Cryospheric science articles within Nature

Featured

  • Letter |

    Studies of an Antarctic marine sediment core suggest that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated in the vicinity of the Wilkes Subglacial Basin during extended warm periods of the late Pleistocene, when temperatures were similar to those predicted to occur within this century.

    • David J. Wilson
    • , Rachel A. Bertram
    •  & Carlota Escutia

  • Review Article |

    This paper discusses how Antarctic ice has changed over recent decades, and how these changes have been recorded in satellite observations.

    • Andrew Shepherd
    • , Helen Amanda Fricker
    •  & Sinead Louise Farrell

  • Letter |

    Models show that even if global temperature rise can be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, only about 65 per cent of glacier mass will remain in the high mountains of Asia by the end of this century, and if temperatures rise by more than this the effects will be much more extreme.

    • P. D. A. Kraaijenbrink
    • , M. F. P. Bierkens
    •  & W. W. Immerzeel

  • Article |

    Cryo-electron microscopy snapshots of the E. coli flippase MsbA at discrete functional states reveal a ‘trap and flip’ mechanism for lipopolysaccharide flipping and the conformational transitions of MsbA during its substrate transport cycle.

    • Wei Mi
    • , Yanyan Li
    •  & Maofu Liao

  • Letter |

    Measurements of cosmic-ray-produced 10Be and 26Al in a bedrock core from beneath the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet show that Greenland was nearly ice-free for extended periods under Pleistocene climate forcing.

    • Joerg M. Schaefer
    • , Robert C. Finkel
    •  & Roseanne Schwartz

  • Letter |

    Modelling suggests that the icy region on Pluto known as Sputnik Planitia formed shortly after Charon did and has since been stable, with its latitude corresponding to a minimum in annual solar illumination and its longitude determined by tidal forces from Charon.

    • Douglas P. Hamilton
    • , S. A. Stern
    •  & H. A. Weaver

  • Letter |

    Many glaciers and ice shelves in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are retreating or thinning rapidly, but the triggering mechanism has been unclear; now, the retreat of Pine Island Glacier is found to have begun in the 1940s following warming El Niño events in the Pacific Ocean, showing that glacial retreat can continue long after an initial push from the climate.

    • J. A. Smith
    • , T. J. Andersen
    •  & D. G. Vaughan

  • Letter |

    A parameterized convection model and observations of the puzzling polygons of the Sputnik Planum region of Pluto are used to compute the Rayleigh number of its nitrogen ice and show that it is vigorously convecting, kilometres thick and about a million years old.

    • A. J. Trowbridge
    • , H. J. Melosh
    •  & A. M. Freed

  • Letter |

    The stability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to past sea-level rise are not well defined; in this paper, airborne geophysical data and ice-sheet models are used to show that the Totten Glacier has undergone large-scale retreats and advances, and that it could contribute several metres of sea-level rise in a fully retreated scenario.

    • A. R. A. Aitken
    • , J. L. Roberts
    •  & M. J. Siegert

  • Article |

    Climate and ice-sheet modelling that includes ice fracture dynamics reveals that Antarctica could contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 13 metres by 2500, if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.

    • Robert M. DeConto
    •  & David Pollard

  • Letter |

    Reconstruction of the activity of ice streams operating during the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet reveals that the number of ice streams and their total discharge decreased as the total volume of the ice sheet decreased, suggesting that ice stream activity did not accelerate the collapse of the ice sheet.

    • C. R. Stokes
    • , M. Margold
    •  & L. Tarasov

  • Letter |

    Recent work has suggested that sections of the West Antarctic ice sheet are already rapidly retreating, raising concerns about increased sea-level rise; now, an ice-sheet model is used to simulate the mass loss from the entire Antarctic ice sheet to 2200, suggesting that it could contribute up to 30 cm of sea-level rise by 2100 and 72 cm by 2200, but is unlikely to contribute more.

    • Catherine Ritz
    • , Tamsin L. Edwards
    •  & Richard C. A. Hindmarsh

  • Letter |

    Whether or not an increase in meltwater will make ice sheets move more quickly has been contentious, because water lubricates the ice–rock interface and speeds up the ice, but also stimulates the development of efficient drainage; now, a long-term and large-area study of a land-terminating margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet finds that more meltwater does not equal higher velocity.

