Journal: Communications Earth & Environment

Abbreviation

Commun Earth Environ

Publisher

Nature

Journal Volumes

ISSN

2662-4435

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2020 - 2026107
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Publications1 - 10 of 107
  • Ice-rock avalanches in a warming Himalaya indicate pathways toward effective preparedness
    Item type: Review Article
    Ahmed, Rayees; Bhardwaj, Anshuman; Sam, Lydia; et al. (2026)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    When a massive wall of ice and rock collapsed into the Rishiganga valley in Chamoli, India, in 2021, it destroyed hydropower plants, swept away bridges, and killed over 200 people. Four years later, a large ice-rock avalanche struck Blatten, Switzerland, burying most of the village yet causing only one casualty. The difference between catastrophe and survival was not luck, but preparedness, monitoring, and rapid response. In Blatten, authorities and residents acted on precursory signs of slope instability, enabling timely evacuation. This Perspective asks why such hazard preparedness remains rare in the Himalaya. We contrast Chamoli's devastation with Blatten's near-escape, assess progress made in the Himalaya since 2021, and examine whether the region is better prepared today. We then explore how elements of the Swiss early-warning approach, especially integrated monitoring, communication, and community-linked response, can be adapted to Himalayan realities to transform potential disasters into survivable events.
  • The Gulf Stream moved northward at the end of the Little Ice Age
    Item type: Journal Article
    Forman, Edward C.G.; Baldini, James U.L.; Jamieson, Robert A.; et al. (2025)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    The Gulf Stream forms part of the upper-ocean limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, playing an essential role in redistributing heat northward and greatly influencing regional climates in the North Atlantic. Understanding Gulf Stream path and strength variability on pre-instrumental timescales is vital to contextualise its proposed present-day weakening and to better appreciate its sensitivity to external forcing. Here we present a 564 year-long monthly resolved terrestrial palaeo-oceanographic temperature record derived from a Bermudan stalagmite, spanning 1449 to 2013 in the Common Era. Our reconstruction suggests that the Gulf Stream migrated northward as the Little Ice Age abated, after a combination of reduced Gulf Stream transport, enhanced Labrador Current and Deep Western Boundary Current transport, and an extended negative North Atlantic Oscillation phase had likely forced its path southward.
  • Sedimentary biomarkers of human presence and taro cultivation reveal early horticulture in Remote Oceania
    Item type: Journal Article
    Camperio, Giorgia; Ladd, S. Nemiah; Prebble, Matiu; et al. (2024)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    Remote Oceania was among the last places settled by humans. However, the timing of initial human settlements and the early introduction of horticulture remain debated. We retrieved a sediment core close to Teouma, the oldest cemetery in Remote Oceania that reveals evidence of initial settlement, horticulture practice, and concurrent climatic conditions on the island of Efate, Vanuatu. Sedimentary biomarkers indicating human presence (coprostanol and epicoprostanol), and taro cultivation (palmitone), increase simultaneously, attesting to the early introduction of horticulture by first settlers. The precipitation signal preserved in leaf waxes shows that the initial settlement occurred during a period of increasing wetness—climatic conditions favourable for the establishment of horticulture. The timing of these events is constrained by a high-resolution radiocarbon chronology that places the first unequivocal trace of human activity and horticulture at 2800 years ago. These findings advance our understanding of human history in the Pacific.
  • Breaking Rossby waves drive extreme precipitation in the world’s arid regions
    Item type: Journal Article
    De Vries, Andries-Jan; Armon, Moshe; Klingmüller, Klaus; et al. (2024)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    More than a third of the world’s population lives in drylands and is disproportionately at risk from hydrometeorological hazards such as drought and flooding. While weather systems governing precipitation formation in humid regions have been widely explored, our understanding of the atmospheric processes generating precipitation in arid regions remains fragmented at best. Here we show, using a variety of precipitation datasets, that Rossby wave breaking is a key atmospheric driver of precipitation in arid regions worldwide. Rossby wave breaking contributes up to 90% of daily precipitation extremes and up to 80% of total precipitation amounts in arid regions equatorward and downstream of the midlatitude storm tracks. The relevance of Rossby wave breaking for precipitation increases with increasing land aridity. Contributions of wave breaking to precipitation dominate in the poleward and westward portions of arid subtropical regions during the cool season. Our findings imply that Rossby wave breaking plays a crucial role in projections and uncertainties of future precipitation changes in societally vulnerable regions that are exposed to both freshwater shortages and flood hazards. (Figure presented.)
  • Projected poleward migration of the Southern Ocean CO₂ sink region under high emissions
    Item type: Journal Article
    Mongwe, Precious; Gregor, Luke; Tjiputra, Jerry; et al. (2024)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    The Southern Ocean is a major region of ocean carbon uptake, but its future changes remain uncertain under climate change. Here we show the projected shift in the Southern Ocean CO₂ sink using a suite of Earth System Models, revealing changes in the mechanism, position and seasonality of the carbon uptake. The region of dominant CO₂ uptake shifts from the Subtropical to the Antarctic region under the high-emission scenario. The warming-driven sea-ice melt, increased ocean stratification, mixed layer shoaling, and a weaker vertical carbon gradient is projected to together reduce the winter de-gassing in the future, which will trigger the switch from mixing-driven outgassing to solubility-driven uptake in the Antarctic region during the winter season. The future Southern Ocean carbon sink will be poleward-shifted, operating in a hybrid mode between biologically-driven summertime and solubility-driven wintertime uptake with further amplification of biologically-driven uptake due to the increasing Revelle Factor.
  • Dynamics and evolution of the Azores Triple Junction and its relation to pre-existing major tectonic structures
    Item type: Journal Article
