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Abrupt changes in the African Monsoon, which have been recorded throughout the late Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs, tend to coincide with changes in North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. A numerical simulation shows that the interaction between thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean and wind-driven currents in the topical Atlantic Ocean contributes to the rapidity of African Monsoon transitions during abrupt climate change events.

Glaciers showed a similar evolution in Greenland, Europe, the US and the tropical Andes during the Holocene. The authors propose the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Overturning Circulation as a key driver of this trend.

East Asian summer monsoon precipitation varied on millennial timescales during the last glacial period. Sediment records and climate modelling suggest that the winter monsoon was also affected by millenial scale variability, and that the abrupt changes were driven by changes in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

A challenge for testing mechanisms of past climate change is the precise correlation of palaeoclimate records. Here, through climate modelling and the alignment of terrestrial, ice and marine ¹⁴C and ¹⁰Be records, the authors show that Southern Ocean freshwater hosing can trigger global change.

The ability to predict a potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is widely desired, but problematic. Here, using a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation mode, the authors show that early warning signs can be detected 250 years in advance.

Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka, driven by adaptation to diverse habitats.

Climate models suggest that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is unlikely to collapse this century, owing to stabilization from wind-driven upwelling in the Southern Ocean.

Knowledge of how climate change will affect temperatures on a regional scale is needed for effective planning and preparedness. This study uses five climate models to investigate regional warming. It shows that warming is nonlinear for doublings of atmospheric CO₂ and that nonlinearity increases with higher CO₂ concentrations.

Several periods of massive iceberg discharge into the North Atlantic and widespread cooling marked the last glacial period. Reconstructions of northward flow along the Florida margin suggest that not all cold events were associated with a change in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

The last glacial period was marked by dramatic climate fluctuations. Sediment records from the Cariaco Basin and the Arabian Sea suggest that cooling in the North Atlantic region was tightly coupled with a southward displacement of the intertropical convergence zone and a weakening of the Indian summer monsoon.

The impacts of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) decline in future climate change are uncertain. Here the authors show that the inter-model spread in the AMOC response in global climate models amplify uncertainties in the projections of temperature, rainfall and the jet-stream.

A slower Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during Heinrich Stadial 1 led to the spread of seasonal tropical vegetation in northern Amazonia, a pattern that may repeat in a warming climate, according to proxy records combined with modelling.

Random atmospheric fluctuations can trigger a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation under stabilized CO₂ concentration based on simulations, underscoring high climate uncertainty and the urgent need for timely mitigation.

A statistical reassessment of the tide gauge record concludes that sea level rose at a rate of about 1.2 millimetres per year from 1901 to 1990, slightly lower than prior estimates and now consistent with estimates based on individual contributions to sea-level change; the estimates reported here from 1990 onwards are consistent with other work, suggesting that the recent acceleration in sea-level rise is greater than previously thought.

A better-ventilated North Pacific could have reduced the carbon of water upwelled in the Southern Ocean, reducing outgassing and revealing a remote influence on Southern Ocean biogeochemistry in glacial times.

Based on reconstructions of sea surface temperature and salinity, the authors find that surface freshening did not always trigger cooling during a millennial climate event on the Iberian Margin.

Large changes in Greenland and North Atlantic temperature — termed Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles — have been linked to variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. However, the mechanisms are debated. This Review proposes an oscillatory framework to explain Dansgaard–Oeschger cyclicity, involving atmosphere–ocean–ice interactions.

How the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) changes has strong effects on tropical regions. Here the authors show that while the ITCZ moves northwards over the first one to two decades of CO₂ emissions, the long-term migration is southward, linked to delayed surface warming in the Southern Ocean.

Warming is predicted to weaken the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Simulated temperature stabilization at Paris Agreement targets shows recovery to a level independent of the target, with continued North Atlantic warming and North Atlantic sea-level rise lower than the global mean.

The extreme fields generated when a high-intensity laser or relativistic electron passes through a plasma offer the potential to accelerate particles over shorter distances than is possible with conventional accelerators. A new study suggests that driving a plasma with protons rather than electrons could be the key to generating TeV electron beams by this process.

Spatial changes in planktonic foraminifera species assemblages reveal steeper thermal gradients in the North Atlantic Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum than simulated by climate models, according to a macroecological analysis of marine sediment cores.

Release of freshwater into the oceans as a result of ice sheet melting could impact the distribution of climate-sensitive diseases. Here, the authors show that a rapid ice sheet melting in Greenland could cause an emergence of malaria in Southern Africa whilst transmission risks in West Africa may decline.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is expected to collapse with warming. Here the authors assess whether solar geoengineering could prevent such a collapse and find that this would be possible only with early deployment under low and medium emissions, highlighting the need for emissions mitigation.

Iceberg-trajectory models along with multi-proxy evidence from sediment cores from the Indian Ocean show that northward shifts in Antarctic iceberg melt redistributed freshwater in the Southern Ocean during the Pleistocene.

The warm last interglacial serves as a period to investigate climate change associated with a weakened AMOC. Here the authors report evidence of Eastern Mediterranean cooling and accompanied atmospheric circulation shifts affecting rainfall.

The Younger Dryas cooling event has been identified in ice records in the Northern Hemisphere, but the effects of this cold snap on the tropics are poorly known. Here, the authors present a speleothem record and model simulations, showing that tropical hydroclimate recovered slower than temperatures in Greenland.

The exact freshwater scenario that caused the 8.2 ka cold event is still debated. This study presents new evidence for a severe Labrador shelfwater freshening 8500 years ago that was caused by the Hudson Bay Ice Saddle collapse following a warming in subsurface waters.

Increased Southern Ocean productivity driven by sea-ice feedbacks contributed to a slowdown in rising CO₂ levels during the last deglaciation, according to analyses of marine-derived aerosols from an Antarctic ice core.

It can be challenging to obtain meaningful and accurate structural information for air-sensitive proteins. This protocol describes the application of customized vacuum manifold and anaerobic chamber setups for the purification and cryo-electron microscopy analysis of air-sensitive nitrogenase enzymes.

Carbon dioxide and methane records from a West Antarctic ice core show that although gradual variations in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the last glacial termination are linked to changes in Antarctic temperature, the concentration underwent three abrupt, centennial-scale changes related to sudden climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere.

This protocol describes how to prepare samples for labeling nuclei of cultured mammalian cells for 3D structured illumination microscopy of nuclear structures. Image acquisition, registration and downstream image analysis are also described.