Articles in 2007

Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to ocean acidification, causing significant reductions in the growth of crustose coralline algae.

Tim Bartholomaus and Suzanne and Bob Anderson hauled 25 kilograms of equipment over 25 kilometres in 25 hours to get a handle on glacier flow — without breaking the bank.

Using sophisticated multibeam imaging equipment aboard a French Navy vessel, Marc Fournier and colleagues mapped the structure of the enigmatic Owen fracture zone underneath the Arabian Sea.

The speed of a glacier is affected most by sudden jumps in the water supply to the glacier, but it goes back to previous levels if high water inputs are sustained because the glacier's plumbing system adjusts.

The isotopic composition of oceanic basalts suggests that they are composed of true recycled oceanic crust and sediments, which are mixed with the depleted mantle.

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event coincides ~470 million years ago with the break-up of a large asteroid and the resultant frequent bombardment of Earth with asteroid fragments.

Sea level during the last interglacial stood at least 4 m higher than at present, with evidence of short-term fluctuations of up to 10 m. A new continuous sea level record from the Red Sea and coral ages suggest that during these fluctuations, sea level changes were on the order of 1.6 m per century.

Crumpling of the crust above a sinking dense mantle layer, which is underneath central Europe, triggered the formation of the eastern Alps and the Carpathian mountains, and its surroundings were stretched to form the Pannonian Basin.

In each of the three main ocean basins, dense water from around Antarctica circulates in the bottom layers, and in the Atlantic ocean, an upper circulation cell that is driven from the north caps the bottom loop.

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change has convinced the public that climate change is real. To tackle it, the panel needs complementary climate services that provide continuous climate information for all regions and the globe.

Clustering of earthquakes at various spatial scales is the result of a heterogeneous distribution of stresses, and – at least for intermediate-magnitude earthquakes – areas that are quiet at present are likely to remain so in the future.

Carbon isotopes of fossil plants and model simulations suggest that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were variable during the period 200 to 60 million years ago. The large decreases in the partial pressure of CO₂ coincide with glaciations, providing evidence against climate–CO₂ decoupling during the Mesozoic.

Thanks to global carbon-cycle feedbacks, the Earth may have escaped global glaciation during the Neoproterozoic era, enabling photosynthesis to continue.

The tropical belt has been widening over past decades — as estimated from a number of independent lines of evidence — shifting the dry subtropical climate zones polewards around the world.

Over the past 15 million years, Arctic Ocean circulation has exhibited two distinct modes: during the interglacial periods of the past two million years, including the present, Arctic intermediate water was mainly derived from North Atlantic inflow. By contrast, between 15 and 2 million years ago, and during glacial periods thereafter, brine formation on the Eurasian shelves contributed substantially to Arctic intermediate water.

Multibeam mapping of the northwestern Indian Ocean seafloor provides clear evidence of dextral strike-slip motion along the Owen fracture zone and helps constrain the nature of deformation as well as the rate of slip along this little-studied plate boundary.

Forests in northern Asia had fewer trees at the peak of the last Ice Age compared with their modern counterparts.

The shift of autumnal colouring of leaves to later in the year is due to high ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and is independent of temperature.

Although the climate on Venus is very different from that on Earth, many features of the two planets' atmospheric circulations and their lightning regimes are more similar than we thought.

The peak flow of glacier lake outburst floods — and consequently their potential for devastation — depends on air temperature.