    Marques, Fernando O.; Balázs, Attila; Gerya, Taras V.; et al. (2025)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    Triple junctions, where three tectonic plates meet, play a critical role in geodynamics. The Azores Triple Junction is critical in the study of triple junctions, challenging traditional models of triple junction stability. Unlike the established rift-rift-rift framework, the Azores Triple Junction exhibits notable complexities, including a sigmoidal rift arm and a directional shift in velocity vectors. Our state-of-the-art 3-D thermo-mechanical simulations reveal critical similarities between model and nature in terms of timing, transient grabens distribution, rift and triple junction jump, diffuse plate boundary, depth of the main rift, and rift shoulder uplift, and indicate that the Azores Triple Junction became unstable because of the sigmoidal shape of the precursor Azores-Gibraltar fault zone and how Nubia has moved relative to Eurasia in the last 3 millions of years. A northward jump of the rift transferred the Azores block from Eurasia to Nubia, without forming a distinct Azores microplate. The findings underscore the importance of pre-existing tectonic structures in triple junction evolution, challenging the necessity of a thermal mantle plume in explaining the current dynamics and topography of the Azores Triple Junction.
  • Transient wave activity in snow avalanches is controlled by entrainment and topography
    Item type: Journal Article
    Li, Xingyue; Sovilla, Betty; Gray, John Mark Nicholas Timm; et al. (2024)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    Waves are omnipresent in avalanches on Earth and other planets. The dynamic nature of waves makes them dangerous in geological hazards such as debris flows, turbidity currents, lava flows, and snow avalanches. Extensive research on granular waves has been carried out by using theoretical and numerical approaches with idealized assumptions. However, the mechanism of waves in realistic complex situations remains intangible, as it is notoriously difficult to capture complex granular waves on real terrain. Here, we leverage a recently developed hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian numerical scheme and an elastoplastic constitutive model to investigate the processes involved in waves of snow avalanches, including erosion, deposition, and flow instability induced by terrain irregularity. This enables us to naturally simulate roll-waves, erosion-deposition waves, and their transitions in a single large-scale snow avalanche on real terrain. Simulated wave features show satisfactory consistency with field data obtained with different radar technologies. Based on a dimensionless analysis, the wave mechanics is not only controlled by the Froude number and local topography but also by the mass of the wave which governs the entrainment propensity. This study offers new insights into wave mechanisms of snow avalanches and provides a novel and promising pathway for exploring transient waves in granular mass movements.
  • The location of compression-induced subduction initiation controlled by structural versus thermal inheritance
    Item type: Journal Article
    Oravecz, Éva; Gerya, Taras; Balázs, Attila (2025)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    Subduction initiation is a pivotal process in the Wilson cycle, yet its mechanisms remain elusive. Using 3D coupled thermo-mechanical and surface processes models, we investigated how the duration of the plate motion reversal from rifting to plate convergence and the structural versus thermal inheritance influence the location of compression-induced subduction initiation. Our results reveal that abrupt plate motion changes lead to ridge inversion-driven subduction, controlled by the inherited thermal- and melt-induced weakening. In contrast, transitions exceeding a few million years localize strain along inherited continental lithospheric-scale weak zones, enhanced by rifting-induced grain size reduction. These findings, supported by lithospheric strength and strain analysis, align with observations from inferred subduction initiation sites, such as the Algerian margin and eastern Japan Sea, highlighting the interplay between structural and thermal inheritance in controlling compression-induced subduction initiation.
  • Diminished contribution of spring phenology to early-season carbon uptake in a changing climate
    Item type: Journal Article
    Liu, Zunchi; Zohner, Constantin M.; Wu, Zhaofei; et al. (2025)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    Advances in spring phenology (SOS) and increases in terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP) are well-documented. However, the impact of an earlier SOS on the duration and rate of carbon uptake (GPP(rate)) during the early growing season (EGS) remains unclear, leaving the overall influence of these factors on EGS GPP uncertain. Using satellite and carbon flux data across the Northern Hemisphere, we found that an earlier SOS extended EGS, but reduced the mean daily GPP(rate) during this period, primarily due to lower temperatures and soil-water content. While the extended EGS increased total EGS GPP, the reduction in EGS GPP(rate) lowered these gains by 30% on average, with a more pronounced reduction in arid regions (similar to 85%) compared to humid areas (similar to 15%). The diminished contribution of an advanced SOS to early-season productivity suggests that the current increase in carbon uptake in northern ecosystems may be offset by future warming and drought conditions.
  • The effect of climate change on sources of radionuclides to the marine environment
    Item type: Review Article
    Gwynn, Justin P.; Hatje, Vanessa; Casacuberta, Núria; et al. (2024)
    Communications Earth & Environment
    Climate change interacts with the sources and cycling of contaminants, such as radionuclides, in the environment. In this review, we discuss the implications of climate change impacts on existing and potential future sources of radionuclides associated with human activities to the marine environment. The overall effect on operational releases of radionuclides from the nuclear and non-nuclear sectors will likely be increased interference or prevention of normal operations due to weather-related events. For certain radioactive waste dumped at sea and sunken nuclear submarines, the impact of climate change and ocean acidification on the release of radionuclides and their subsequent fate in the marine environment should be considered further. Fluxes from secondary sources of radionuclides in the marine and terrestrial environment and cryosphere will change in response to climate change impacts such as sea level rise, warming and changes in precipitation patterns. In addition, climate change impacts may increase the risk of releases of radionuclides from operational and legacy wastes on land to the marine environment. Overall, our synthesis highlights that there is a need to understand and assess climate change impacts on sources of radionuclides to the marine environment to meet environmental and management challenges under future climate scenarios.
Publications1 - 10 of 107