News & Views in 2012

Large-scale ecological disturbances are expected to alter climate by disrupting ecosystem function, but the climatic perturbation can be hard to detect. An analysis of forests in British Columbia reveals a warmer, drier summer following pine-beetle tree kill.

Thirty years ago, the spacecraft Pioneer Venus observed the peak and decline of sulphur dioxide levels above Venus's clouds. Similar observations by Venus Express reveal a surprisingly variable venusian atmosphere.

Sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean are subject to year-to-year variations. Reanalysis data and model simulations suggest that advection of warm water from north of the Equator can drive some of the warm events.

Great Himalayan earthquakes were thought to rarely rupture the surface. Field analyses in Nepal, however, reveal large surface displacements along the main fault bounding India and Asia during at least two historical earthquakes, in 1255 and 1934.

The catastrophic drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz about 8,500 years ago is linked to abrupt climate change. A layer of sediments deposited during the previous interglacial period suggests that such outburst flooding is not unique to the Holocene epoch.

Ocean acidification is predicted to harm the ocean's shell-building organisms over the coming centuries. Sea butterflies, an ecologically important group of molluscs in the Arctic and Southern oceans, are already suffering the effects.

Carbon dioxide cools the upper atmosphere. Satellite measurements suggest that concentrations of this greenhouse gas have risen in the thermosphere over the past decade, with implications for the energy balance of the upper atmosphere.

Solar forcing has been invoked to explain persistent, millennial-scale climate variations during the Holocene. Two climate reconstructions, one based on sea-ice drift and one on North Atlantic storminess, call this link into question.

Subtropical highs influence climate over extensive regions of the planet. These maritime high-pressure systems are set to intensify in boreal summer over the coming century, as a result of an increase in the land–sea thermal contrast.

Reconstructing past climate in the Southern Hemisphere is a challenge. An analysis of tree-ring records suggests that recent changes in the southern storm track in summer are unprecedented in the past 600 years.

In 2011, a modest earthquake in southern Spain seriously damaged the city of Lorca. Analysis of surface deformation suggests that the quake was caused by rupture of a shallow fault patch brought closer to failure by the pumping of water from a nearby aquifer.

The surface of the Moon is not totally devoid of water. Analyses of lunar soils reveal that impact glasses contain significant amounts of water, with an isotopic composition that is indicative of an origin from the solar wind.

Climate change is likely to offset some of the improvements in air quality expected from reductions in pollutant emissions. A comprehensive analysis of future air quality over North America suggests that, on balance, the air will still be cleaner in coming decades.

Tracking diffuse, shearing deformation of continents is difficult. Numerical modelling of drainage evolution in the Southern Alps, New Zealand, suggests that rivers can act as dynamic markers of tectonic deformation over geological timescales.

Climate model projections of future precipitation extremes in the tropics are highly uncertain. Observations of year-to-year variations in extremes of present-day climate help to narrow down these projections to a rise in extreme rainfall by 6–14% per °C of warming.

Clay minerals on Mars have been interpreted as an indication for a warm, wet early climate. A new hypothesis proposes that the minerals instead formed during brief periods of magmatic degassing, diminishing the prospects for signs of life in these settings.

Shallow magma bodies that feed regularly erupting volcanoes are usually considered enduring features that grow steadily between eruptions. Measurements of deformation at Santorini, however, reveal sudden rapid magma accumulation after half a century of rest.