Shipping seasons along the Northwest Passage vary in space and time, with southward transport of multi-year ice creating choke points that reduce overall season length, according to an analysis of sea ice charts derived from risk index systems from 2007 to 2021.

Icelandic granitoids are not analogues for continental crust on the early Earth but can help understand how silicic crust forms on other terrestrial planets without plate tectonics, according to geochemical modelling based on four granitic Iceland plutons.

The carbon stored in Africa’s miombo woodlands may require a significant upward revision owing to the contribution from large trees, according to 3D multi-scale lidar measurements acquired from 50 kha of intact and degraded forests in Mozambique.

Increased soil carbon, lower soil bulk density, higher earthworm abundance and vascular plant richness indicate that permaculture in Central Europe enhances soil health and biodiversity, suggest field experiments in Germany and Luxembourg.

Hot and dry summers in Europe occur 5–6 times more often under global warming levels of 3 °C, compared to 2 °C, and South-Eastern European summer heat expands northwards, according to comparisons of reanalysis data with climate model simulations.

Under low and medium emission scenarios, the Polar Class 7 will be able to sail the Arctic passages with no risk of sea ice motion during the summer and autumn seasons and, from 2065, the whole year-round, according to an analysis that combines climate, sea ice, and navigation data.

A large patch of thermohaline staircases in the eastern Caribbean Sea is disrupted by vertical shear associated with subsurface mesoscale eddies, according to analysis of thermohaline staircases and their three-dimensional distribution using high-resolution active acoustic reflection data.

Arabian Sea wind patterns respond differently to precession and obliquity cycles, whereas Indian Summer Monsoon rainfall directly follows to Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, according to simulations using an orbitally-forced isotope-enabled Community Earth System Model.

Large-scale energy budgets can explain the correlation between sea ice extent and ocean heat transport, providing fresh insight into accurate projection of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, according to a simple equation for computing sea ice edge change from surface temperature and ocean heat transport.

Extreme warm summers and high melt rates in Greenland since 1979 have been fueled by feedbacks between downwelling longwave radiation and a high-pressure blocking system, according to analyses of year-to-year perturbations of Greenland’s surface energy budget.

Achieving the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement relies on every actor maximising their effort to reduce emissions. Generic targets claiming a basis in science have been used to justify inequitable efforts that insufficiently stretch the ambition of the best-resourced countries and companies.

A combination of anthropogenic warming and natural variability led to another record-breaking year of warmth in 2023. Global mean temperatures in 2023 nearly exceeded the 1.5 °C threshold, making it both a scientific and societal imperative to understand the underlying reasons for this warmth.

Attribution of the record-shattering global annual heat in 2023 to human and/or natural factors is fundamentally required for reliable predictions of upcoming global warming and its impacts. An observation-model comparison of global hot areas supports a key role for human-induced climate change, with a small contribution from El Niño.

In northern China and the Korean Peninsula, air pollution has worsened over the past ten years, but the two countries have not cooperated efficiently to resolve the problem. China and Korea must separate environmental negotiations and diplomatic actions to address the transboundary nature of air pollution.

Oxygen levels in the ocean increased three times between the early Ediacaran and the early Cambrian, in synchrony with major developments in animal evolution.

In 2021, one in five people in Africa was affected by hunger, and the continent had the highest prevalence of undernourished people globally. We argue that food systems in Africa can be more resilient if their development includes climate adaptation.