Volume 16 Issue 12, December 2023

While it may feel cold to the touch, Sheng Fan and David Prior explain that ice on Earth is relatively hot. Understanding ‘hot’ ice physics during deformation is critical in determining future sea-level rise.

Marine microfossil assemblages refine sea surface temperature patterns and yield insights into discrepancies between paleoclimate models of the last ice age and observations.

Three decades of meteorological observations show that Himalayan glaciers have been cooling because of intensified downslope winds, in contrast to the warming observed elsewhere in the region.

Identifying the metal micronutrients required by early life could help to illuminate how primitive organisms arose, but which metals were biologically available in ancient seawater has not been determined. A new experimental framework suggests how the precipitation of iron minerals from seawater reduced the availability of key metals, particularly zinc, copper and vanadium.

A geochemical study of an ancient mass-extinction event shows that only moderate expansion of oxygen-deficient waters along continental margins is needed to decimate marine biodiversity. This finding provides a stark warning of the possible consequences of human-driven ocean deoxygenation on life in Earth’s shallow oceans.

Analysis of sea temperatures using a four-dimensional spatio-temporal framework has revealed a great number of marine heatwaves occurring globally below the sea surface. These extreme events, which threaten the ecologically important epipelagic zone, have occurred increasingly frequently during the past three decades owing to ocean warming.

Deep-sea acidity data combined with ice-core carbon dioxide records reveal that an interplay between the two polar regions modulates ocean ventilation through various modes. These modes explain past variations in deep-sea carbon storage and atmospheric carbon dioxide on millennial timescales.

H₂, which is formed by the oxidation of iron in rocks, was likely a critical source of energy for early life. Analysis of natural rock samples from 3.5–2.7 billion-year-old komatiites, combined with geochemical data from a global database, quantifies the amount of H₂ likely to have been produced in Earth’s ancient oceans.

Authorship statistics from ice core science suggest that collaboration between women is a key factor in closing gender gaps in scientific publishing.

Convection-permitting simulations suggest that the radiative impact of aerosol–cloud interactions is enhanced by adjustments to large-scale circulation, which increase cloudiness.

Substantial numbers of marine heatwaves are hidden globally below the sea surface, according to analyses of ocean temperature data.

The century-scale marine sequestration flux of biogenic inorganic carbon driven by the biological pump over the whole water column may be several times higher than previous estimates.

Spatial changes in planktonic foraminifera species assemblages reveal steeper thermal gradients in the North Atlantic Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum than simulated by climate models, according to a macroecological analysis of marine sediment cores.

High-elevation meteorological observations and reanalysis data indicate local cooling and drying near Himalayan glaciers due to enhanced katabatic winds in response to global warming.

The Southern Annular Mode and ENSO are the main drivers of recent decadal variability in Antarctic ice mass, according to analysis of satellite-based gravimetric observations.

Lightning-induced fires account for 77% of the burned area in extratropical intact forests, and lightning ignitions will probably become more frequent as the global climate warms, according to a global attribution of lightning and anthropogenic fires from 2001 to 2020.

Wildfires have caused widespread and increasingly severe losses within timber-producing forests in recent decades, according to maps of logging activity and wildfires.

Reconstructions of Tibetan Plateau streamflow over the last millennia reveal close associations with dry season vegetation and major population shifts in Southeast Asia.

Increasing soil organic carbon can, under optimum management only, enhance global production of maize, wheat and rice by up to 0.7% with important regional differences, according to 13,662 field trials across a broad range of soils, climates and management practices.

The variable intensity of Southern Ocean as well as North Atlantic deep-water ventilation explains differences in atmospheric CO₂ trends and magnitudes during cold stadials over the past 150,000 years, according to a record of deep-ocean acidity.

Abrupt changes in atmospheric methane through the last deglaciation were largely the result of tropical sources responding to shifting rainfall patterns, according to a comparison of precisely dated ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica.

While global ocean redox patterns during the end Triassic were similar to today, pulses of localized anoxia were probably linked to mass extinctions on continental shelves, according to analysis of molybdenum records.

Mineral precipitation experiments suggest the formation of greenalite, an iron silicate mineral, limited zinc, copper and vanadium levels in the Archaean ocean, making them unavailable to early microbial life.

Serpentinization of komatiites produced large quantities of H₂ in the Archaean, which has implications for the start of early chemosynthetic life, according to petrologic and bulk rock chemical analyses.

Velocity-weakening seismic barriers in subduction zones display a range of behaviours consistent with geologic structural control on earthquake seismicity, according to earthquake cycle simulations along a megathrust.

Deeply subducted water may have enabled the exchange of hydrogen and silicon between the mantle and core, according to high-pressure and -temperature experiments.