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As anthropogenic forcing increases in the future, Southern Hemisphere atmospheric variability, the Southern Annular Mode, plays a more significant role in Antarctic sea ice variability than the deep convection in the Southern Ocean.

Soil moisture is the primary driver of variability in dryland carbon and water cycling, according to a synthesis of eddy covariance, remote sensing and land surface model data from the western United States.

Rising CO₂ and warming enhance vegetation greening, but drought, heat stress, and resource limits constrain this trend. Here, the authors show that within a year, increased early- and peak- season greenness often leads to late-season declines, highlighting water/heat stress limits on greening and the carbon sink.

Climate warming increases evapotranspiration (ET) more in boreal peatlands than in forests. Observations show that peatland ET can exceed forest ET by up to 30%, indicating a stronger warming response in peatlands. Earth system models do not fully account for peatlands and hence may underestimate future boreal ET.

Asymmetrical distribution of tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease is linked to asymmetrical amyloid-beta deposition, not reduced brain connectivity, suggesting regional vulnerability plays a key role in determining the distribution of tau pathology.

Methane production is traditionally not found in oxygenated soils, a paradigm incorporated in global greenhouse gas modelling efforts. Here the authors show geochemical and biological evidence of active methanogenesis in bulk-oxic wetland soils, attributing up to 80% of the total methane budget for the site.

Metallic glasses can be softened to different shapes whilst maintaining mechanical properties, and the related thermoplastic processing requires a heating source and an applied force. Here, the authors show an effective thermoplastic approach by a coupling between electric pulses and a magnetic field.

Irrigation is the most important use of water. A newly developed irrigation management scheme leads to a significant reduction in water use and increase in economic gains while maintaining crop yields, presenting opportunities for real-world impacts under current and future climate conditions.

The authors test for temperature dependency of ecosystem respiration rates across globally distributed eddy covariance sites, revealing consistent temperature thresholds where ecosystem metabolism changes.

The diversity in the hydraulic traits of trees mediates ecosystem resilience to drought and will probably have an important role in future ecosystem–atmosphere feedback effects.

How the carbon stocks of the Arctic–Boreal Zone change with warming is not well understood. Here the authors show that wildfires and large regional differences in net carbon fluxes offset the overall increasing CO₂ uptake.

Here, authors reveal the anatomy of the chimpanzee arcuate fasciculus predicts use of intentional, communicative gestures and sounds. The chimpanzee arcuate is not left-asymmetric at the population level, but more leftward tracts are associated with more communication.

Satellite and atmospheric observations show that the rate of net biome productivity has accelerated over the warming ‘hiatus’ period (1998–2012). This net gain results from reduced respiration, rather than increased primary productivity.

The transmission spectrum of the exoplanet WASP-39b is obtained using observations from the Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy mode of the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument aboard the JWST.

The future of carbon dynamics in the northern high latitudes is uncertain yet represents an important potential feedback under climate change. This study uses a comprehensive observational dataset to show an increasing carbon sink in non-permafrost systems; in permafrost systems uptake was offset by loss.

Plants may enhance sedimentation and help deltas to keep up with rising sea levels. Numerical simulations show that intermediate vegetation height and density are optimal, whereas too much vegetation inhibits sediment deposition in deltaic marshes.

Using systematic satellite observations of land surface temperature and soil moisture during soil dry-downs, the spatially-explicit global distribution of the critical soil moisture threshold of plant water stress and its drivers is uncovered.

The sensitivity of terrestrial net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE) to climate remains a major source of uncertainty. Here, the authors identify a precipitation threshold of between 750-950 mm yr⁻¹ for the contiguous United States, beyond which NEE is regulated by respiration rather than production.

Historical and future trends in net primary productivity (NPP) and its sensitivity to global change are largely unknown because of the lack of long-term, high-resolution data. Here the authors show that tree-ring isotopes can be used for inferring interannual variability and long-term changes in NPP.

Turbulence is generated in a quiescent environment using vortex rings as building blocks.

Wetland methane emissions contribute to global warming, and are oversimplified in climate models. Here the authors use eddy covariance measurements from 48 global sites to demonstrate seasonal hysteresis in methane-temperature relationships and suggest the importance of microbial processes.

Kinetic energy put into a granular medium as a collective is typically dissipated as friction. The situation is different when forces are applied to the individual particles. An experiment now shows that when torques are applied to particles in a dense bed of microrollers, the grains roll uphill.

Executive functions are affected by ageing but it is unclear how. Kievit et al.use brain imaging and modelling approaches to show how multifactorial explanations outperform single-factor models when relating age-related differences in grey and white matter to differences in fluid intelligence and multitasking.

Degeneration of pericytes causes toxic fibrin(ogen) accumulation, cell death and microcirculation dysfunction in CNS white-matter axon tracts.

Climate-sensitive disturbances, such as droughts and wildfires, impact terrestrial carbon uptake. Here the sensitivity of ecosystem productivity to disturbance is found to diverge between regions, with dryland ecosystems becoming particularly vulnerable under a warming climate.

The timing of life-history events has a strong impact on ecosystems. Now, analysis of the phenology of temperate forests in the eastern US indicates that in the case of an earlier spring and a later autumn, carbon uptake (photosynthesis) increases considerably more than carbon release (respiration).

Accounting for meltwater from the Antarctic Ice Sheet in simulations of global climate leads to substantial changes in future climate projections and identifies a potential feedback mechanism that exacerbates melting.

Present-day forests use water more efficiently, probably owing to the effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on leaf stomata, which partially close to maintain a near-constant level of carbon dioxide inside the leaves despite increasing atmospheric levels.

The diatom Pseudo-nitzschia produces the neurotoxin domoic acid, known to cause illness and death in marine mammals and humans. Measurements of surface- and deep-water domoic acid concentrations off the coast of California suggest that this toxin is rapidly transported to depth following diatom blooms.