Research Highlight |
Featured
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Nature Index |
Japan’s rising research stars: Yuuki Wada
Wada is studying high-energy particles by collecting data from storms on Earth.
- Chris Woolston
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News & Views |
How wildfires deplete ozone in the stratosphere
Unexpected smoke-particle chemistry is shown to be the link between intense wildfires and stratospheric ozone loss. As the climate changes, more-frequent and more-intense fires might delay the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer.
- V. Faye McNeill
- & Joel A. Thornton
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Nature Podcast |
How the Australian wildfires devastated the ozone layer
Why smoke particles from wildfires lead to ozone depletion, and modelling food systems with ‘digital twins’.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News |
Australia’s massive wildfires shredded the ozone layer — now scientists know why
Smoke from the catastrophic 2019–20 fires unleashed ozone-eating chlorine molecules into the stratosphere.
- Dyani Lewis
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Article
| Open AccessOceanic climate changes threaten the sustainability of Asia’s water tower
Weakening blocking effect of the High Mountain Asia on the westerlies-carried deficit in precipitation minus evaporation from the southeast North Atlantic is demonstrated, leading to persistent northward expansion of terrestrial water storage deficit in the Tibet Plateau.
- Qiang Zhang
- , Zexi Shen
- & Gang Wang
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News & Views Forum |
JWST opens a window on exoplanet skies
An unprecedented glimpse of a distant planet reveals clues about how it might have formed. Scientists explain why it’s a win for atmospheric chemistry, and celebrate the technology that made it possible.
- Julia V. Seidel
- , Louise D. Nielsen
- & Subhajit Sarkar
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World View |
Solar geoengineering is scary — that’s why we should research it
Research on blocking sunlight needs a dose of realpolitik.
- Katharine Ricke
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Editorial |
Indoor air pollution kills and science needs to step up
Researchers and policymakers are only now waking up to the effects of dirty indoor air. As ever, low-income and marginalized communities are most exposed.
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Comment |
Hidden harms of indoor air pollution — five steps to expose them
Dirty outdoor air might grab the headlines, but learning how pollutants inside buildings form, accumulate and affect our health is equally crucial.
- Alastair C. Lewis
- , Deborah Jenkins
- & Christopher J. M. Whitty
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News Feature |
How India is battling deadly rain storms as climate change bites
South Asian weather is becoming increasingly difficult to forecast as monsoons grow more erratic — and global warming is raising the risks posed by violent rain storms.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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News & Views |
Cause of the 2020 surge in atmospheric methane clarified
Atmospheric methane concentrations rose unexpectedly during the lockdowns of 2020. It now seems that this was due to warm, wet weather in the Northern Hemisphere and, ironically, a slowdown in air-pollutant emissions.
- George H. Allen
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Article |
Wetland emission and atmospheric sink changes explain methane growth in 2020
Using both bottom-up and top-down approaches, the record high increase in the methane growth rate in 2020 is attributed mainly to emissions from wetlands, which have been exacerbated by a warmer and wetter climate, and to the reduced atmospheric methane sink, in response to emissions reduction of air pollutants during COVID-19 lockdowns.
- Shushi Peng
- , Xin Lin
- & Philippe Ciais
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Research Briefing |
Observations refute the idea that warming strongly reduces cloudiness
The response of cumulus clouds in trade-wind regions to warming is a large uncertainty in climate projections. Observations now indicate that the mechanism leading to the strongest cloud reductions in models does not occur in nature, suggesting that extreme sensitivity of Earth’s temperatures to climate change is less likely than previously thought.
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Article
| Open AccessStrong cloud–circulation coupling explains weak trade cumulus feedback
Analysis of new observations from the EUREC4A field campaign shows that lower-tropospheric mixing does not desiccate the base of trade cumulus clouds, refuting the mixing-desiccation hypothesis and explaining the weak trade cumulus feedback.
- Raphaela Vogel
- , Anna Lea Albright
- & Sandrine Bony
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News & Views |
From the archive: a shared motivation for scientists, and mirages
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News & Views |
From the archive: the story of life on Earth, and a triple rainbow
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Comment |
Aerosols must be included in climate risk assessments
Estimates of impending risk ignore a big player in regional change and climate extremes.
- Geeta G. Persad
- , Bjørn H. Samset
- & Laura J. Wilcox
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Research Briefing |
Orbit-induced changes in the seasonality of the Pacific cold-tongue region explained
Simulations reveal that the annual temperature cycle in the Pacific cold-tongue region is influenced by the shape of Earth’s orbit, as well as by the planet’s axial tilt. Together, these influences drive remarkable changes in the cold tongue’s seasonality across a cycle of about 22,000 years.
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Article |
Two annual cycles of the Pacific cold tongue under orbital precession
The Pacific cold tongue is shown to possess two distinct annual cycles with complex interference effects, calling for a reassessment of its seasonal dynamics and re-evaluation of tropical Pacific palaeoclimate records of annual cycle phase changes.
