Articles in 2026

Large cascading ruptures in northeastern Tibet arise from the combined influences of fault geometry, rupture direction, dynamic stress triggering, and stress or strength heterogeneities, as revealed by physics-based simulations that incorporate kinematically derived on-fault prestress.

Offshore carbon capture projects in southern China can break even before 2040, with transport distance as a key driver. These insights are based on geological assessment, phased planning, and technoeconomic analysis and GIS spatial analysis.

Presence of higher soil pH and calcium in limestone promote free-living nitrogen fixation activity in soils by fostering beneficial microbial associations, whereas lithology has no significant effect on the activity in litter, according to sampling analysis conducted in the southwest China.

Ocean warming can influence both the quantity and composition of dissolved organic carbon released from large coastal macrophytes such as seagrasses and eelgrasses, according to analyses of cross-ecosystem mesocosm experiments.

Cropland expansion in tropical Africa leads to cooler surface temperature compared to grassland at night, but the daytime temperatures show distinct changes dependent on the aridity condition, revealed by satellite observations.

Strontium to calcium ratio and oxygen isotopic records from single corals contain a strongly autocorrelated non-climate noise component, which can inflate reconstructed temperature variability, according to analyses of coral records and sea surface temperature data.

Marine oxygen loss intensified millions of years before the end-Triassic mass extinction, coinciding with biodiversity declines, according to an analysis using sedimentary iron speciation and nitrogen isotopes to reconstruct water-column redox changes.

IPCC emission factors potentially overestimate carbon dioxide emissions from cool temperate and boreal croplands on organic soils in Norway, according to calibrated soil-plant-atmosphere system modeling.

Cyclonic and anticyclonic atmospheric synoptic forcings produce pronounced vertical structure in upper-ocean temperature anomalies in the eastern Eurasian Arctic, with their magnitude and timing shaped by the seasonal evolution of sea ice and stratification, as shown by experiments using a high-resolution ocean-ice coupled model.

Population density and agricultural activity intensify fractional floating algal cover in 71% global lakes, whereas temperature and wind regulate the bloom phenology, according to an analysis of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data across 4085 global lakes for two decades.

Natural forest conversion reduces soil respiration by 7% through strong declines in autotrophic respiration and raises temperature sensitivity after conversion to agriculture and grassland, with both responses returning to forest levels within 30 years, based on 452 paired observations.

Sub-Saharan Africa and Indus River Valley are two hotpots of the occurrence of compound heat-pollution events in recent decades, though with different circulation backgrounds, revealed by fine scale global assessment.

The uplift of the Altaid Plateau during the Late Triassic drove major climatic shifts that triggered glaciation, stronger monsoons, and ultimately the collapse of regional alpine and terrestrial ecosystems, according to tectonic, sedimentological, and biogeochemical analyses.

Lake-terminating glaciers across Greenland flow more rapidly at their termini, with 44% showing down-ice accelerations, and with greater accelerations associated with larger lakes, according to analysis of velocity profiles of 102 lake- and land-terminating glaciers.

Cloud feedback does not exceed prior expectations, given the evidence that the cloud-radiative anomalies can be explained by meteorological variations and aerosol emission reduction, according to quantifications based on observations.

Deposition fluxes of nitrate and ammonium on Tibetan glaciers have accelerated since 2000 due to growing anthropogenic emissions in South Asia, according to geochemical analyses of two ice cores from the southern Tibetan Plateau and back-trajectory analysis.

Soil bacterial and fungal necromass carbon is linked with plant species richness with a stronger positive correlation in the topsoil than in the subsoil, according to observations along a 3,000 km transect in grasslands on the Tibetan plateau.

The 2016 extreme El Niño led to near collapse of diatoms and reduction in carbon export and respiration, according to analyses of biogeochemical model output and machine learning based particle backscattering and oxygen fields.

Cold-region riverbeds erode faster than unfrozen ones as early thaw season water injections enhance subsurface thawing and increase bed erosion, suggesting an increased sensitivity to extreme weather events, according to flume experiments, scaling theory, and field data.

Microbial dormancy-resuscitation dynamics amplify soil carbon responses to warming, especially during non-growing seasons, driven by reduced frozen depth and prolonged thaw, based on a microbial model integrated with multi-year whole-soil warming experiments on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.