Climate sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Accurate estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks are needed for policies to reduce emissions from loss of forests. By looking at a central area in the Congo Basin, Kearsleyet al.find that inconsistencies in height–diameter relationships across Central Africa cause overestimations between regions.

    • Elizabeth Kearsley
    • , Thales de Haulleville
    •  & Hans Verbeeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dissolution of iron from sediments along ocean margins may stimulate photosynthesis and moderate global climate. This study shows how margin sediments supply iron in varying amounts between regions, and by distinct mechanisms, which may be due to geological characteristics and hydrological controls on land.

    • William B. Homoky
    • , Seth G. John
    •  & Rachel A. Mills

  • Article |

    Alaskan mountain glaciers are losing ice and contribute to sea level rise, but contributions from specific ice-loss mechanisms are not known. Here, calving losses in Central Alaska are found to equal 36% of the net regional mass change each year and regional flux is dictated largely by snow accumulation rates.

    • Evan W. Burgess
    • , Richard R. Forster
    •  & Christopher F. Larsen

  • Article |

    Patchiness in the distribution of phytoplankton promotes many of the ecological interactions that underpin the marine food web. This study shows that turbulence, ubiquitous in the ocean, counter-intuitively ‘unmixes’ a population of motile phytoplankton, generating intense, small-scale patchiness in its distribution.

    • William M. Durham
    • , Eric Climent
    •  & Roman Stocker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomass burning is a major source of carbonaceous particles, including tar balls and soot, that affect earth’s climate. Studying a wildfire plume, this work identifies two types of tar balls and classifies soot according to its mixing state with implications for the calculation of aerosol radiative forcing.

    • Swarup China
    • , Claudio Mazzoleni
    •  & Manvendra K. Dubey

  • Article |

    Iron plays a key role in controlling biological production in the Southern Ocean, yet mechanisms regulating iron availability are not completely understood. Here, Ingall et al.show that structural incorporation of reduced, organic iron into biogenic silica represents a new and substantial removal pathway.

    • Ellery D. Ingall
    • , Julia M. Diaz
    •  & Jay A. Brandes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest cover up-river influences the sediments reaching coral reefs, but how this relationship is affected by future climate change is not clear. In a study of the Malagasy coral reefs, Maina et al.find that regional land-use management is more important than mediating climate change for reducing reef sedimentation.

    • Joseph Maina
    • , Hans de Moel
    •  & Jan E. Vermaat

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The South African archaeological record contains evidence of the early flourishing of the human mind. Ziegler et al. provide new paleoclimate reconstructions, which suggest that rapid fluctuations in global climate have played a key role in the evolution of these early human cultures.

    • Martin Ziegler
    • , Margit H. Simon
    •  & Rainer Zahn

  • Article |

    A strong increase in atmospheric 14C was measured in tree rings at AD 774 to 775, providing potential evidence of large cosmic ray fluxes to Earth, but the cause of this event is unclear. Here, Miyake et al. report a second 14C event in AD 993, which suggests that the most likely cause was a large solar proton event.

    • Fusa Miyake
    • , Kimiaki Masuda
    •  & Toshio Nakamura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Near-term climate prediction is an information tool used in climate adaptation services. This study analyses the quality of the predictions, showing that near-term climate forecasts have good skill in predicting temperature at regional scales, where most of the skill is attributed to atmospheric composition changes.

    • F. J. Doblas-Reyes
    • , I. Andreu-Burillo
    •  & G. J. van Oldenborgh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The abrupt ending of the Younger Dryas cooling episode marked the onset of the present interglacial and was the most prominent climate change in the Earth’s recent history. This study shows evidence for a sequence of events with a leading role of the ocean at the transition into the present day warm Holocene epoch.

    • Christof Pearce
    • , Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz
    •  & Søren M. Kristiansen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that only climate change drives temporal tree mortality increases in old forests. Here, Luo and Chen show that both forest dynamics and climate change drive temporal tree mortality increases in young and old forests, and that climate change-associated mortality increases are higher in the young forests.

