Reviews & Analysis

Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is losing mass and has the potential to cause substantial sea level rise. New seabed imagery indicates that the glacier previously retreated at double its current rate, implying that mass loss could accelerate in the near future.

The colonization of Earth landmasses by vascular plants around 430 million years ago substantially impacted erosion and sediment transport mechanisms. This left behind fingerprints in magmatic rocks, linking the evolution of Earth’s biosphere with its internal processes.

Modelling indicates that a return to fully normal marine conditions in the Mediterranean following the flooding that ended the Messinian Salinity Crisis was delayed by salt transfers and temporarily enhanced stratification.

Sea level rise causes barrier islands to migrate landward. Coastal evolution modelling reveals a centennial-scale lag in island response time and suggests migration rates will increase by 50% within the next century, even if sea level were to stabilize.

Analyses of the 2014 Iceland–Holuhraun volcanic eruption revealed the emitted aerosols induced a 10% increase in cloud coverage above the region, suggesting anthropogenic aerosols might strongly cool the Earth’s climate by increasing the cloud coverage.

Water that has been carried deep into the Earth by oceanic plates in subduction zones, can influence earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Three-dimensional images of electrical resistivity derived from electromagnetic geophysical data provide new constraints on the distribution, transport, and storage of water in the Cascadia subduction zone.

Shrubs act as thermal bridges to conduct heat through the tundra snowpack, fostering heat loss from the ground in winter and heat gain in the spring.

For decades, ozone pollution mitigation efforts relied on two chemical regimes. A global modelling analysis has revealed a third regime involving aerosols that would help with the concurrent control of both ozone and particulate pollution.

The bulk crustal porosity of the lunar highland may have been generated early in the Moon’s history by basin-forming impacts and then declined exponentially. A new porosity evolution model constrains the timing and sequence of basin formation.

Ozone depletion is not only a serious health threat but can also affect the climate. Atmospheric chemistry models reveal that springtime Arctic ozone depletion can have major consequences for the seasonal climate in the Northern Hemisphere, including warming over Eurasia and drying across central Europe.

Monitoring of the daily global CO₂ emissions in 2020 reveals the spatial–temporal pattern of the drop in emissions due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The daily CO₂ emission changes also reveal different patterns of human activities and fossil CO₂ emissions across countries, sectors and periods.

Unrest episodes observed in basaltic systems indicate magma influx rates may be key to generating long-term eruption forecasts. The findings predict that, if a critical flow rate is surpassed, a volcano will erupt within a year.

Climate change is exacerbating geohazards in High Mountain Asia that pose a growing risk to hydropower and water infrastructure across the region.

Megathrust aftershocks can be highly destructive if they strike close to shore. Here, we show that aftershocks on the rupture surface have an initially high rate but shut down within several years, potentially for centuries. However, aftershocks also surround the rupture, where they persist for up to 60 years.

In a simulation with a state-of-the-art climate model, obstruction of the ocean gateways in the Canadian archipelago due to ice-sheet growth reroutes currents and alters North Atlantic Ocean conditions, permitting glacial inception in Scandinavia. This mechanism could help to explain periods of rapid ice-sheet growth in Earth’s history.

Preferential P retention emerges in almost 90% of global lakes. This retention leads to a strong elevation in the N:P ratios in lakes outflow, exacerbates the imbalance of the nutrient cycles and can potentially result in biodiversity losses and algal blooms in lakes and downstream ecosystems.

The surface of the asteroid Bennu is so weakly bonded that rockslide avalanches are easily triggered by small body impacts, and boulders fractured due to diurnal heating and cooling are readily dislodged. The result is a surface under continuous renewal.

This study shows that by stabilizing the soil, biological soil crusts reduce global atmospheric dust emissions by 60%, corresponding to ~700 Tg of dust per year. According to models of biocrust cover loss, this effect will be reduced in the future, leading to increases in not only dust emissions but also global radiative cooling.