Volume 13 Issue 10, October 2020

Land-use and land-cover changes are accelerating. Such changes can homogenize the water cycle and undermine planetary resilience. Policymakers and practitioners must consider water–vegetation interactions in their land-management decisions.

Underground smouldering fires resurfaced early in 2020, contributing to the unprecedented wildfires that tore through the Arctic this spring and summer. An international effort is needed to manage a changing fire regime in the vulnerable Arctic.

Permanent surface deformation caused by the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes has been directly measured, constraining the mechanics of surface damage in earthquakes.

Some valleys in the southern highlands of Mars may have formed by subglacial erosion, consistent with a cold and icy early Mars, according to a statistical analysis of valley morphometry.

The transitional state between cloudy and clear skies, known as the twilight zone, has a substantial effect on the atmospheric energy budget, according to an analysis of cloud fields using global satellite observations.

Aged soot particles in the atmosphere enhance future warming through their influence on cloud formation and thus Earth’s radiation balance, according to global climate simulations.

Satellite observations reveal that fresh wildfire plumes are a globally important source of nitrous acid, enhancing oxidative plume chemistry and regional ozone levels.

Environmental factors influence the molecular composition of carbon in soils across continental gradients, according to analyses of North American mineral soils.

A global carbon cycle perturbation during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 was probably due to elevated oxygen levels leading to a transient increase in wildfire activity, according to a record of plant biomarkers tracking fire frequency in western North America.

Inelastic failure in the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes was localized and influenced by mylonitic deformation of the fault damage zone, according to an analysis of surface displacements derived from satellite images.

A transition from rate-weakening to rate-strengthening frictional behaviour with increasing slip rate could explain the observed diversity of slow slip events on faults, according to numerical simulations.