    • Andrew J. Tedstone
    • , Peter W. Nienow
    •  & Edward Hanna

  • Letter |

    Despite computational and methodological uncertainties, and a wide range of potential greenhouse gas emissions, here millennial-scale simulations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in a warming climate show that most of Antarctica’s fringing ice shelves will collapse, leading to a rise in sea level of up to 3 metres by 2300.

    • N. R. Golledge
    • , D. E. Kowalewski
    •  & E. G. W. Gasson

  • Letter |

    Erosion and velocity data from 15 outlet glaciers covering temperate to polar glacier thermal regimes from Patagonia to the Antarctic Peninsula reveal that over the past century the basin-averaged erosion rates vary by three orders of magnitude as a function of climate across this latitudinal transect.

    • Michéle Koppes
    • , Bernard Hallet
    •  & Katherine Boldt

  • Article |

    Ice-core and tree-ring data show that large volcanic eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were primary drivers of temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 2,500 years, firmly implicating such eruptions as catalysts in major sixth-century pandemics, famines, and socioeconomic disruptions.

    • M. Sigl
    • , M. Winstrup
    •  & T. E. Woodruff

  • Letter |

    A synthesis of new and existing data allows Heinrich Stadial 11 (HS11), a prominent Northern Hemisphere cold event, to be linked to the timing of peak sea-level rise during glacial termination T-II, whereas rapid sea-level rise in T-I is shown to clearly post-date Heinrich Stadial 1, so fundamentally different mechanisms seem to be at work during glacial terminations.

    • G. Marino
    • , E. J. Rohling
    •  & J. Yu

  • Letter |

    A new ice core from West Antarctica shows that, during the last ice age, abrupt Northern Hemisphere climate variations were followed two centuries later by a response in Antarctica, suggesting an oceanic propagation of the climate signal to the Southern Hemisphere high latitudes.

    • Christo Buizert
    • , Betty Adrian
    •  & Thomas E. Woodruff

  • Letter |

    Observations of rapid, persistent elevation gains that occur on the ice surface above a subglacial lake as the lake is refilled with surface meltwater during the summer melt period in Greenland show that surface meltwater may be trapped and stored at the bed of an ice sheet, affecting ice dynamics downstream.

    • Michael J. Willis
    • , Bradley G. Herried
    •  & Robin E. Bell

  • Letter |

    A moraine chronology determined by surface exposure dating shows that glaciers in the northern tropical Andes expanded to a larger extent during the Antarctic cold reversal (14,500 to 12,900 years ago) than during the Younger Dryas stadial (12,800 to 11,500 years ago), contrary to previous studies; as a result, previous chronologies and climate interpretations from tropical glaciers may need to be revisited.

    • V. Jomelli
    • , V. Favier
    •  & B. L. Otto-Bliesner

  • Letter |

    Concurrent observations at multiple locations indicate that storm-generated ocean waves propagating through Antarctic sea ice can transport enough energy to break first-year sea ice hundreds of kilometres from the ice edge, which is much farther than would be predicted by the commonly assumed exponential wave decay.

    • A. L. Kohout
    • , M. J. M. Williams
    •  & M. H. Meylan

  • Letter |

    Human-induced climate change is usually assumed to be responsible for the dramatic thawing of glaciers since the mid 1990s in Greenland and northeastern Canada; approximately half of the observed warming in this region during this period is now found to be attributable to atmospheric circulation changes that may be of natural origin.

    • Qinghua Ding
    • , John M. Wallace
    •  & Lei Geng

  • Article |

    A novel approach to the estimation of sea level and deep-sea temperature has been used to determine these quantities over the past 5.3 million years; this approach, based on oxygen isotope records from the eastern Mediterranean, shows that temperature and sea-level histories are broadly correlated but also show intriguing temporal offsets.

    • E. J. Rohling
    • , G. L. Foster
    •  & F. Williams

  • Letter |

    Four reconstructions of North American ice-sheet history are tested using oxygen isotope records from the Gulf of Mexico in a water-mixing model; the one based on ice physics is the best match to the isotopic data and to the observed Last Glacial Maximum fall in sea level due to melting of the Laurentide ice sheet.

    • Andrew D. Wickert
    • , Jerry X. Mitrovica
    •  & Robert S. Anderson

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