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The widespread occurrence of young grabens associated with larger compressional structures on Mercury’s surface suggests contractional tectonism has continued on the planet into geologically recent times.
Early Holocene groundwater recharge rates were higher than modern in the Grand Canyon region, probably due to an expanded North American Monsoon, according to a speleothem record and isotope-enabled palaeoclimate modelling.
Sustained emission reductions have altered the prevailing regime for ozone formation over China, weakening the trade-off in pollution control between aerosols and ozone, according to analyses of ozone pollution chemistry between 2013 and 2021.
The Earth may become inhospitable to land mammals in about 250 Myr owing to climate warming and drying associated with the assembly of the next supercontinent, Pangaea-Ultima, according to combined tectonic, climate and mammal habitability modelling.
Flat microplastic fibres have much longer residence times and travel further in the atmosphere than previously appreciated, according to simulations of the settling of microplastics with different shapes.
Oceanographic observations indicate sustained warming and enhanced basal melt since 2016 below the Fimbulisen ice sheet in East Antarctica, associated with increased subpolar westerlies and reduced sea ice.
Analyses of phosphorus concentrations in more than 370 watersheds of the Great Lakes Basin from 2003 to 2019 suggest widespread increases in soluble reactive phosphorus concentrations, despite often decreasing or non-significant trends in total phosphorus.
Laboratory experiments suggest that bursting bubbles enhance ice melt from tidewater glaciers, and consequently, glacier-ice structure needs to be accounted for in projections of ice loss and sea-level rise.
Fine sea salt aerosols produced by blowing snow in the Arctic impact cloud properties and warm the surface, according to observations from the MOSAiC expedition.
While generally tracking Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, the Earth gained energy during cold millennial scale events throughout the past 150,000 years, according to an analysis of benthic oxygen isotopes.
Subduction of sediments shaped geochemically by an increasingly oxidized atmosphere shifted the redox state of the mantle during the early Proterozoic, according to an analysis of sulfur speciation in apatites from ancient igneous zircons.
Fluids at the plate interface are sourced from the dehydrating slab mantle beneath the Shumagin Gap in Alaska, and contribute to regional seismic risk by influencing rupture propagation, according to magnetotelluric observations and electrical resistivity modelling.
Early continental crust formed at depth, implying some type of plate tectonics operating as long as 4 billion years ago, according to high-pressure and temperature melting experiments of an analogue material.
Climate model simulations suggest that reducing aerosol pollution enhances the cooling effects of afforestation, which could partially counteract the warming effect of air quality measures.
The temporal evolution of the net global climate feedback in recent decades has been governed by sea surface temperature patterns in the Southern Ocean, according to climate model simulations.
Divergent trends in biogeochemical constituents of the six largest rivers in the Arctic from 2003 to 2019 support multi-faceted changes on the Arctic landscape under global environmental change.
The triple oxygen isotope composition of quartz veins indicates that the southern Tibetan Plateau was already around 3.5 km high by 60 million years ago, showing that substantial surface uplift started before collision of the Eurasian and Indian plates.
A 3D global marine plastic mass budget suggests that larger items contribute more than 95% of buoyant plastics by mass and are longer lived than previously estimated, which suggests there is no missing sink of marine plastic pollution.
Atmospheric short-wave absorption due to wildfire smoke is caused predominantly by dark brown carbon particles, according to observations from smoke plumes in the United States.
Spatial patterns of channel sinuosity near river outlets reflect the interplay between the channel migration rate and the avulsion timescale, according to sinuosity measurements of lowland rivers on Earth and Mars and channel evolution simulations.