    • Yong Luo
    •  & Han Y. H. Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that during the mid-Pliocene warm period the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) must have been stronger than today. Here, using proxy data compilation and simulation, Zhang et al.show that the two observations used to support stronger AMOC may not necessitate its increased strength.

    • Zhongshi Zhang
    • , Kerim H. Nisancioglu
    •  & Ulysses S. Ninnemann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The branched inflow of warm Atlantic Water to the Arctic has been known for more than a hundred years, yet what controls the relative strengths of the two pathways remains poorly understood. Here, the authors identify the role of atmospheric circulation over the northern Barents Sea in controlling inflow.

    • Vidar S. Lien
    • , Frode B. Vikebø
    •  & Øystein Skagseth

  • Article |

    The long-term hydroclimate variability in Amazonia and its influence on biodiversity remain poorly understood. Here, new speleothem oxygen isotope records characterize spatial–temporal changes in precipitation and provide new insights to understanding the west–east contrasting pattern of biodiversity in Amazonia.

    • Hai Cheng
    • , Ashish Sinha
    •  & Augusto S. Auler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active seafloor spreading has been documented in some of the tectonically active basins of the Gulf of California. This work presents new geophysical and geochemical data as evidence that active seafloor spreading is also occurring in the northernmost Wagner and Consag basins of the Gulf.

    • Rosa Ma Prol-Ledesma
    • , Marco-Antonio Torres-Vera
    •  & Carlos Robinson

  • Article |

    Mineral cave deposits—speleothems—provide a record of past rainfall changes. This study presents a speleothem data-set from southwestern Oregon, revealing winter climate change over the past 13,000 years with abrupt transitions between warm-dry and cold-wet regimes influenced by solar forcing.

    • Vasile Ersek
    • , Peter U. Clark
    •  & R. Lawrence Edwards

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Palaeoclimate proxies, such as shells, record past ocean changes. A radiocarbon study based on a shell chronology from the Icelandic shelf is used to track changes in ocean circulation and climate for the past 1,350 years, suggesting a declining influence of North Atlantic surface waters on the Icelandic shelf over the last millennium.

    • Alan D. Wanamaker Jr
    • , Paul G. Butler
    •  & Christopher A. Richardson

  • Article |

    Small-scale ocean dynamics can have wide reaching impacts on the larger-scale ocean circulation. Using temperature and velocity data, this study shows the presence of abyssal vortices in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, adding complexity to the structure and evolution of water masses in this region.

    • A. Rubino
    • , F. Falcini
    •  & A. Capone

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The calving of the Mertz Glacier occurred in 2010 in East Antarctica, brought on by the re-positioning of a large iceberg. Using satellite data, this study shows a reduction in sea ice production following the calving, interpreted as a potential regime shift towards reduced sea ice production for the coming decades.

    • T. Tamura
    • , G.D. Williams
    •  & K.I. Ohshima

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ocean circulation moves heat and gases between the ocean and atmosphere, impacting the carbon cycle at decadal timescales. Here, a radiocarbon coral record of ocean mixing from Bermuda suggests that the formation of mode water, and thus carbon uptake, have been more stable over the past 200 years than previously thought.

    • Nathalie F. Goodkin
    • , Ellen R. M. Druffel
    •  & Scott C. Doney

  • Article |

    Understanding the environmental controls of past wildfires is difficult due to the lack of records of weather or vegetation. This study shows, using cross-scale analysis, how power laws associated with fire-event time series can identify critical thresholds in landscape dynamics in a rapidly changing climate.

    • Donald McKenzie
    •  & Maureen C. Kennedy

  • Article |

    A detailed assessment of near-shore temperature changes is needed for improved forecasts of the consequences of coastal warming. Here, changes in coastal sea surface temperature are estimated, showing that although 71% of the world's coastlines are warming, the rates of change have varied spatially.

    • Fernando P. Lima
    •  & David S. Wethey

  • Article |

    The Younger Dryas cold period is thought to have occurred mainly due to the release of fresh water into the North Atlantic from the glacial Lake Agassiz. Here, sedimentary and geochemical data from the central Arctic Ocean support the hypothesis of a northward route drainage event from Lake Agassiz during the Younger Dryas.

