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The Top 25 Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences Articles of 2023
We are pleased to share with you the 25 most downloaded Nature Communications articles* across Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences published in 2023. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system. Here, data-driven estimators for the time of tipping predict a potential AMOC collapse mid-century under the current emission scenario.
Extinction of megafauna is a defining trend of the last 50,000 years. Here, the authors use genomic data to infer population histories of 139 extant megafauna, suggesting that their population decline is better explained by Homo sapiens expansion than by climate change.
Using historical data across the U.S., the authors find that population declines are associated with flood exposure. Projecting this relationship to 2053, the authors find that flood risk may result in 7% lower growth than otherwise expected.
While accounting for intrinsic differences between short- and long-lived greenhouse gases, solely relying on soil carbon sequestration in grasslands to offset warming effect of emissions from current ruminant systems is not feasible
Using satellite and survey data, an ancient river landscape 300 km wide has been discovered buried and preserved beneath the ice in East Antarctica. It has likely survived largely intact for up to 34 million years since before ice sheet growth.
The global risk of record-breaking heatwaves is assessed, with the most at-risk regions identified. It is shown that record-smashing events that currently appear implausible could happen anywhere as a result of climate change.
Neman and Noy estimate the global climate change costs of extreme weather and find that US\(\$\) 143 B/yr of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority of this is due to human loss of life.
A dominant influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases on Arctic sea ice area is detectable in all months. By scaling climate models’ sea ice response to best match observed trends, an ice-free Arctic in September is projected under all scenarios.
Carcinogenic heavy metals are an underappreciated public health concern from wildfire. Fire severity, geology, and ecosystem type influence landscape-scale production of hexavalent chromium, concentrated in wind-dispersible particles.
Future aerosol reductions significantly contribute to climate warming and increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather toward carbon neutrality. Aerosol impacts far outweigh those of greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone.
North Greenland ice shelves have lost more than a third of their masses, thinning dramatically from below due to increased ocean temperatures. In response, grounding lines have retreated and the amount of ice discharged into the ocean has increased.
Uracil was identified in the sample returned from the asteroid Ryugu. Having been provided to the early Earth as a component in such asteroidal materials, these molecules might have played a role for prebiotic chemical evolution on the early Earth
Time series of high spatial resolution ocean temperature, salinity and velocity across Drake Passage show that compensating trends across the frontal regions yield no acceleration in net transport over the last 15 years despite increased wind stress.
This study presents hitherto unreported multiply-reverberating seismic body waves through the Earth’s center. Their travel times confirm a distinct internal shell within the inner core, existing possibly due to a past change in the inner core growth.
By analyzing historical and Argo observations, the authors find that the warming of mode and intermediate water layers drives most of the global upper 2000 m ocean warming, highlighting the outsized heat uptake by regional water masses in both hemispheres.
A static tilt of some 0.17° between the rotation axes of the solid inner core and the mantle is inferred from the observed approximate 8.5 year periodic inner core wobble in both polar motion and length-of-day variations of the Earth’s rotation.
Aggressive or uniform actions on climate targets may exacerbate regional inequality and induce economic losses in China. The proposed collaborative strategy for carbon neutrality can avoid up to 1.54% of GDP losses while 90% of provinces would gain.
Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are a major hazard to downstream populations. Here, the authors show that 15 million people globally are potentially exposed to GLOF impacts, with more than half of these living in India, Pakistan, Peru and China.
Warm ocean waters and favourable bathymetry caused Cadman Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula to increase speed by 94% from 2018 to 2019. This led to increased ice discharge, glacier retreat of 8 kilometres, and glacier thinning by 20 meters per year.
Incomplete denitrification associated with the micro-niche of marine particles, instead of nitrification as previously assumed, is a major source of N2O in the turbid coastal waters, even though the water is well-oxygenated.
The record-breaking ozone holes of recent years contribute to a steady decline of mid-spring ozone in the Antarctic, contrary to signs of early-spring recovery. Changes in descending air at the core of the ozone hole might be the driver.
Global observations from mangroves and saltmarshes unravel hidden carbon pathways. Inorganic carbon outwelling is revealed to dominate carbon budgets, impact coastal pH, and enhance the climate mitigation potential of blue carbon ecosystems.
The Argyle deposit erupted 1.3 billion years ago into an ancient rift at the edge of a craton. Argyle coincided with supercontinent breakup, highlighting the link between diamond emplacement, former rifts and continental breakup.
Emerging limitations on climate and low-carbon technology would require adjusting our 15.C climate change mitigation pathways. However, this could increase average annual emissions reductions to around 3GtCO2/year using a broad portfolio of mitigation measures.