Featured
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Article
| Open AccessDeeper and stronger North Atlantic Gyre during the Last Glacial Maximum
Analysis of benthic foraminiferal δ18O profiles from sediment cores in two depth transects in the Northwest Atlantic suggests that the subtropical gyre was deeper and stronger during the Last Glacial Maximum compared with today.
- Jack H. Wharton
- , Martin Renoult
- & David J. R. Thornalley
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Article
| Open AccessAirborne DNA reveals predictable spatial and seasonal dynamics of fungi
Using a globally distributed standardized aerial sampling of fungal spores, we show that the hyperdiverse kingdom of fungi follows globally highly predictable spatial and temporal dynamics, with seasonality in both species richness and community composition increasing with latitude.
- Nerea Abrego
- , Brendan Furneaux
- & Otso Ovaskainen
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Correspondence |
Regulate to protect fragile Antarctic ecosystems from growing tourism
- Yi Luo
- , Huan Zhong
- & Christian Sonne
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Correspondence |
More studies needed on how climate change affects exercise health benefits
- Zhenxiang Guo
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News & Views |
How mud brought France and England together — 150 years ago
Artificial daylight lacks commercial interest, and a geologist’s thirst for knowledge kickstarts the bid for the Channel Tunnel, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.
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Where I Work |
Why I work to revive the Tasmanian tiger
Andrew Pask develops genetic sequencing techniques for marsupials — including an apex predator that was hunted to death in the twentieth century.
- Margaret Simons
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Arts Review |
Kyoto review: ‘thrilling’ play shows fight for landmark climate treaty
Drama behind the scenes at the Kyoto Protocol negotiations is laid bare in a major theatrical production.
- Peter Stott
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News |
‘Chemical recycling’: 15-minute reaction turns old clothes into useful molecules
Fast fashion creates millions of tonnes of waste each year — could clever chemistry help to tackle the problem?
- Helena Kudiabor
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News & Views |
Last year’s summer was the warmest in 2,000 years
A record spanning two millennia of Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures has revealed the extent to which 2023 was anomalously hot. The finding is a striking confirmation of warming since the pre-industrial period.
- Gabriele C. Hegerl
- & Katherine L. Taylor
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Article
| Open AccessHuman degradation of tropical moist forests is greater than previously estimated
A global survey on the magnitude and persistence of moist forest cover change and canopy height following degradation using satellite remote sensing data finds that the effects are substantial and persist for decades.
- C. Bourgoin
- , G. Ceccherini
- & F. Achard
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Article |
Giant stem tetrapod was apex predator in Gondwanan late Palaeozoic ice age
A study describes a new giant stem tetrapod, Gaiasia jennyae, from high-palaeolatitude early Permian-aged deposits in Namibia that challenges current hypotheses of early tetrapod evolution.
- Claudia A. Marsicano
- , Jason D. Pardo
- & Helke Mocke
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Research Highlight |
The surprising driver of Amazon deforestation
Demand from Brazil itself accounts for more than half of the demand for crops and livestock from the Amazon and the savannah that surrounds it.
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World View |
Climate change is worsening the housing crisis — we must tackle the two together
Thousands of people are being displaced across the Arctic. Governments must listen to Indigenous and local communities and act on their advice.
- Julia Christensen
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: How NASA astronauts are training to walk on the Moon in 2026
NASA astronauts have been performing simulated lunar exploration in Arizona to help prepare them for doing geology at the Moon's south pole.
- Alexandra Witze
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News & Views |
Deep-sea dye confirms turbulent-mixing theory — with implications for climate
Carbon storage in Earth’s oceans is controlled by deep-sea mixing processes, but the details have proved difficult to test. Ambitious efforts to track ocean mixing using dye have now demonstrated the pivotal role of the sea floor.
- Ryan M. Holmes
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Article |
Explainable El Niño predictability from climate mode interactions
An extended nonlinear recharge oscillator model shows skilful and explainable El Niño–Southern Oscillation forecasts at lead times up to 16–18 months, better than global climate models and comparable to the most skilful artificial intelligence forecasts.
