Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The spatial pattern of climate change is uncertain. Analyses of a simple model suggest that uncertainty in tropical feedbacks induces a global response, but the impact of uncertainty in polar feedbacks tends to be limited to the region.
During the early to mid-Holocene, Africa was more humid than today. Precipitation reconstructions from across Africa suggest that the termination of humidity was spatially variable, moving towards progressively lower latitudes.
Carbon dioxide emissions from lakes contribute to the continental carbon balance. Water chemistry analyses of reservoirs in Spain suggest that carbonate weathering causes CO2 supersaturation in lakes above a threshold alkalinity.
Earth’s nitrogen isotopic composition has been linked to an unknown primordial reservoir. Macroscopic analyses of mineral inclusions in meteorites suggest that ices in the Sun’s protoplanetary disk could be the source of Earth’s nitrogen.
The atmospheric circulation controls the regional expression of global climate change. An analysis of aquaplanet climate simulations suggests that the radiative effects of clouds and water vapour are key to the circulation response to global warming.
The Tibetan Plateau is extending. Numerical simulations suggest that regional-scale extension is caused by gravitational collapse of the plateau, whereas rapid extension in the south is caused by underthrusting of the Indian slab.
Earth’s initial oxygenation took several hundred million years. Experiments and geochemical modelling suggest that early photosynthetic marine microbes may have been repeatedly stressed by Fe(II) delivered by submarine volcanism.
Seismic tremors can be used to distinguish plate boundaries. Analysis of tremors occurring deep beneath the San Andreas Fault may identify the boundary between the North American Plate and the preserved remnant of a subducted slab.