Climate sciences articles within Nature

Featured

  • News Q&A |

    Rodolfo del Valle and his team are heading to the Southern Ocean to measure a methane leak.

    • Ana Belluscio

  • Review Article |

    China has tremendous climatic and ecological diversity, so the impacts of climate change on natural and managed systems might likewise be expected to be diverse. Yet so far systematic studies have been rare. Here, the impacts of historical and future climate change on water resources and agriculture in China are assessed. Despite clear trends in climate, the overall impacts are overshadowed by natural variability and uncertainties in crop responses and projected climate, especially precipitation.

    • Shilong Piao
    • , Philippe Ciais
    •  & Jingyun Fang

  • Books & Arts |

    An ambitious atlas that charts the composition of frozen northern soils highlights their contribution to climate change, finds Philippe Ciais.

    • Philippe Ciais

  • News Feature |

    When oil stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the ecosystems under assault started on a long road to recovery. Amanda Mascarelli meets the researchers assessing their chances.

    • Amanda Mascarelli

  • News |

    Sediment studies rule out impact as cause of ancient cold spell.

    • Rex Dalton

  • Letter |

    At the end of the last ice age, rising atmospheric CO2 levels coincided with a decline in radiocarbon activity, suggesting the release of highly radiocarbon-depleted CO2 from the deep ocean to the atmosphere. These authors present radiocarbon records of surface and intermediate-depth waters from two sediment cores and find an decrease in radiocarbon activity that precedes and roughly equals in magnitude the decrease in the atmospheric radiocarbon signal during the early stages of the glacial–interglacial climatic transition.

    • Kathryn A. Rose
    • , Elisabeth L. Sikes
    •  & Howard J. Spero

  • Editorial |

    A coalition government could be what the country needs to make headway on an emissions policy.

  • Letter |

    Cloud simulation is one of the most challenging tasks in regional to global-scale modelling. In many cases, the physical mechanisms responsible for observed cloud dynamics are unknown, making it difficult to realistically simulate their structure and behaviour. These authors show that open cellular clouds — characterized by low albedo — can be created by precipitation-driven downdrafts and that the resulting cloud structure forms an oscillating, self-organizing cloud field.

    • Graham Feingold
    • , Ilan Koren
    •  & Wm. Alan Brewer

  • News Feature |

    Every summer for the past nine years, water with lethally low concentrations of oxygen has appeared off the Oregon coast. The hypoxia may be a sign of things to come elsewhere, finds Virginia Gewin.

    • Virginia Gewin

  • Opinion |

    Telecommunications companies and oceanographers should work together to plug old and new submarine cables into research projects, says Yuzhu You. A global network could monitor climate change.

    • Yuzhu You

  • Careers and Recruitment |

    Marine biologists are developing an appreciation for conservation, a change that is creating new jobs. Emma Marris reports.

    • Emma Marris

  • News |

    New species are continually emerging from the ocean depths, comprehensive record of biodiversity reveals.

    • Melissa Gaskill

  • Article |

    Using historical data combined with more recent satellite observations, these authors show that global phytoplankton biomass has been declining during the past century.

    • Daniel G. Boyce
    • , Marlon R. Lewis
    •  & Boris Worm

  • News |

    Independent researchers claim oxygen depletion in the Gulf of Mexico is real, but a US government report advises caution.

    • Amanda Mascarelli

  • Letter |

    The annual burial of organic carbon in lakes and reservoirs exceeds that of ocean sediments, but inland waters are components of the global carbon cycle that receive only limited attention. Here the authors find that the mineralization of organic carbon in lake sediments exhibits a strong positive relationship with temperature, suggesting that warmer water temperatures lead to more mineralization and less organic carbon burial.

    • Cristian Gudasz
    • , David Bastviken
    •  & Lars J. Tranvik

  • Letter |

    Emissions of African dust increased sharply in the early 1970s, but the human contribution to land degradation and dust mobilization remains poorly understood. Now, a 3,200-year record of dust deposition off northwest Africa has been constructed. On the basis of this dust record and a proxy record for West African precipitation, it is suggested that human-induced dust emissions from the Sahel region have contributed to the atmospheric dust load for more than 200 years.

    • Stefan Mulitza
    • , David Heslop
    •  & Michael Schulz

  • News |

    A generation of sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico is to be lifted out of the oil spill's way.

    • Melissa Gaskill

  • Review Article |

    Global climate and the atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide are correlated over recent glacial cycles, with lower partial pressure of carbon dioxide during ice ages, but the causes of the changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide are unknown. Here the authors review the evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Southern Ocean is an important driver of glacial/interglacial changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide.

    • Daniel M. Sigman
    • , Mathis P. Hain
    •  & Gerald H. Haug

  • Letter |

    It remains uncertain whether added nitrogen enhances total plant productivity in response to CO2-fertilisation in natural ecosystems. Here the authors show that nitrogen addition initially enhances the CO2-stimulation of plant productivity but also promotes the encroachment of plant species that respond less strongly to elevated CO2 concentrations. Overall, the observed shift in the plant community ultimately suppresses the CO2-stimulation of plant productivity.

    • J. Adam Langley
    •  & J. Patrick Megonigal

  • Editorial |

    It isn't enough to explain the facts of climate change very, very clearly. Building public trust requires researchers to change their practices.

  • Books & Arts |

    A history of climate modelling shows that forecasts that acknowledge uncertainty will be the way forward, argues Myles Allen.

    • Myles Allen

  • Opinion |

    Lessons on the risks and opportunities of climate change should be directed at future executives, given that many companies rival nations in greenhouse-gas emissions, says Genevieve Patenaude.

    • Genevieve Patenaude

  • News |

    European Space Agency mission provides the first global map of a key climate variable.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • News |

    The Deepwater Horizon oil spill puts ocean-current modelling to the test.

    • Janet Fang

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