Volume 16 Issue 6, June 2023

Research on the energy transition needs to involve all communities and requires breaking the paradigm of traditional industry-funded research, argues Jef Caers from his personal story.

Deciphering the contribution of mantle convection to Earth’s surface elevation remains challenging, but it may have a dominant influence on mountain-building at subduction zones, according to a new study reconstructing the topographic evolution of Calabria.

Inspired by the mineralogist Shulamit Gross’s studies of one of the world’s unique mineral factories, Michael Anenburg discusses the pyrometamorphic minerals formed by fire in the Dead Sea desert.

Lightning can produce bioavailable nitrogen oxides, but it is unknown whether this was a substantial nutrient source for Earth’s earliest biosphere. Comparison of nitrogen isotope measurements from spark discharge experiments to those from the rock record suggests that lightning was likely not the main source of bioavailable nitrogen for the biosphere throughout most of Earth’s history.

High-resolution satellite observations reveal that large lakes on the Tibetan Plateau have total nitric oxide emissions comparable to anthropogenic emissions from individual megacities worldwide.

Spark discharge experiments suggest lightning was not the main source of bioavailable nitrogen for the established Archaean biosphere, but could have been significant for Earth’s earliest ecosystems.

The Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort Gyre has transitioned to a state where the freshwater content has plateaued and the cold halocline layer has thinned, as a result of variation in the regional wind forcing.

The hyper-arid climate of modern East Antarctica only arose in the late Miocene, millions of years after the interval of rapid ice-sheet expansion, according to meteoric beryllium-10 concentrations within the permafrost.

Fine-grained pyroclastic deposits can be fluidized by decompression following the passage of dilute pyroclastic density currents, generating hazardous, highly mobile flows, according to analogue experiments and numerical simulations.

Sediment lenses trailing subducting seamounts could maintain long-lasting fluid pressures and support slow-slip behaviour at sediment-rich subduction zones, according to three-dimensional seismic surveys of the Hikurangi margin.

Interactions between subducting slabs and the 660-km mantle transition zone can influence mantle convection and forearc uplift, according to rock uplift histories of the Calabrian forearc spanning the past 30 million years.

The formation of continental crust may have trapped —and thus not degassed—substantial amounts of magmatic nitrogen over Earth’s history, according to geochemical analyses of igneous rocks from the Hekla volcanic system in Iceland.

Correlation between large igneous province activity and iron formation ages suggests that subducted iron formations may have facilitated mantle plume upwelling in the Archaean and Proterozoic Earth.

Volatile-rich kimberlite magmas may be transported to the surface by broad mantle upwellings located above mobile basal mantle structures, according to global models of mantle convection over the past 200 million years.

Primordial helium in the deep mantle may be supplied continuously from Earth’s core, according to first-principles calculations and modelling of helium partitioning into exsolved magnesium oxide at core–mantle boundary conditions