- Sen Zhao
- , Fei-Fei Jin
- & Wenju Cai
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Book Review |
How the grid came to shape the US landscape
Science and reason underpinned early surveys, but sociopolitical ideals left their mark on the nation too, a historical account concludes.
- K. John Holmes
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Article
| Open AccessCenozoic history of the tropical marine biodiversity hotspot
A reconstruction of Cenozoic marine biodiversity in the Indo-Australian Archipelago reveals decreasing rates of net diversification and identifies the factors that have established it as the richest marine biodiversity hotspot.
- Skye Yunshu Tian
- , Moriaki Yasuhara
- & Tomoki Kase
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Article
| Open AccessObservations of diapycnal upwelling within a sloping submarine canyon
A dye-release experiment within a sloping submarine canyon provides direct evidence that vigorous mixing at topographic features, such as canyons, leads to rapid diapycnal upwelling of deep water.
- Bethan L. Wynne-Cattanach
- , Nicole Couto
- & Matthew H. Alford
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Correspondence |
How societies respond to environmental stressors needs detailed studies
- Yitzchak Jaffe
- , Ari Caramanica
- & Max Price
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News |
You’re not imagining it: extreme wildfires are now more common
For the first time, data show that cataclysmic infernos are increasing in frequency and intensity globally.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Research Highlight |
A mighty river’s radical shift changed the face of ancient Egypt
Samples taken near a capital of the pharaohs reveal an overhaul of the Nile 4,000 years ago.
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Spotlight |
How to address agriculture’s water woes
Water isn’t the only challenge facing agriculture in a climate-altered future, but a lack of it could have catastrophic effects.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Spotlight |
How farming could become the ultimate climate-change tool
A generation of farmers and scientists are finding ways to sequester carbon in the soil while improving crop yields.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Article |
Amazon forest biogeography predicts resilience and vulnerability to drought
Drought response is structured by water-table depth in higher-fertility Southern Amazonia, whereas lower-fertility Northern Amazonia supports more-drought-resilient forests independent of water-table depth.
- Shuli Chen
- , Scott C. Stark
- & Scott R. Saleska
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Correspondence |
The global refugee crisis is above all a human tragedy — but it affects wildlife, too
- Andrew D. Walde
- , Gift S. Demaya
- & Luca Luiselli
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Correspondence |
Earth-surface monitoring is at risk — more imaging tools are urgently needed
- Etienne Berthier
- , Jeffrey S. Kargel
- & Michael Zemp
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News & Views |
James Clerk Maxwell’s ode to bubble blowing
Curious volcanic activity confounds tourists near Naples, and Maxwell reviews a textbook on bubbles, in the weekly dip into Nature’s archive.
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News |
How climate change is hitting Europe: three graphics reveal health impacts
A growing body of research reveals the deaths and diseases linked to rising temperatures across the continent.
- Carissa Wong
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Comment |
Extending the Sustainable Development Goals to 2050 — a road map
The world should redouble its efforts on the SDGs, not abandon them. Here’s how to progress the United Nations’ agenda towards 2050.
- Francesco Fuso Nerini
- , Mariana Mazzucato
- & Jeffrey Sachs
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Editorial |
The Sustainable Development Goals: can they be made smarter?
Accounting for factors such as artificial intelligence in a more ambitious set of goals has a lot of merit — as long as urgency is not lost on the existing ones.
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Article
| Open AccessInner core backtracking by seismic waveform change reversals
Matching seismic waveforms show that the inner core of Earth gradually super-rotated from 2003 to 2008, and then more slowly sub-rotated from 2008 to 2023 back through the same path.
- Wei Wang
- , John E. Vidale
- & Ruoyan Wang
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Comment |
To save the high seas, plan for climate change
Species are already on the move as waters warm. Conservation plans need to take this into account.
- Lee Hannah
- , Amy Irvine
- & Ryan Stanley
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Perspective |
Possible shift in controls of the tropical Pacific surface warming pattern
Focusing on the role of external forcing, an investigation of the causes of observed changes in the tropical Pacific surface warming pattern over recent decades discusses a possible shift in the drivers of this pattern.
