NATURE
1. Astrometry: Europe's star power
Devin
Powell
02 October 2013
The
Gaia spacecraft will soon launch on a mission to chart the heavens in
unprecedented detail.
2. Geologists take drill to Triassic park
Alexandra
Witze
01 October 2013
Arizona
rock core to yield coherent picture of turbulent period. The red rocks of Chinde Point in the Petrified Forest
National Park may soon provide fresh insight into events more than 200 million
years ago.
3. Supervolcanoes
within an ancient volcanic province in Arabia Terra, Mars
Joseph R. Michalski &
Jacob E. Bleacher
Nature 502, 47–52 (03 October 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12482
Several irregularly shaped
craters located within Arabia Terra, Mars, are interpreted as a new type of
highland volcanic construct, similar to supervolcanoes on Earth, fundamentally
changing the picture of ancient volcanism and climate evolution on Mars.
4. How plants helped Earth to stay cool
Nature 502, 9 (03 October 2013) doi:10.1038/502009b
Plant growth spurred by
rising levels of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere has slowed the rate
of global warming considerably.
5. Calving fluxes and basal melt rates of Antarctic
ice shelves
M.
A. Depoorter, J. L. Bamber, J. A. Griggs, J. T. M. Lenaerts, S. R. M.
Ligtenberg, M. R. van den Broeke & G. Moholdt
Nature 502, 89–92 (03 October 2013)
doi:10.1038/nature12567
An estimate of the mass
balance components for all ice shelves in Antarctica indicates that about half
of the ice-sheet surface mass gain is lost through oceanic erosion before
reaching the ice front, and that the loss due to iceberg calving (split off from the iceberg) is about 34
per cent less than previously thought.
SCIENCE
6. The IPCC Gains
Confidence in Key Forecast
Richard
A. Kerr
Science
4 October 2013: 23-24.[DOI:10.1126/science.342.6154.23-a]
The
latest international climate assessment may appear to rubberstamp the same old
guess of how bad global warming will get, but the science is now actually much
advanced.
7. For Researchers, IPCC
Leaves a Deep Impression
Eli
Kintisch
Science
4 October 2013: 24.[DOI:10.1126/science.342.6154.24]
It's
not clear how much impact a massive new report on climate change will have on
policymakers, but it is clear that the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) has left a deep mark on global science.
8. Managing Forests and
Fire in Changing Climates
S.
L. Stephens, J. K. Agee, P. Z. Fulé, M. P. North, W. H. Romme, T. W. Swetnam,
and M. G. Turner
Science
4 October 2013: 41-42.[DOI:10.1126/science.1240294]
Policy
focused on fire suppression only delays the inevitable.
9. Nitrogen Isotopic
Composition and Density of the Archean Atmosphere
Bernard
Marty, Laurent Zimmermann, Magali Pujol, Ray Burgess, and Pascal Philippot
Science
4 October 2013: 101-104. [DOI:10.1126/science.1240971]
Earth’s
Archean atmosphere contained roughly as much nitrogen between 3.0 and 3.5
billion years ago as it does today.
10. Surviving in a Marine
Desert: The Sponge Loop Retains Resources Within Coral Reefs
Jasper
M. de Goeij, Dick van Oevelen, Mark J. A. Vermeij, Ronald Osinga, Jack J.
Middelburg, Anton F. P. M. de Goeij, and Wim Admiraal
Science
4 October 2013: 108-110.[DOI:10.1126/science.1241981]
Sponges
take up dissolved organic matter and convert it into consumable cellular
material.
PNAS
11. Carbon substitution
for oxygen in silicates in planetary interiors
Sabyasachi Sen, Scarlett J.
Widgeon, Alexandra Navrotsky, Gabriela Mera, Amir Tavakoli, Emanuel Ionescu,
and Ralf Riedel
PNAS 2013 110 (40)
15904-15907; published ahead of print September 16, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1312771110
We suggest that significant
(several percent) substitution of C for O could occur in more complex
geological silicate melts/glasses in contact with graphite at moderate pressure
and high temperature.
12. Evidence for a rapid
release of carbon at the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum
James D. Wright and Morgan
F. Schaller
PNAS 2013 110 (40)
15908-15913; published ahead of print September 16, 2013,
doi:10.1073/pnas.1309188110
Calcium carbonate and carbon
isotope records from the rhythmically bedded Marlboro Clay, deposited during
the onset of the PETM CIE, show that the massive release of isotopically light
carbon was instantaneous, providing important constraints for the magnitude of
carbon released and potential mechanisms.
13. Electromagnetically
driven westward drift and inner-core superrotation in Earth’s core
Philip W. Livermore, Rainer
Hollerbach, and Andrew Jackson
PNAS 2013 110 (40)
15914-15918; doi:10.1073/pnas.1307825110
Observations of the
geomagnetic field provide evidence of westward-drifting features at the edge of
the liquid outer core.
NATURE GEOSCIENCE
14. El Niño and nitrous oxide
Anna
Armstrong
Nature Geoscience 6, 805 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1978
Published online 27
September 2013
Soils are a significant
source of atmospheric nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that also
contributes to the depletion of stratospheric ozone. Numerical simulations
suggest that the El Niño/Southern Oscillation modifies soil nitrous oxide
emissions on a global scale.
