News & Views in 2017

A combination of two anoxygenic pathways of photosynthesis could have helped to warm early Earth, according to geochemical models. These metabolisms, and attendant biogeochemical feedbacks, could have worked to counter the faint young Sun.

Progress in the post-combustion treatment of diesel vehicle exhaust has led to shifting proportions of the constituents of nitrogen oxides. Observations from 61 European cities suggest that the outlook on attaining NO₂ standards is more optimistic than expected.

A link between CO₂ outgassing from carbonatite volcanoes during the Ediacaran and one of the most prominent carbon cycle perturbations in Earth’s history is suggested by an analysis of the trace-element composition of detrital zircons.

Rising oxygen levels may have facilitated the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event according to a reconstruction of atmospheric oxygen concentrations.

Ancient lavas reveal the presence of deep mantle reservoirs with anomalously light oxygen signatures. These lavas fingerprint heterogeneous mantle domains in early Earth that may have since been mixed away.

Satellite measurements indicate that Greenland's meltwater rivers are exporting one billion tons of sediment annually, a process that is controlled by the sliding rate of glaciers. This rate is nearly 10% of the fluvial sediment discharge to the ocean.

The release of methane trapped in Martian subsurface reservoirs following planetary obliquity shifts may have contributed to episodic climate warming between 3.6 and 3 billion years ago, explaining evidence for ancient ice-covered lakes.

Debate rages over which water bodies in the US are protected under federal law by the Clean Water Act. Science shows that isolated wetlands and headwater systems provide essential downstream services, but convincing politicians is another matter.

Partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea may have boosted magmatism during the Messinian epoch.

Serpentine minerals in Earth's early upper continental crust suppressed atmospheric oxygen levels until the upper crust became granitic.

Changes in dust flux, export productivity, and bottom-water oxygenation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean have been tightly linked with variations in North Atlantic climate over the past 100,000 years, according to analyses of marine sediments.

A fast equatorial jet in the Venusian cloud layer has been revealed by the Akatsuki orbiter by tracking cloud movement in near-infrared images. The findings suggest that the Venusian atmosphere is more variable than previously thought.

The processes that form and recycle continental crust have changed through time. Numerical models reveal an evolution from extensive recycling on early Earth as the lower crust peeled away, to limited recycling via slab break-off today.

Estimates of carbon in the deep mantle vary by more than an order of magnitude. Coupled volcanic CO₂ emission data and magma supply rates reveal a carbon-rich mantle plume source region beneath Hawai'i with 40% more carbon than previous estimates.

Mass changes in High Mountain Asia's glaciers have been under dispute for almost a decade. An analysis of satellite data archives provides an observation-based mass budget for every single glacier in the region.