- Masahiro Watanabe
- , Sarah M. Kang
- & Malte F. Stuecker
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Book Review |
The climate crisis is solvable, but human rights must trump profits
Huge planetary problems were fixed in the past, yielding lessons for the current climate crisis — yet this time a solution is justice.
- Friederike Otto
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Article |
Onset of coupled atmosphere–ocean oxygenation 2.3 billion years ago
The Great Oxidation Event represents a tipping point in Earth’s O2 mass balance—when more O2 was being produced than destroyed—that forever changed the habitability of worldwide oceans.
- Chadlin M. Ostrander
- , Andy W. Heard
- & Sune G. Nielsen
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal variability in atmospheric new particle formation mechanisms
Molecular-level experiments are described to develop a detailed assessment of 11 new particle formation mechanisms in a global climate model and, in comparison with simulations and observations, the dominant mechanisms worldwide are mapped.
- Bin Zhao
- , Neil M. Donahue
- & Lin Wang
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Correspondence |
Equality doesn’t equal sustainability — even high-welfare states must do more
- David Pérez-Neira
- , Sherman Farhad
- & Luis Buendía
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Research Highlight |
A win for global action: harm from some ozone-eroding gases starts to fall
Emissions reductions achieved under the landmark Montreal Protocol mean that the ozone hole could close sooner than expected.
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World View |
Space weather can affect our daily lives — we need a better warning system
Categorizing geomagnetic storms on a scale of one to five leaves no room for once-a-century superstorms.
- Sean Elvidge
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Where I Work |
I raise delicate butterflies on the mean streets of New York
Robyn Elman works to protect and conserve monarch butterflies before their dangerous migration down the US East Coast to Mexico.
- Jack Leeming
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News & Views |
Two decades of deep ice cores from Antarctica
In June 2004, the results of an ambitious Antarctic ice-drilling project brought insight into hundreds of thousands of years of climatic changes. The extraordinary sample still has much to offer climate research — even as its successor is being drilled.
- Kenji Kawamura
- & Ikumi Oyabu
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News |
World's first wooden satellite could herald era of greener space exploration
Japan’s satellite will test wood’s resilience in space — wooden Moon shelters are also planned.
- Tim Hornyak
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News |
What’s the best way to tackle climate change? An ‘evidence bank’ could help scientists find answers
Synthesizing research on which policies are most effective is a key priority in climate science, advocates say.
- Helen Pearson
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Article |
Fault-network geometry influences earthquake frictional behaviour
Analysis of some of the main fault zones in California shows that the presence of complex earthquake fault-network geometries results in geometric locking that promotes stick-slip behaviour, whereas simpler geometries lead to smooth fault creep.
- Jaeseok Lee
- , Victor C. Tsai
- & Daniel T. Trugman
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Research Briefing |
Atomic-scale insights into the mystery of how ice surfaces melt
It has long been known that ice starts melting at temperatures far below its nominal freezing point, but why or how has remained enigmatic. An innovation in atomic force microscopy provides insights into how this process begins in the most abundant form of ice on Earth.
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Article
| Open AccessMicrobial competition for phosphorus limits the CO2 response of a mature forest
Microbial pre-emption of mineralized soil P limits the capacity of trees for increased P uptake and assimilation under elevated CO2 and therefore restricts their capacity to sequester extra C.
- Mingkai Jiang
- , Kristine Y. Crous
- & David S. Ellsworth
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Article |
A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal
Cross-hatch impressions from Ediacaran rocks in China are interpreted as having been left by a crown-group sponge fossil, Helicolocellus cantori gen. et sp. nov., characterized by an organic latticework skeleton.
- Xiaopeng Wang
- , Alexander G. Liu
- & Shuhai Xiao
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Article |
The time between Palaeolithic hearths
High-resolution time differences between six Middle Palaeolithic hearths from El Salt Unit x (Spain) obtained through archaeomagnetic and archaeostratigraphic analyses show sometimes decade-long intervals between hearths.
- Ángela Herrejón-Lagunilla
- , Juan José Villalaín
- & Ángel Carrancho