    • Christelle Not
    •  & Claude Hillaire-Marcel

  • Article |

    Active shortening in the Central Andes shifted from the western to the eastern margin between 10-7 Myr ago, but the mechanism of formation is still unclear. Here, using critical wedge theory and local-scale fault friction calculations, this shift is proposed to have been controlled by changes in erosion patterns.

    • Kevin Norton
    •  & Fritz Schlunegger

  • Article |

    Peatlands are a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide and make up a large soil carbon reservoir. Here, studies of the interaction between drainage and fire show that long-term carbon emissions will likely exceed rates of carbon uptake, reducing the northern peatland carbon sink.

    • M.R. Turetsky
    • , W.F. Donahue
    •  & B.W. Benscoter

  • Article |

    Many organisms are responding to a warming climate by shifts in spatial distribution. The poleward movement of silver hake,Merluccius bilinearis, over the last forty years is related to the position of the Gulf Stream and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation through changes in local bottom water temperature.

    • Janet A. Nye
    • , Terrence M. Joyce
    •  & Jason S. Link

  • Article |

    Assessments of future water availability in South America are uncertain based on multiple coupled general circulation models. Shiogamaet al.identify global-scale metrics for measuring the reliability of water resource assessments, and indicate a higher probability of drying in the Amazon basin.

    • Hideo Shiogama
    • , Seita Emori
    •  & Toru Nozawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The presence of earthworms is known to enhance the quality and moisture of soil in cool and wet climates. Evanset al. show that termites and ants can improve soil quality in warmer and drier climates—their presence results in elevated water infiltration and nitrogen content, leading to increased wheat yields.

    • Theodore A. Evans
    • , Tracy Z. Dawes
    •  & Nathan Lo

  • Article |

    Storm water runoff and wastewater effluent are discharged into oceans, but the full ecological effects of these discharges are unknown. Here, the authors examine the population structure of a marine organism, the bat star, and show that these discharges alter the genetic structure and larval dispersal of this species.

    • Jonathan B. Puritz
    •  & Robert J. Toonen

  • Article |

    Ocean acidification due to increasing carbon dioxide levels can affect the growth and viability of corals. In this study, the authors measured extension, calcification and density in Florida corals collected in 1996, and show that recent climate change did not cause a decline in their extension or calcification.

    • Kevin P. Helmle
    • , Richard E. Dodge
    •  & C. Mark Eakin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a semi-periodic variability of sea-surface temperature, is unknown. Knudsenet al.show that 55- to 70-year climate oscillations existed throughout the last 8,000 years, suggesting that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is a permanent feature of the Holocene climate induced by internal ocean variability.

    • Mads Faurschou Knudsen
    • , Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz
    •  & Antoon Kuijpers

  • Article |

    Antarctic bottom water is important for the global climate system, but its main source in East Antarctica was altered recently because of calving of the Mertz Glacier Tongue. The authors model this event and find large changes in dense water exports from the region.

    • Kazuya Kusahara
    • , Hiroyasu Hasumi
    •  & Guy D. Williams

  • Article |

    Ocean tides and infragravity waves—the Earths 'hum'—have very different periods and wavelengths. Sugioka and colleagues report resonance between these two phenomena using arrays of broadband ocean-bottom seismometers and show that some tidal energy is transferred to the deep oceans through this coupling.

    • Hiroko Sugioka
    • , Yoshio Fukao
    •  & Toshihiko Kanazawa

  • Article |

    Global vegetation models are too coarse to predict climate change effects at the hillslope level. Using high-resolution LiDAR, the authors explore the three-dimensional structure and vegetation of an African savanna, and suggest that finer hydrogeomorphological features will shape future climate effects.

    • Shaun R. Levick
    • , Gregory P. Asner
    •  & David E. Knapp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The storage in soils of biochar, the product of biomass pyrolysis, has been proposed as an attractive option to mitigate climate change. Amonette and co-workers model the potential impact of biochar and find that it could eliminate more carbon from the atmosphere than using the same biomass for biofuel.

    • Dominic Woolf
    • , James E. Amonette
    •  & Stephen Joseph

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