15. Three decades of
global methane sources and sinks
Stefanie Kirschke, Philippe
Bousquet, Philippe Ciais, Marielle Saunois, Josep G. Canadell, Edward J.
Dlugokencky, Peter Bergamaschi, Daniel Bergmann, Donald R. Blake, Lori
Bruhwiler, Philip Cameron-Smith, Simona Castaldi, Frédéric Chevallier, Liang
Feng, Annemarie Fraser, Martin Heimann, Elke L. Hodson, Sander Houweling,
Béatrice Josse, Paul J. Fraser, Paul B. Krummel, Jean-François Lamarque, Ray L.
Langenfelds, Corinne Le Quéré, Vaishali Naik, Simon O'Doherty, Paul I. Palmer,
Isabelle Pison, David Plummer, Benjamin Poulter, Ronald G. Prinn, Matt Rigby,
Bruno Ringeval, Monia Santini, Martina Schmidt, Drew T. Shindell, Isobel J.
Simpson, Renato Spahni, L. Paul Steele, Sarah A. Strode, Kengo Sudo, Sophie
Szopa, Guido R. van der Werf, Apostolos Voulgarakis, Michiel van Weele, Ray F.
Weiss, Jason E. Williams & Guang Zeng
Nature Geoscience 6, 813
– 823 (2013), doi:10.1038/ngeo1955
Methane is an important
greenhouse gas, responsible for about 20% of the warming induced by long-lived
greenhouse gases since pre-industrial times. A compilation of observations and
results from chemical transport, ecosystem and climate chemistry models
suggests that a rise in wetland and fossil fuel emissions probably accounts for
the renewed increase in global methane levels after 2006.
16. Readily available phosphate from minerals in
early aqueous environments on Mars
C.
T. Adcock, E. M. Hausrath & P. M. Forster
Nature Geoscience 6, 824–827 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1923
Phosphorus is an important
element for biogeochemical development. According to a set of experiments,
martian phosphate minerals dissolve more quickly than terrestrial ones,
possibly providing nutrients in aqueous environments for early Martian life.
17. Repeated Pleistocene glaciation of the East
Siberian continental margin
Frank
Niessen, Jong Kuk Hong, Anne Hegewald, Jens Matthiessen, Rüdiger Stein,
Hyoungjun Kim, Sookwan Kim, Laura Jensen, Wilfried Jokat, Seung-Il Nam &
Sung-Ho Kang
Nature Geoscience 6, 842–846 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1904
During the Last Glacial
Maximum, ice sheets in Eurasia terminated at the edge of the Laptev Sea.
Seismic data now suggest that a separate ice sheet was repeatedly centred
further east, in the East Siberian Sea, during previous glacial periods.
18. Similar spatial patterns of climate responses to
aerosol and greenhouse gas changes
Shang-Ping
Xie, Bo Lu & Baoqiang Xiang
Nature Geoscience 6, 828–832 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1931
Anthropogenic aerosols are
highly spatially variable, whereas greenhouse gases are largely well-mixed at
the global scale, but both affect climate. Nevertheless, climate simulations
suggest that regional changes in sea surface temperature and precipitation to
changes in greenhouse gas and aerosol forcings are similar.
19. Diverse calving patterns linked to glacier
geometry
J.
N. Bassis & S. Jacobs
Nature Geoscience 6, 833–836 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1887
Iceberg calving—implicated
in the retreat of ice shelves—is a complex process constrained by few
observations. Numerical simulations suggest that the pattern of iceberg calving
is controlled by the geometry of the glacier, and that regions of Greenland and
Antarctica may be particularly vulnerable to catastrophic calving-driven
retreat.
20. Air–sea temperature decoupling in western Europe
during the last interglacial–glacial transition
María
Fernanda Sánchez Goñi, Edouard Bard, Amaelle Landais, Linda Rossignol &
Francesco d’Errico
Nature Geoscience 6, 837–841 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1924
Between 80,000 and
70,000 years ago, climate cooled and ice sheets in the high northern
latitudes expanded. Pollen and microfossil data from marine sediments indicate
that an increasing thermal gradient between cold air and warmer oceans could
have supported continental ice growth.
21. Methylmercury
production below the mixed layer in the North Pacific Ocean
Joel D. Blum, Brian N. Popp,
Jeffrey C. Drazen, C. Anela Choy & Marcus W. Johnson
Nature Geoscience 6, 879–884 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1918
Mercury enters marine food
webs in the form of microbially generated monomethylmercury. An analysis of the
mercury isotopic composition of nine species of North Pacific fish suggests
that microbial production of monomethylmercury below the surface mixed layer
contributes significantly to the mercury contamination of marine food webs.
22. Regional population collapse followed initial
agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe
Stephen
Shennan, Sean S. Downey, Adrian Timpson, Kevan Edinborough, Sue Colledge, Tim
Kerig, Katie Manning & Mark G. Thomas
Nature Communications 4, Article number: 2486
doi:10.1038/ncomms3486
Here we show that, in
contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of
agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density
of regional populations.
