the vulnerability of poor countries to earthquakes, says Daniel Sarewitz.

    • Daniel Sarewitz

  • News Feature |

    Fifty years ago this month, a massive earthquake in Chile broke new ground in seismic science. Roff Smith looks back at the largest quake ever recorded.

    • Roff Smith

  • News and Views Q&A |

    The ability to perceive Earth's magnetic field, which at one time was dismissed as a physical impossibility, is now known to exist in diverse animals. The receptors for the magnetic sense remain elusive. But it seems that at least two underlying mechanisms exist — sometimes in the same organism.

    • Kenneth J. Lohmann

  • Letter |

    Here a method of seismic wave imaging known as 'ambient noise' tomography is used to generate high-resolution images of seismic wave speeds in the crust and uppermost mantle. The observations reveal strong and uniform anisotropy — where waves travel through rock at different speeds depending on direction — in the deep crust in areas of the western United States that have undergone significant extension during the past 65 million years.

    • M. P. Moschetti
    • , M. H. Ritzwoller
    •  & Y. Yang

  • Letter |

    Our current concepts of abrupt climate change are influenced by palaeoclimate evidence for events such as the Younger Dryas cold interval, in which massive climate changes occurred essentially instantaneously. It is thought that an injection of fresh water from the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet altered the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and triggered the Younger Dryas, but convincing geological evidence has been elusive. Here, a major flood event that is chronologically consistent with the Younger Dryas has been identified—through the MacKenzie River into the Arctic Ocean.

    • Julian B. Murton
    • , Mark D. Bateman
    •  & Zhirong Yang

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Solid Earth sciences across other nature.com journals