Volume 12 Issue 11, November 2019

Scientists and policymakers must acknowledge that carbon dioxide removal can be small in scale and still be relevant for climate policy, that it will primarily emerge ‘bottom up’, and that different methods have different governance needs.

Governments disagree even on the current state of climate change engineering governance, as became clear at the 2019 United Nations Environment Assembly negotiations. They must develop mechanisms to provide policy-relevant knowledge, clarify uncertainties and head off potential distributional impacts.

Northern peatlands store over 1,000 Gt of carbon, almost double previous estimates, according to a new analysis of peat core data. The fate of this peat carbon, however, is uncertain in a rapidly changing world.

Wet rice cultivation in the Palu Valley, Indonesia, prepared the ground for the devastating liquefaction-induced landslides that were triggered by the M_w 7.5 earthquake in 2018, suggest two studies of the spatial relationship between landslide morphology and irrigation.

Brines from evaporation of a lake in Gale crater on Mars are inferred from bulk enrichments of Ca- and Mg-sulfates in Hesperian sedimentary rocks, identified by geochemical analyses and observations by NASA’s rover Curiosity.

Hot and dry climate extremes in Australia are linked to stratospheric polar vortex weakening, with potential implications for their predictability, according to statistical analyses of observational data from the past 40 years.

Warming in climate simulations since about 1970, when aerosol cooling showed little variation, constrains the transient climate response to doubled atmospheric CO₂ levels to about 1.67 K, according to an analysis of this emergent constraint.

Observations confirm that cleaning up fine particulate matter in the North China Plain has exacerbated ozone pollution, suggesting that both NO_x and VOC emissions need to be reduced to improve air quality.

Atmospheric rivers associated with blocking events are related to a large fraction of the surface ice melt events in West Antarctica, suggest observation-based analyses of atmospheric dynamics and West Antarctic surface melt.

Northern peatlands are estimated to store more than 1,000 Gt of carbon, almost doubling previous estimates, according to a reconstruction of historical peat carbon accumulation.

Pervasive drying over the last few centuries has reduced carbon storage in European peatlands, the result of climate change and human impacts, according to a continent-wide compilation of hydrological records derived from testate amoeba.

Minimum atmospheric CO₂ levels during glacial intervals were set, in part, by repeated CO₂ release from pyrite oxidation on exposed continental shelves, according to a geochemical model of the past 3 Myr.

Aqueduct-supported cultivation of rice resulted in liquefaction of the alluvial soils that led to the landslides triggered by the Palu 2018 earthquake, according to satellite analyses.

Landslides triggered during the Palu 2018 earthquake correlate spatially with the presence of irrigation systems according to satellite analyses, suggesting that liquefaction of alluvial fans played a role.

Steady-state chemical differentiation between Earth’s mantle and crust was reached 3.5 billion years ago, following vigorous crustal recycling, according to mass balance modelling of molybdenum isotopes measured in mantle-derived volcanic rocks.

During the submarine eruption of gas-rich magma into shallow water, a gas-tight seal forms, breaks and reseals, a process that results in violent explosions and the release of large gas bubbles, suggest low-frequency sound data from Bogoslof volcano, Alaska.