- John C. H. Chiang
- , Alyssa R. Atwood
- & Anthony J. Broccoli
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Research Briefing |
Finding the invisible traces of shipping in marine clouds
Human activities produce airborne particles called aerosols that can brighten clouds and cool the planet, but the magnitude of this effect is unclear. A study of shipping’s influence on clouds suggests that aerosols could have a large impact on climate by increasing the amount of water contained in clouds.
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Article
| Open AccessInvisible ship tracks show large cloud sensitivity to aerosol
Investigations of the effect of aerosol emissions from shipping on cloud properties when both visible and invisible ship tracks are considered implies a large negative radiative effect (and associated cooling) from liquid water path adjustments.
- Peter Manshausen
- , Duncan Watson-Parris
- & Philip Stier
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News & Views |
From the archive: city smoke, and Pasteur’s beer-making invention
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News |
Why are Pakistan’s floods so extreme this year?
Huge swathes of the country are under water, following an intense heatwave and a long monsoon that has dumped a record amount of rain.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
Australia’s epic wildfires expanded ozone hole and cranked up global heat
Smoke from the unprecedented 2020 fires increased temperatures in the stratosphere by 3 °C in some places.
- Jude Coleman
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News & Views |
From the archive: bacteriophage mystery, and air-pollution tests
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News |
Nuclear war between two nations could spark global famine
A pall of smoke from burning cities would engulf Earth, causing worldwide crop failures, models show.
- Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Atmospheric waves reinforced tsunami after Tongan eruption
The global tsunami and atmospheric waves that followed the eruption of the Tongan volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai were observed around the world. Analysing the data could reshape our understanding of such events.
- Emily M. Lane
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News |
Carbon dating hampered by rising fossil-fuel emissions
Archaeologists will increasingly have to rely on other techniques as emissions continue to alter the composition of carbon isotopes in air.
- Nicola Jones
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Research Highlight |
The roof of the Alps yields clues to a toxic-pollutant puzzle
Ice collected near Mount Blanc’s summit shows that cement plants do not account for a rise in thallium levels.
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Where I Work |
We built a science institute from scratch
With no research institute in Nepal equipped to support her drought research, Hemu Kafle helped establish a new one.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Article
| Open AccessSurface-to-space atmospheric waves from Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai eruption
The Hunga Tonga eruption represents a natural experiment, being a clearly identifiable near-point source producing gravity waves across a broad range of spatiotemporal and frequency scales, observed by a diverse array of instruments worldwide.
- Corwin J. Wright
- , Neil P. Hindley
- & Jia Yue
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Matters Arising |
Landfalling hurricane track modes and decay
- Kelvin T. F. Chan
- , Kailin Zhang
- & Johnny C. L. Chan
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Article
| Open AccessSynergistic HNO3–H2SO4–NH3 upper tropospheric particle formation
By performing experiments under upper tropospheric conditions, nitric acid, sulfuric acid and ammonia can form particles synergistically, at rates orders of magnitude faster than any two of the three components.
- Mingyi Wang
- , Mao Xiao
- & Neil M. Donahue
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Research Highlight |
Helium levels in the atmosphere are ballooning
Sensitive techniques show rising levels of two forms of helium, one expected and one a mystery.
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Where I Work |
A grass-roots science movement to rebuild Lebanon
Najat Saliba is pairing researchers around the world with local communities in Lebanon.
- Benjamin Plackett
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Research Highlight |
Why air pollution plagues a small island deep in the South Pacific
Rapa Nui has fewer than 10,000 residents but is on the receiving end of carbon monoxide from continents thousands of kilometres away.
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Matters Arising |
On the role of atmospheric model transport uncertainty in estimating the Chinese land carbon sink
- Andrew E. Schuh
- , Brendan Byrne
- & Brad Weir
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: The size of the land carbon sink in China
- Jing Wang
- , Liang Feng
- & ChaoZong Xia
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: On the role of atmospheric model transport uncertainty in estimating the Chinese land carbon sink
- Jing Wang
- , Liang Feng
- & ChaoZong Xia
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News |
AI reads Greek, COVID’s catastrophe — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key graphics from the week in science and research.
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News |
Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record
Natural variability is probably the cause, although global warming could have a role.
- Tosin Thompson
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Research Highlight |
Puzzling spikes in ozone-eating chemical have a fiery cause
Scientists trace variation in methyl bromide levels to an increase in fires — which are linked to the climate pattern El Niño.
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News Feature |
Why the Tongan eruption will go down in the history of volcanology
The 15 January blast sent shock waves around the globe and defied scientific expectations. Researchers are now scrambling to work out why.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane
As global methane concentrations soar over 1,900 parts per billion, some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Tonga volcano eruption created puzzling ripples in Earth’s atmosphere
Powerful waves ringing through the atmosphere after the eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai are unlike anything seen before.
- David Adam