Featured
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Research Highlight |
Sea spray carries huge amounts of ‘forever chemicals’ into the air
Long-lived compounds emitted by industry reach the oceans and are then ferried by bubbles into the atmosphere.
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News Explainer |
Divisive Sun-dimming study at Harvard cancelled: what’s next?
As the climate crisis rages on, advocacy for testing controversial solar geoengineering technology is ramping up.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Nature Podcast |
These tiny fish combine electric pulses to probe the environment
Elephantnose fish share electric pulses to extend their senses, and the bumblebees that show a uniquely human trait.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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World View |
Megafires are here to stay — and blaming only climate change won’t help
It’s not just global warming that’s driving the growth in destructive wildfires. Better land management is the first step to mitigating the risks.
- Renata Libonati
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Research Highlight |
Why sunsets were a weird colour after Krakatau blew its top
Evening skies, which are usually red after a volcanic eruption, were instead emerald after the 1883 event.
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News |
This methane-sniffing satellite will leave climate polluters nowhere to hide
Set to launch as early as next week, MethaneSAT will partner with Google to map leaks from the oil and gas industry and beyond.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
First aircraft to fly on Mars dies — but leaves a legacy of science
The record-setting Mars helicopter Ingenuity broke during a final, fatal flight.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Canada’s oil sands spew massive amounts of unmonitored polluting gases
Innovative aircraft-based technique records carbon emissions not tracked before from the industrial region.
- Nicola Jones
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News |
Surge in extreme forest fires fuels global emissions
Climate change and human activities have led to more frequent and intense forest blazes over the past two decades.
- Xiaoying You
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News & Views |
From the archive: London fog, and an expedition team to envy
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Research Highlight |
Where ‘green ghost’ lightning gets its emerald hue
A range of elements in planetary dust provide the colour for high-altitude natural fireworks.
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Research Highlight |
How immense mountains create one of the rainiest places on Earth
The western coast of Colombia can get more than 26 metres of rain a year, thanks to the influence of air jets hitting the Andes range.
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News |
Catastrophic change looms as Earth nears climate ‘tipping points’, report says
Polar ice, coral reefs and other Earth systems could cross irrevocable thresholds soon, but urgent action could stave off the worst effects.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Research Highlight |
Huge California wildfires seeded cirrus clouds half a world away
Smoke from record-breaking fires in 2020 travelled all the way to Cyprus, where it helped to trigger cloud formation.
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News & Views |
JWST ends game of hide and seek with methane
The space telescope has helped to determine the atmospheric composition of an exoplanet using the light spectrum of its host star. Spectral changes as the planet orbits the star reveal the long-sought presence of exoplanetary methane.
- Gloria Guilluy
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News |
Record-breaking heat set to hit Southern Hemisphere as summer begins
The Northern Hemisphere experienced a sweltering summer due to climate and meteorological patterns. Scientists say the south will not escape.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Research Highlight |
A Russian warship’s sinking is linked to strange weather pattern
Unusual temperature inversion might have helped Ukraine to sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet last year.
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News |
Asteroid sampler’s hypersonic return thrilled scientists: here’s what they learnt
The re-entry of the OSIRIS-REx sample canister is the most closely observed of its type in history.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Grand plan to drought-proof India could reduce rainfall
The major engineering scheme aims to interlink several Indian rivers to support irrigation.
- Rishika Pardikar
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Nature Index |
Where is the strongest research focus on the environment?
The alignment of high-quality research to Sustainable Development Goals on climate and conservation varies widely between the world’s regions.
- Simon Baker
- & Bec Crew
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Research Highlight |
Summer storms launch water high into the stratosphere
Thunderstorms can increase the levels of water vapour in the atmosphere, at altitudes as high as 19 km.
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Article |
Tropical Atlantic multidecadal variability is dominated by external forcing
Anthropogenic and volcanic aerosols dominate multidecadal variability in aspects of the tropical Atlantic climate, such as sea surface temperatures, Sahel rainfall and hurricanes.
- Chengfei He
- , Amy C. Clement
- & Lisa N. Murphy
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News Explainer |
India’s Moon mission: four things Chandrayaan-3 has taught scientists
In just two weeks, the Indian mission has made some surprising discoveries about the composition of the Moon
- T.V. Padma
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Article
| Open Access
Forced changes in the Pacific Walker circulation over the past millennium
Analysis of a new annually resolved, multi-method, palaeoproxy-derived reconstruction ensemble for the period 1200–2000 suggests that recent variability in the Pacific Walker circulation is unusual but not unprecedented over the past 800 years.
- Georgina Falster
- , Bronwen Konecky
- & Samantha Stevenson
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News & Views |
Clues to rain formation found in droplet images
X-ray and optical imaging have revealed the intricate process through which droplets freeze during the formation of rain. The results could help to explain how clouds are able to produce enough ice particles to make rain.
