Climate sciences articles within Nature

Featured

  • 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
  • Letter |

    The Southern Ocean is potentially a substantial sink of anthropogenic carbon dioxide; however, the regulation of this carbon sink by the wind-driven Ekman flow, mesoscale eddies and their interaction is under debate. Here, a high-resolution ocean circulation and carbon cycle model is used to study intra-annual variability in anthropogenic carbon dioxide over a two-year time period; the Ekman flow is found to be the primary mechanism of anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport across the Antarctic polar front.

    • T. Ito
    • , M. Woloszyn
    •  & M. Mazloff
  • Column |

    Science should focus more on understanding the present and less on predicting the future, argues Daniel Sarewitz.

    • Daniel Sarewitz