Research articles

Urban trees can lower pedestrian-level air temperature by up to 12 degrees centigrade, and the cooling efficacy depends on background climate, urban morphology, and tree trait, according to a global meta-analysis of 182 studies.

Climate change increases US offshore wind energy vulnerability to tropical cyclones, with turbine yielding and buckling probabilities rising by 37% and 13% resulting from a 20-year storm, according to a synthetic tropical cyclone model analysis.

Nile’s river mega-dams can operate collaboratively to generate upstream sustainable hydropower and minimize downstream water deficit during drought events, according to an analysis that combines the water resources systems model and policy scenarios.

Australians alarmed by climate change report the same motivators for their chosen behaviors, but barriers differ across behaviors and do not depend on the individual’s breadth of activity, according to an analysis that combines a survey of 519 individuals and a statistical approach.

Salinity and pH-driven variations in microbial communities significantly affect bacterial lipid compositions, leading to temperature overestimations in reconstructions, based on machine learning clustering of lake sediment data and bacterial analysis.

Under high emission scenarios, 248 global natural heritage sites are projected to be exposed to extreme climate events by 2100, and the forest sites are mainly at risk, according to an analysis that combines world heritage site data and climate scenarios.

Downward longwave radiation significantly influences the cooling response in northern mid-high latitudes to land use change, influenced by changes in water vapor and cloud cover, according to multi-model ensemble results.

Calcification rates of reef-building corals have decreased across the Indo-Pacific since 1900 due to recent marine heatwaves, according to analyses of coral core samples.

Paleoclimatic response was negligible in the Gulf of Mexico despite two or more extraterrestrial impact events occurring approximately 35.65 million years ago, according to stable oxygen and carbon isotope records from planktonic and benthic foraminifer.

Unfrozen water in the perennially ice-covered Lake Enigma, Antarctica supports microbial communities distinct from those in other Antarctic lakes according to analyses of the lake’s physical structure, geochemistry, hydrological history, and microbiota.

During the Campi Flegrei caldera unrest from 2000 to 2023, the upper crust had a quasi-elastic behavior and there was a parabolic increase of ground uplift and a superexponential increase in the number of earthquakes and seismic energy release.

Southern China, Central and N Europe, Central and Eastern America, and Japan are areas with dense photovoltaic installations, and they are particularly affected by extremely low production events, according to an analysis that uses weather data and an inventory of photovoltaic installations.

The initiation of a subduction zone in the Paleo-Asian Ocean approximately 530 million years ago is recorded in ophiolites formed through subduction initiation processes, according to geochemical data from ophiolites in the Mongol Altai and Trans Altai mountains belonging to the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and numerical modeling.

The trajectories of plastic particles in settling experiments within a water column are more chaotic and slower by up to 12% when colonised with biofilms, relative to pristine particles, even with larger densities.

Seasonal variations in beach litter on North East Atlantic coastlines are driven by riverine and aquaculture inputs, and are likely to be exacerbated by adverse weather conditions in the future, according to a machine learning framework informed by beach litter survey data.

Phyllosphere microbiota of beech and Scots pine at European continental scale is influenced by the host species and associated foliar traits, as well as by temperature and nitrogen deposition, according to 16S rRNA gene sequencing analyses on leaf epiphytic microbes.

Redox potential and the cycling of redox-active solutes are decoupled from soil moisture in the active layer of permafrost-affected areas, according to a field study conducted in the tundra areas of Alaska’s North Slope.

The polar ice sheets are key contributors to the uncertainty of future climate change projection, according to an analysis using an Earth system network model to assess the contribution of six Earth system components at 1.5 and 4.0 °C of warming.