- Thomas Leisner
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News |
Australia’s Antarctic budget cuts a ‘terrible blow for science’
Scientists around the globe have expressed concern at reports that the Australian Antarctic Division will have its budget slashed by the government.
- Gemma Conroy
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Comment |
How to reduce Africa’s undue exposure to climate risks
Africa is disproportionately exposed to catastrophic climate, hydrological and meteorological risks. Well-funded weather monitoring, nowcasting and early-warning systems must become a priority.
- Asaf Tzachor
- , Catherine E. Richards
- & Amadou T. Gaye
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Article |
A cool runaway greenhouse without surface magma ocean
It is reported using a consistent climate model that pure steam atmospheres are commonly shaped by radiative layers, making their thermal structure strongly dependent on the stellar spectrum and internal heat flow.
- Franck Selsis
- , Jérémy Leconte
- & Émeline Bolmont
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Research Highlight |
Cutting ships’ pollution has climate downside
Rules on the fuel burnt by ships at sea implemented in 2020 lead to local changes in cloud chemistry.
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News & Views |
From the archive: computer security, and a key experiment by Pascal
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Research Highlight |
Great bolts of lightning foretell Earth-warming clouds
Coverage of wispy cirrus clouds is linked to episodes of electrical activity.
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Article
| Open Access
Accurate medium-range global weather forecasting with 3D neural networks
Three-dimensional deep neural networks can be trained to forecast global weather patterns, including extreme weather, with accuracy greater than or equal to that of the best numerical weather prediction models.
- Kaifeng Bi
- , Lingxi Xie
- & Qi Tian
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Article
| Open Access
Skilful nowcasting of extreme precipitation with NowcastNet
A new nowcasting model unifies physical-evolution schemes and deep-learning methods to accurately predict precipitation with lead times of up to 3 h, including extreme-precipitation events and weather systems that were previously considered intractable with physics-based numerical methods.
- Yuchen Zhang
- , Mingsheng Long
- & Jianmin Wang
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News & Views |
Natural halogen-containing compounds cool the climate
Simulations using a model of the Earth system have shed light on the role of short-lived halogen-containing gases in climate change. The findings suggest that these gases should now be included in all Earth-system models.
- Laura Revell
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Article
| Open Access
Natural short-lived halogens exert an indirect cooling effect on climate
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.
- Alfonso Saiz-Lopez
- , Rafael P. Fernandez
- & Jean-François Lamarque
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Research Highlight |
Underwater volcano triggered the most intense lightning ever recorded
The huge eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai volcano generated more than 2,600 lightning flashes per minute.
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News & Views |
From the archive: Oxford observatory delayed, and cyclone mysteries
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Research Highlight |
Tibetan lakes emit as much nitrogen as a megacity
Surprisingly high levels of pollution rise from 135 remote lakes, which collectively release as much nitrogen oxides as London.
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News |
Why are the Canadian wildfires so bad this year?
Hot, dry weather and human carelessness have led to a huge burnt area — and to a choking haze that is affecting millions of people.
- Brian Owens
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Research Highlight |
Vaunted treaty to protect the ozone layer has a hole
Industrial releases of bromoform, an ozone-depleting compound that is also emitted by seaweed, are much higher than expected.
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News |
Air pollution in China is falling — but there is a long way to go
Easy gains from upgrading power-plant smokestacks will be strengthened only by deeper policy changes.
- Dyani Lewis
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Article |
Increased heat risk in wet climate induced by urban humid heat
An analysis of data from urban and rural areas shows that in wet climates the net effect of temperature and humidity in urban areas is an increase in heat stress.
- Keer Zhang
- , Chang Cao
- & Xuhui Lee
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Research Highlight |
How CubeSats could harm the ozone layer
The proliferation of miniature satellites — and a possible switch to iodine exhaust — could have unintended consequences.
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Article |
Human-induced weakening of the Northern Hemisphere tropical circulation
Analysis of sea-level pressure measurements shows that, in agreement with the latest suite of climate models, the Hadley circulation has considerably weakened in the Northern Hemisphere over recent decades, driven by anthropogenic emissions.
- Rei Chemke
- & Janni Yuval
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News |
‘This shouldn’t be happening’: levels of banned CFCs rising
Researchers have detected increased emissions for five ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons.
- Katherine Bourzac
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News Explainer |
What the science says about California’s record–setting snow
A relentless series of ‘rivers in the sky’ is creating extreme conditions across the state, but a role for climate change is unclear.
- Gemma Conroy
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Research Highlight |
The seas exhale toxic mercury — and more of it than we realized
Ocean emissions partially explain why 40% more mercury enters the atmosphere every year than previously estimated.
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Nature Index |
Japan’s rising research stars: Yuuki Wada
Wada is studying high-energy particles by collecting data from storms on Earth.
- Chris Woolston
Lethal dust storms blanket Asia every spring — now AI could help predict them