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Who are the “amphibious ill-born mob” who gave rise to the British nation?

Genome-wide ancient DNA data from individuals from the Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age documents large-scale movement of people from the European continent between 1300 and 800 bc that was probably responsible for spreading early Celtic languages to Britain.

Genome-wide data from 400 individuals indicate that the initial spread of the Beaker archaeological complex between Iberia and central Europe was propelled by cultural diffusion, but that its spread into Britain involved a large-scale migration that permanently replaced about ninety per cent of the ancestry in the previously resident population.

Various geoengineering approaches have been proposed for carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal but their viability at scale remains unclear. Here, we consider the natural behaviour of driftwood, the warming-induced acceleration of sea-ice loss and tree growth, as well as the stability of cellulose in subfossil wood under cold-anoxic conditions, to introduce the concept of sinking timber from the boreal forest for durable CO₂ sequestration at the deep Arctic Ocean floor.

The cause of episodes of unrest at caldera volcanoes is often unclear. Analysis of the sulfur composition of gas emissions at Campi Flegrei in Italy suggests a magmatic origin of the recent unrest at this hazardous caldera.

Geochemical analyses correlating the stratum that overlies the sediments containing the Omo fossils with material from a volcanic eruption suggest that these fossils (the oldest known modern human fossils in eastern Africa) are over 200,000 years old.

This study of volcanic gas chemistry during pulsatory lava fountaining at Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland reveals that the intermittency stems from pressure cycles and gas-melt separation within a shallow magma-filled cavity.

Indonesia is the country with the most active volcanoes, several of which are renowned for climate-changing eruptions. Here the authors show a rather moderate sulfur emissions budget and reinforce the idea that sulfur-rich eruptions reflect long-term accumulation of volatiles in the reservoirs.

Primitive lavas of the Fagradalsfjall eruption present a window into the deep roots of a magmatic system previously inaccessible to near-real-time investigation, showing that eruptible batches of basaltic magma mix on a timescale of weeks.

On 28 May 2025, twenty million cubic metres of rock and ice buried the medieval village of Blatten and nearby settlements in the Swiss Lötschen valley. In the wake of the warmest decade since at least 742 CE, the disaster underlines the impact of climate warming on people and heritage.

Tree rings are a crucial archive for Common Era climate reconstructions, but the degree to which methodological decisions influence outcomes is not well known. Here, the authors show how different approaches taken by 15 different groups influence the ensemble temperature reconstruction from the same data.

The millennium volcano eruption rather than climate change primarily alters montane vegetation compositions at Changbaishan, causing larger abundance of broad-leaf forests with tundra dominating at high elevations, based on reconstructive vegetation from deposits and remote sensing data.

A revised date for the Laacher See eruption using measurements of subfossil trees shifts the chronology of European varved lakes relative to the Greenland ice core record, synchronizing the onset of the Younger Dryas across the North Atlantic–European sector.

The impact of a volcanic eruption depends on more than just its size. We need more interdisciplinary research to understand the global societal consequences of past and future volcanic eruptions.

The redox state of volcanic gases and melts can become decoupled during magma ascent, according to observations of gas emissions from Kīlauea’s lava lake, Hawaii. Cooling of fast-rising bubbles changes the abundance of redox-sensitive gas species.

Despite their extensive use, the absolute dating of tree-ring chronologies has not hitherto been independently validated at the global scale. Here, the identification of distinct ¹⁴C excursions in 484 individual tree rings, enable the authors to confirm the dating of 44 dendrochronologies from five continents.

Analysis of contemporary reports of total lunar eclipses, combined with aerosol model simulations and tree-ring-based climate proxies, allowed greater precision in dating of the occurrence of stratospheric volcanic eruptions during the High Medieval Period.

Genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe between 12000 and 500 bc reveals that the region acted as a genetic crossroads before and after the arrival of farming.

The climatic response to the 1257 Samalas eruption is unclear. Analyses of proxy data and medieval archives suggest that the eruption triggered some of the coldest summers of the past millennium, but only in some Northern Hemisphere regions.

Model and proxy-based estimates of climate cooling from volcanic eruptions have disagreed. Refined simulations and tree-ring time series converge on a total of 0.8 to 1.3 °C of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere from the 1257 and 1815 eruptions.

Five major explosive volcanic pulses in the Main Ethiopian Rift took place in the last four million years with intensity and magnitude declining over time, based on stratigraphic and geochronology data of volcanic units.

The Millennium Eruption of Mt. Baekdu was a multiphase eruption with two main phases separated approximately by one or two months, and was less climatically significant than previously thought, according to high-resolution glaciochemical and tephra analyses of an ice core in Greenland.

Volatile metal pollutants in basaltic volcanic plumes can be deposited up to 100 times faster than refractory species, and may produce disproportionate impacts at proximal locations, according to extensive sampling of Kīlauea’s 2018 eruption plume.

Lava–seawater interaction plumes have contrasting volatile metal compositions to associated magmatic plumes emitted at volcanic vents, including elevated concentrations of chloride-complexing metals, according to direct measurements of the 2018 Kīlauea eruption.

A recent study dating Viking presence in America to a precise year was only possible thanks to long-term conservation of archaeological finds. It also arose from curiosity, interdisciplinarity and recognition of emerging techniques. These factors highlight the importance of archiving materials and asking the right questions in research on the entanglements of climate and history.