News & Views in 2012

Methane emissions from natural gas reservoirs have long been largely overlooked. The discovery of abundant geological gas seeps in areas of cryosphere degradation highlights the relevance of these emissions to the greenhouse gas budget.

Of the West Antarctic ice shelves, those in the Amundsen Sea sector have given the most cause for concern. Ocean modelling of the Weddell Sea region, together with a detailed survey of the ice bed morphology, indicates that this region, too, may change soon.

The hothouse climate of the early Eocene epoch was punctuated by a series of transient warming events linked to massive carbon release. Detailed terrestrial records for three of these events indicate that they were caused by similar underlying mechanisms.

The prediction of marine microbial responses to ocean acidification is a key challenge for marine biologists. Experimental evolution offers a powerful tool for understanding the forces that will shape tomorrow's microbial communities under global change.

Faults break under the stress of plate tectonic forces, but the processes immediately preceding rupture are enigmatic. Monitoring of a remote oceanic fault that breaks regularly indicates that rupture is controlled by physical properties of the fault zone.

The fate of glaciers in the greater Himalaya is widely discussed, but poorly known. A new measurement in the central Karakoram mountain range suggests that glacier mass change in this region contributes to sea-level rise nearly 0.05 mm per year less than has been thought.

Earth's crust is formed where tectonic plates rift apart and upwelling magma solidifies. Disparate observations from rifts beneath the oceans and on land provide insights into the dynamics of rifting and opportunities for synthesis.

The supply of magma to Kīlauea Volcano was relatively stable for 50 years. But between 2003 and 2007, the volcano experienced a surge in the supply of magma from the mantle that implies short-term changes in the underlying Hawaiian hotspot.

The plausibility of the high end of global warming projections in recent assessments is a subject of debate. A study of multi-model climate simulations argues that we need to take the possibility of strong warming seriously.

A giant impact on the young proto-Earth is thought to explain the formation of the Moon. High-precision analysis of titanium isotopes in lunar rocks suggests that the Moon and Earth's mantle are more similar than existing models permit.

Glaciers supply downstream ecosystems with reactive dissolved organic carbon during periods of ice and snow melt. An analysis of glacier meltwaters in Alaska shows that anthropogenic aerosols fertilize these waters, raising questions about glacier greening.

The Arctic Ocean has become less saline, perhaps in response to climate change. Satellite and in situ observations reveal changes in the regional wind patterns that have re-routed freshwater and prevented it from leaving the Arctic Ocean in the past decades.

During the middle of the Cretaceous period, the polarity of Earth's magnetic field remained stable. A magnetic survey of oceanic crust formed during that time, however, suggests that the field intensity was surprisingly variable.

The configurations of ancient tectonic plates are difficult to reconstruct. Seismic images of deep subducted plates, combined with data from ancient volcanic arcs, help to derive a tectonic map of the Pacific Ocean as it was 200 million years ago.

Dune fields often exhibit complex patterns of vegetation and morphology over relatively short distances. An analysis of the White Sands dune field in New Mexico attributes the shift in dune form to the development of an internal boundary layer over the rough dune-field surface.

Atmospheric measurements reveal unexpectedly high concentrations of hydroxyl radicals over tropical forests. Incorporation of a new mechanism of isoprene oxidation into a chemistry model brings simulations into closer agreement with these observations.