Featured
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News |
Biodiversity talks get under way
Delegates begin to hammer out a new strategy for the Convention on Biological Diversity.
- Natasha Gilbert
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News |
Early humans wiped out Australia's giants
Climate not to blame for the extinction of Australia's big animals.
- Cheryl Jones
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News |
Senate climate debate up in the air
Moves by Republicans shift the US legislative landscape.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Europe cannot keep its promises on fish stocks
Even with total cessation of fishing, UN target would still be missed.
- Daniel Cressey
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News |
Most powerful hurricanes on the rise
Global warming could lead to fewer but more-intense storms.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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Letter |
Increasing springtime ozone mixing ratios in the free troposphere over western North America
High concentrations of ozone in the troposphere are toxic and act as a greenhouse gas. Anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors have caused widespread increases in ozone concentrations since the late 1800s, with the fastest-growing ozone precursor emissions currently coming out of east Asia. Much of the springtime east Asian pollution is exported towards western North America; a strong increase in springtime ozone mixing ratios is now found in the free troposphere over this region.
- O. R. Cooper
- , D. D. Parrish
- & M. A. Avery
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Research Highlights |
Geoscience: Blowin' in the wind
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Editorial |
Climate of suspicion
With climate-change sceptics waiting to pounce on any scientific uncertainties, researchers need a sophisticated strategy for communication.
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Correspondence |
Conservation work is incomplete without cryptic biodiversity
- Genoveva F. Esteban
- & Bland J. Finlay
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Abstractions
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Research Highlights |
Geophysics: Synthetic sky light
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Research Highlights |
Microbiology: Life in the lost city
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News Feature |
The real holes in climate science
Like any other field, research on climate change has some fundamental gaps, although not the ones typically claimed by sceptics. Quirin Schiermeier takes a hard look at some of the biggest problem areas.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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Opinion |
A route to more tractable expert advice
There are mathematically advanced ways to weigh and pool scientific advice. They should be used more to quantify uncertainty and improve decision-making, says Willy Aspinall.
- Willy Aspinall
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News & Views |
Stripped on passing by Earth
Asteroids are weakly bound piles of rubble, and if one comes close to Earth, tides can cause the object to undergo landslides and structural rearrangement. The outcome of this encounter is a body with meteorite-like colours.
- Clark R. Chapman
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News |
Lemurs' wet and wild past
Model shows how mammals could have 'rafted' to Madagascar.
- Geoff Brumfiel
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Letter |
Mammalian biodiversity on Madagascar controlled by ocean currents
Madagascar has a striking and peculiar fauna. It has been proposed that the ancestors of Madagascar's present-day mammal stock rafted there from Africa, but the validity of this hypothesis is questioned. Using palaeogeographic reconstructions and palaeo-oceanographic modelling, surface currents during the Palaeogene period are now shown to have been capable of transporting the animals to the island, as required by the hypothesis.
- Jason R. Ali
- & Matthew Huber
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News |
Glacier estimate is on thin ice
IPCC may modify its Himalayan melting forecasts.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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News |
Geologists to evaluate future Haiti risks
Hunt for survey markers may reveal crucial data.
- Rex Dalton
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News |
Why oil from the Exxon Valdez lingers
Rocky beaches may have locked oil away in airtight pores.
- Naomi Lubick
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Letter |
Dominant control of the South Asian monsoon by orographic insulation versus plateau heating
The elevation of the Tibetan plateau is thought to cause its surface to serve as a heat source that drives the South Asian summer monsoon, potentially coupling uplift of the plateau to climate changes on geologic timescales. Here, however, an atmospheric model is used to show that flattening of the Tibetan plateau has little effect on the monsoon, provided that the narrow orography of the Himalayas and adjacent mountain ranges is preserved.
- William R. Boos
- & Zhiming Kuang
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Research Highlights |
Geoscience: Extraterrestrial dust
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Research Highlights |
Biogeochemistry: DDT in the ocean
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Research Highlights |
Biology: Snakes face the heat
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Books & Arts |
No crystal ball for natural disasters
Floods and fires aside, the tricky science of prediction is explained in a book that treads a careful line between analysis and anecdotes of awful events, says Andrew Robinson.
- Andrew Robinson
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News |
Disease epidemic killing only US bats
European bats seemingly unaffected by fungal infection.
- Lizzie Buchen
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Briefing |
The Haiti earthquake in depth
Fault produces its biggest quake since 1751.
- Daniel Cressey
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News & Views |
A moist model monsoon
Received wisdom about the main driver of the South Asian monsoon comes into question with a report that tests the idea that the Himalayas, not the Tibetan plateau, are the essential topographic ingredient.
- Mark A. Cane
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News |
Pulsar watchers race for gravity waves
Radio telescopes vie with laser detectors to hunt for signs of massive cosmic collisions.
- Eric Hand
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News |
Driveways could spread toxins into the home
Carcinogens in coal tar–sealed pavements cause worry.
- Nicola Jones
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News |
Missed 2050 climate targets will reduce long-term options
Models suggest that drastic action will be needed in the latter half of the century.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Oceans release DDT from decades ago
Emissions of controversial pesticide are heading northwards.
- Richard A. Lovett
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News |
Sea stars suck up carbon
Much more carbon is sequestered by echinoderms than previously thought.
- Matt Kaplan
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Letter |
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport in the Southern Ocean driven by Ekman flow
The Southern Ocean is potentially a substantial sink of anthropogenic carbon dioxide; however, the regulation of this carbon sink by the wind-driven Ekman flow, mesoscale eddies and their interaction is under debate. Here, a high-resolution ocean circulation and carbon cycle model is used to study intra-annual variability in anthropogenic carbon dioxide over a two-year time period; the Ekman flow is found to be the primary mechanism of anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport across the Antarctic polar front.
- T. Ito
- , M. Woloszyn
- & M. Mazloff
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Correspondence |
Climate e-mails: man's mark is clear in thermometer record
- Hans von Storch
- & Myles Allen
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Abstractions
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Column |
World view: Tomorrow never knows
Science should focus more on understanding the present and less on predicting the future, argues Daniel Sarewitz.
- Daniel Sarewitz
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News |
Floods linked to San Andreas quakes
Historical record underscores connections between reservoirs and seismic activity.
- Rex Dalton
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News |
Discovery pushes back date of first four-legged animal
But controversy surrounds 400-million-year-old fossilized tracks.
- Rex Dalton
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News |
New year, new science
Nature looks at what key events may come from the research world in 2010.
- Richard Van Noorden
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Opinion |
2020 visions
For the first issue of the new decade, Nature asked a selection of leading researchers and policy-makers where their fields will be ten years from now. We invited them to identify the key questions their disciplines face, the major roadblocks and the pressing next steps.