Climate sciences articles within Nature

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  • Books & Arts |

    Four books by prominent global-warming pundits illustrate that exhortation and authority are not enough to solve the climate crisis — it is time for some humility, concludes Roger Pielke Jr.

    • Roger Pielke Jr

  • Editorial |

    The integrity of climate research has taken a very public battering in recent months. Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.

  • News |

    Attack sparks memories of McCarthy witch-hunt.

    • Jeff Tollefson

  • News |

    Experts debate how much emergency-response planners should rely on tsunami forecasts.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • Letter |

    Palaeoclimate data show that 3–5 million years ago in the early Pliocene the equatorial Pacific experienced persistent warm, El Niño conditions. Here a hurricane model and a coupled climate model show a feedback between sea surface temperature and frequent hurricanes that could account for such conditions.

    • Alexey V. Fedorov
    • , Christopher M. Brierley
    •  & Kerry Emanuel

  • News & Views |

    What was responsible for the unusual climatic conditions that prevailed during the early Pliocene, 5 million to 3 million years ago? Modelling studies point to intense tropical-cyclone activity as a possible answer.

    • Ryan L. Sriver

  • News Feature |

    A new generation of sophisticated Earth models is gearing up for its first major test. But added complexity may lead to greater uncertainty about the future climate, finds Olive Heffernan.

    • Olive Heffernan

  • Editorial |

    Exploding the myths surrounding how and why we select our research papers.

  • News Feature |

    Protesters saying "no to CO2" are just one roadblock facing carbon sequestration — a strategy that could help prevent dangerous climate change. Richard Van Noorden investigates.

    • Richard Van Noorden

  • Opinion |

    As calls for reform intensify following recent furores about e-mails, conflicts of interest, glaciers and extreme weather, five climatologists propose ways forward for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their suggestions range from reaffirming the panel' governing principles to increasing the number and speed of its publications to replacing the volunteer organization with a permanently staffed structure.

  • News |

    Climate body slammed for errors and potential conflicts of interest.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • Authors |

    Wealth of data cuts uncertainty in climate-warming predictions.

  • News & Views |

    A probabilistic analysis of climate variation during the period AD 1050–1800 refines available estimates of the influence of temperature change on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

    • Hugues Goosse

  • News |

    Antarctic drilling project aims for a definitive record of climate.

    • Chaz Firestone

  • Letter |

    Anthropogenic global warming is likely to be amplified by positive feedback from the global carbon cycle; however, the magnitude of the climate sensitivity of the global carbon cycle, and thus of its positive feedback strength, is under debate. By combining a probabilistic approach with an ensemble of proxy-based temperature reconstructions and pre-industrial CO2 data from three ice cores, this climate sensitivity is now shown to be much smaller than previously thought.

    • David C. Frank
    • , Jan Esper
    •  & Fortunat Joos

  • Letter |

    High concentrations of ozone in the troposphere are toxic and act as a greenhouse gas. Anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors have caused widespread increases in ozone concentrations since the late 1800s, with the fastest-growing ozone precursor emissions currently coming out of east Asia. Much of the springtime east Asian pollution is exported towards western North America; a strong increase in springtime ozone mixing ratios is now found in the free troposphere over this region.

    • O. R. Cooper
    • , D. D. Parrish
    •  & M. A. Avery

  • Editorial |

    With climate-change sceptics waiting to pounce on any scientific uncertainties, researchers need a sophisticated strategy for communication.

  • News Feature |

    Like any other field, research on climate change has some fundamental gaps, although not the ones typically claimed by sceptics. Quirin Schiermeier takes a hard look at some of the biggest problem areas.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • Letter |

    The elevation of the Tibetan plateau is thought to cause its surface to serve as a heat source that drives the South Asian summer monsoon, potentially coupling uplift of the plateau to climate changes on geologic timescales. Here, however, an atmospheric model is used to show that flattening of the Tibetan plateau has little effect on the monsoon, provided that the narrow orography of the Himalayas and adjacent mountain ranges is preserved.

    • William R. Boos
    •  & Zhiming Kuang

  • News & Views |

    Received wisdom about the main driver of the South Asian monsoon comes into question with a report that tests the idea that the Himalayas, not the Tibetan plateau, are the essential topographic ingredient.

    • Mark A. Cane

  • News |

    Collaboration launches effort to track marine nutrients.

    • Mark Schrope

  • News |

    Much more carbon is sequestered by echinoderms than previously thought.

    • Matt Kaplan

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