NATURE
1. Global heat waves on the rise
Nature 500, 380 (22 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500380a
Climate models predict
that about 20% of Earth's land surface will experience monthly temperatures
that are more than three standard deviations from the mean
The heat-wave projections
stand until 2040, no matter how much more carbon dioxide humans put into the
air.
2. Onset of deglacial
warming in West Antarctica driven by local orbital forcing
WAIS Divide Project Members
Nature 500, 440–444 (22 August 2013)
doi:10.1038/nature12376
An annually resolved
ice-core record from West Antarctica indicates that warming driven by local
insolation resulting from sea-ice decline began in that region about
2,000 years before warming in East Antarctica, reconciling two alternative
explanations for deglacial warming in the Southern Hemisphere.
SCIENCE
3. Groundwater Arsenic
Contamination Throughout China
Luis Rodríguez-Lado, Guifan Sun, Michael Berg, Qiang Zhang, Hanbin Xue, Quanmei Zheng, C. Annette Johnson
Science
23 August 2013: Vol. 341 no. 6148 pp. 866-868
DOI:
10.1126/science.1237484
A
predictive map of arsenic in Chinese groundwater aquifers reveals a potential
health risk to 19.6 million people.
4. Hillslopes Record the
Growth and Decay of Landscapes
Science
23 August 2013: Vol. 341 no. 6148 pp. 868-871
DOI:
10.1126/science.1241791
Changes
in tectonic rates can be quantitatively derived from hillslope morphology.
5. Mapping Tectonic
Deformation in the Crust and Upper Mantle Beneath Europe and the North Atlantic
Ocean
Hejun
Zhu and Jeroen Tromp
Science
23 August 2013: 871-875.Published online 8 August 2013
[DOI:10.1126/science.1241335]
Anisotropy
of the crust and mantle under Europe is a relict of the continent’s formation.
6. Abundant Porewater
Mn(III) Is a Major Component of the Sedimentary Redox System
Andrew
S. Madison, Bradley M. Tebo, Alfonso Mucci, Bjørn Sundby, and George W. Luther
III
Science
23 August 2013: 875-878.[DOI:10.1126/science.1241396]
Soluble
manganese(III) accounts for up to 90% of the total manganese in the
near-surface porewaters of hemipelagic sediments.
7. Microscopic Evidence
for Liquid-Liquid Separation in Supersaturated CaCO3 Solutions
Adam
F. Wallace, Lester O. Hedges, Alejandro Fernandez-Martinez, Paolo Raiteri,
Julian D. Gale, Glenn A. Waychunas, Stephen Whitelam, Jillian F. Banfield, and
James J. De Yoreo
Science
23 August 2013: 885-889.[DOI:10.1126/science.1230915]
The
preordering seen during calcium carbonate crystallization may be due to a
liquid-liquid separation process.
PNAS
8. Minimum of the order
parameter fluctuations of seismicity before major earthquakes in Japan
Nicholas V. Sarlis,
Efthimios S. Skordas, Panayiotis A. Varotsos, Toshiyasu Nagao, Masashi
Kamogawa, Haruo Tanaka, and Seiya Uyeda
PNAS 2013 110 (34)
13734-13738; doi:10.1073/pnas.1312740110
Here, we analyze the Japan
seismic catalog in natural time from January 1, 1984 to March 11, 2011. We find
that the fluctuations of the order parameter of seismicity exhibit distinct
minima a few months before the
earthquakes.
9. Time-dependent climate
sensitivity and the legacy of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions
Richard E. Zeebe
PNAS 2013 110 (34)
13739-13744; published ahead of print August 5, 2013,
doi:10.1073/pnas.1222843110
Results predict a much
longer lifetime of human-induced future warming (23,000–165,000 y), which
increases the likelihood of large ice sheet melting and major sea level rise.
10. The multimillennial
sea-level commitment of global warming
Anders Levermann, Peter U.
Clark, Ben Marzeion, Glenn A. Milne, David Pollard, Valentina Radic, and
Alexander Robinson
PNAS 2013 110 (34)
13745-13750; published ahead of print July 15, 2013,
doi:10.1073/pnas.1219414110
Here we combine
paleo-evidence with simulations from physical models to estimate the future
sea-level commitment on a multimillennial time scale and compute associated
regional sea-level patterns. We are committed to a sea-level rise of
approximately 2.3 m °C−1 within the next 2,000 y.
