Long-term, high-frequency temperature records are critical for evaluating the vulnerability of marine ecosystems to ongoing ocean warming. Commonly used paleoceanographic archives, such as corals and bivalves, face regional and ecological constraints. Rhodoliths, free-living coralline red algal nodules, are established and globally accessible alternatives, yet their complex three...
Plant community stability is often hindered by nitrogen and phosphorus deficiencies in high-altitude alpine steppes. While nutrient addition can mitigate these constraints, the individual and interactive effects of these elements to community stability remain unclear. Here we elucidated the underlying mechanisms by decomposing asynchrony into compensatory and statistical...
Soil acidification driven by anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition is a growing global threat to forest health. Aside from direct nutrient-related effects, as forest soils acidify, severe reductions in ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi abundance and diversity follow. This is worrisome, as EcM fungi are essential for tree nutrient acquisition and are important catalysts of mineral...
For decades, scientists have stressed the need to reduce Europe’s demand for raw materials, including minerals and metals. Yet, the EU has prioritized supply-side measures. The 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act, negotiated in 14 months, exemplifies this trend. Here, we provide a long-term analysis of the EU’s raw materials discourse, showing that the 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act...
The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary is defined by an asteroid impact at 66 million years ago at Chicxulub, Mexico. Despite extensive documentation worldwide, this boundary has not been clearly identified in East Asia, leaving a geographic gap in evaluating the global extent of impact records. Here we report a pronounced increase in osmium concentrations accompanied by a sharp...
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of Amazonian droughts, and El Niño events are predicted to become more intense and persistent. Despite this, the effects of drought on biogenic volatile organic compound emissions from tropical rainforests remain poorly understood. Here we present speciated measurements of isoprene, monoterpenoids, and sesquiterpenoids from...
Aerosol hygroscopicity is a critical parameter for predicting radiative forcing and climate sensitivity, particularly under sub-saturated regimes where it drives complex aerosol–water interactions. Here, we show that externally mixed aerosols exert a stronger influence on direct radiative forcing than is currently represented in models. Incorporating our findings into radiative...
Here we quantify the material footprint of artificial intelligence training by linking computational workloads to physical hardware needs. Graphics processing unit demand is expressed as equivalent hardware lifetime consumed and, thus, the material demand involved. As computational demands rise, assessing the environmental impact of artificial intelligence requires moving beyond...
Methylmercury (MeHg) accumulation in aquatic food webs is a key pathway for human exposure. We examined how terrestrially derived organic matter (tOM) influences MeHg bioaccumulation in coastal planktonic food webs by measuring MeHg bioaccumulation factors (BAFs) for a MeHg isotope tracer added to mesocosms receiving four tOM levels. Combined with two previous studies, the...
Enclosed marginal seas are hotspots of endemic biodiversity that sustain societies through fisheries, tourism, and vital ecosystem services. Their small size makes them highly sensitive to global warming but systematic assessments of future climate change are lacking. Using climate model projections and reanalysis data, we assess two key thermal stressors across 19 seas: the rate...
Oxygen-deficient zones are hotspots of marine fixed nitrogen loss, but the temporal dynamics of their microbial processes remain poorly resolved. Here we present a nearly three-year high-resolution record from a Biogeochemical Argo float in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific that captures a decline in nitrite concentrations, reflecting a shift in nitrogen redox balance. Using a...
Volcano-tectonic earthquakes are shear faulting that releases elastic strain energy within the shallow crust beneath volcanoes. While their focal mechanisms are widely used to infer stress states, they have rarely been applied to investigate hydrothermal system evolution. Here, we show that focal mechanisms of volcano-tectonic events associated with the 2024–2025 unrest at Mt...
Climate change has intensified weather extremes in the semi-arid Sahel, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions. However, the cause of the most dramatic changes, from the Sahel droughts of the 1970s and 1980s to wetter conditions in recent decades, remains contested. Here we use ensembles of climate model simulations to show that these changes were primarily driven by...
The North Atlantic eddy-driven jet plays a vital role in shaping Euro-Atlantic weather and climate. While previous research has focused on the seasonal mean jet response to climate change, its changes at subseasonal timescales remain poorly understood, despite the importance for extreme weather. Here, we show that over the past 75 years, wintertime subseasonal variability in jet...
Nature-based solutions can strengthen climate resilience, but they remain underfinanced. Innovative financial instruments that transfer or reduce climate risk while enhancing ecosystem services help close the adaptation and nature finance gaps. Here we synthesize evidence on nature-positive climate risk transfer and financing instruments, with attention to how the effectiveness...
Antibiotic contamination in global aquatic environments is a growing concern due to its potential to harm ecosystems and human health. This study evaluates the role of policy mitigation in addressing health risks from antibiotic pollution by analyzing the distribution of four antibiotic groups in aquatic environments across 1214 locations in 33 countries, exploring correlations...
Forearc crust that formed at nascent subduction zones contains key evidence regarding Earth’s tectonic evolution, but its nature and underlying formation processes remain unclear. Key geological records are hidden within the deep oceanic lithosphere, highlighting the need to extract information from geophysical data by establishing clear links between rock physical properties and...
Soybean farming—providing protein-rich feed for farm animals worldwide—is the third largest driver of tropical deforestation and expanding. Importing economies are considering regulating the trade of soybeans and other deforestation-driving commodities, and trading companies will be required to conduct due diligence to ensure compliance. However, complex supply chains obscure...
Ocean eddies play crucial roles in climate and marine ecosystems. Still, small mesoscale eddies in the climate-sensitive and biologically unique Arctic Ocean remain poorly characterized and understood due to the coarse resolution of traditional gridded altimetry products and sparse in-situ observations. Here, we show that the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite mission...
As the world’s longest active volcanic arc, the Andes deliver nutrient-rich volcanic ash directly to the ocean via atmospheric transport. This ash supplies key limiting nutrients to the Humboldt Current and the Southern Ocean, both critical for biological productivity, nutrient cycling, and atmospheric carbon dioxide drawdown. During the Late Miocene, massive explosive eruptions...
Understanding asteroid-collision-generated extreme environments, including hydrothermal activity, is crucial for gaining insights into biological evolution on the early Earth. Here, we demonstrate that stromatolites—the oldest fossil evidence of oxygen-producing microbial life on early Earth—could have developed within impact craters, based on a detailed investigation of...
Climate warming is expected to weaken ocean circulation by suppressing deep-ocean eddy activity at mid and low latitudes. However, the future evolution of deep-ocean dynamics in the rapidly changing Arctic remains unclear. Here, we use 1-km-resolution simulations to show that the deep Arctic Ocean is projected to become substantially more energetic, particularly in the Eurasian...