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Large snowpack temperature gradients drive vertical mass transfer on Arctic sea ice, forming sea-ice sourced snow. Stratigraphic and stable water isotope investigations show this contribution may reach 39–63 mm snow depth equivalent.

Understanding snow density is vital for climate science and hazard prediction. The authors present an optical approach that yields insight into light-snow interactions and can be used to convert reflectance images of snow into density information, offering rapid, high-resolution profiles for field measurements.

Fine sea salt aerosols produced by blowing snow in the Arctic impact cloud properties and warm the surface, according to observations from the MOSAiC expedition.

Black carbon and dust deposition advanced the end of the snow season by 17 days on average over the last 40 years in the French Alps and the Pyrenees. The warming-induced snow cover decline was partly offset by decreases in black carbon deposition observed since the 1980s.

Snow accumulation is critical for water availability in the Northern Hemisphere. Model projections show a shift towards low snow years, with areas of western North America, northeastern Europe and the Greater Himalayas showing the strongest decline. Many snow-dependent regions are likely to experience increasing stress from low snow years if global warming exceeds 2° above the pre-industrial baseline.

Short-lived halogens have a substantial indirect cooling effect on climate and this cooling effect has increased since pre-industrial times owing to anthropogenic amplification of natural halogen emissions.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is predicted to slow with climate change. Sea surface temperature data and climate model analysis show that since 1900 natural variability has been dominant in AMOC changes; anthropogenic forcing is not yet reliably detectable by this method.

An international team of researchers finds high potential for improving climate projections by a more comprehensive treatment of largely ignored Arctic vegetation types, underscoring the importance of Arctic energy exchange measuring stations.

Short-lived natural bromocarbons, which contribute to ozone depletion in the atmosphere, are believed to be produced through light-driven processes, mainly in oceans. Here the authors present bromocarbon measurements in snow, sea ice, and air during polar winter that show an unexpected source of bromine to the polar atmosphere during periods of no sunlight.

This study reveals how climate change altered storm dynamics during the 2024 Valencia floods. Warmer seas fueled stronger updrafts, increasing rainfall intensity by 20% and significantly amplifying flood severity.

Forests are essential for both climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, yet how to balance these goals in managed forests remains unclear. Here, using a Europe-wide dataset, the authors find that biodiversity increases with carbon stocks, but mostly when deadwood is included.

The influence of surface ponding on the interior of ice shelves is currently unknown. Here, the authors combine surface and borehole geophysics on the Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica, with remote sensing and modelling and show how pond refreezing increases ice shelf density and temperature.

Climate change can alter when and how animals grow, breed, and migrate, but it is unclear whether this allows populations to persist. This global study shows that shifts in seasonal timing are key to helping vertebrate species maintain population growth under global warming.

Water isotope modelling is an important tool in climate reconstructions, but there remain gaps in our understanding of the effects upon oxygen and hydrogen isotope fractionation, and thus the source of the deposited signal. Here, the authors present a dataset assembled over two years that shows deuterium excess is controlled by humidity and sea surface temperature, and oxygen and hydrogen isotopes as well as deuterium excess are controlled by sublimation of snow in sea-ice regions.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Permafrost in Europe’s mountains has warmed by more than 1 °C per decade in certain places, matching the levels in Arctic lowlands. The strongest warming occurred at cold bedrock at the highest elevations and latitudes or after permafrost degraded.

Fifty years ago today, Charles Percy Snow argued in an influential lecture that the failure of science and the humanities to converse, and the lack of scientists in positions of power, was disastrous for society. In the first of three essays marking this anniversary, Martin Kemp contends that the real enemy of understanding is not these 'Two Cultures' but specialization in all disciplines.

Taveneau et al. leverage artificial-intelligence-driven protein design to create inhibitors that control RNA-targeting enzymes in cells, revealing a strategy to rapidly design off-switches for RNA-editing systems.

Climate change is altering how plants balance carbon gain and water loss. This study maps global leaf-level water-use efficiency over the past two decades, showing it is highest in regions that are cold or dry, increasing worldwide, and strongly influenced by atmospheric dryness.

A two-year study of mercury deposition in the Arctic finds that the main source of mercury is gaseous elemental mercury, which is deposited throughout the year and leads to very high soil mercury levels.

Diatom skeletons largely remain near the surface of the subpolar Southern Ocean following diatom bloom events, suggesting that they do not play as big a role in the downward flux of organic matter as previously thought, according to data from two expeditions focused on the marine twilight zone.

A long-term field study establishes a link between reduced snowfall and bird and tree declines in montane Arizona. Excluding elk from experimental sites reversed these declines and also lowered nest predation. This experiment shows that climate change, operating through increased winter herbivory, can negatively affect diverse species occupying such ecosystems.

Data for the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalaya region from satellite laser altimetry and a global elevation model shows that glacier thinning varied by an order of magnitude across the region, with surface debris not seeming to provide effective insulation, and that the melting ice added several per cent to the annual discharge of the mountain rivers.

Siberian Arctic permafrost contains vast stores of carbon, the fate of which is dependent on the climate. Here the authors use models of future scenarios to show that under the direst climate changes up to 2/3 of the stored organic carbon could thaw.

How landscapes are arranged affects soil pathogenic fungi worldwide. The authors reveal the global pattern and pronounced scale-dependency of landscape complexity and land-cover quantity on soil pathogenic fungal diversity.

Trees outside forests, particularly in croplands, grasslands, and urban areas, accounted for 20.8–32.9% of China’s above-ground carbon in 2019, occupying 3.6–5.7 Pg C, based on a two-step machine learning approach integrating diverse remote sensing data.

The record-breaking 2023 wildfire season in Canada ( ~ 15 Mha burned) was enabled by early snowmelt, drought, and extreme weather. It had profound impacts that included evacuation of >200 communities, millions exposed to hazardous smoke, and a strain on fire-fighting resources.

Trees come in all shapes and size, but what drives this incredible variation in tree form remains poorly understood. Using a global dataset, the authors show that a combination of climate, competition, disturbance and evolutionary history shape the crown architecture of the world’s trees and thereby constrain the 3D structure of woody ecosystems.

Using historical aerial photographs and new bed topography data, accelerating changes on Kennicott and Root Glaciers, Alaska since 1938 are documented. These observations inform projections showing 38–63% mass loss by 2100, depending on future climate.

Integrating impacts and cascading hazards to drought monitoring could improve prediction and mitigation of drought events. This Perspective discusses the limitations of existing indicators, the cascading hazards associated with drought and the importance of assessing drought impacts.

Blooms of pigmented microalgae accelerate glacier and ice sheet melting by reducing the surface albedo. Here, Halbach et al. use single-cell measurements of elemental composition and nutrient assimilation rates of glacier ice algae, showing that the algae are well adapted to the ice’s oligotrophic conditions and exhibit no significant changes in productivity in response to nutrient additions.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.