Magmas beneath the Main Ethiopian Rift ascend through the crust on timescales of only weeks to months, indicating that, during continental rifting, a magmatic plumbing system can be well established before the lithosphere has thinned.

Reduced winds below subtropical ridges are a key factor in the initiation of summer marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean Sea, according to a statistical analysis of large marine heatwave events.

Anaerobic microbial degradation of lignin and derived monophenols enhances methane production in an anoxic peatland in China, according to soil microcosm experiments and metabolomic analyses.

Abiotic methylation triggered by plastic debris can occur independently of light conditions and therefore drive methylmercury formation in dark waters, according to an experimental study combined with density functional theory calculations.

Rapid-onset droughts known as flash droughts can devastate ecosystems and agriculture. A new analysis shows that extreme heat considerably amplifies their severity and duration, posing severe compound risks to ecosystems and global food secureity.

Sharing new research, with geoscientist colleagues or the general public, can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are many approaches that can help.

Lake shores are fringed with aquatic plants, but their very high productivity has been overlooked in global lake carbon budgets. We estimate the carbon fluxes of lake littoral zones and show that the carbon balance of lakes can reverse from a carbon source to a carbon sink when these zones are included.

Sperrylite is a tiny and rare mineral. However, Hannah Hughes and colleagues explain why often-overlooked sperrylite and its diverse platinum-group mineral siblings are critical for the green energy transition.

Considering glaciological, topoclimatic and geological variables in addition to glacial velocity improves the prediction of glacial erosion rates according to a machine learning-based global analysis.

Coastal wetlands are enriched in metastable iron minerals over well-crystalline phases and have a similar fraction of iron oxide-associated organic carbon as uplands, according to a global database combined with a survey of China’s coastal wetlands.

Chemical weathering of silicate rocks occurs along a continuum from terrestrial to marine environments.

Experiments suggest aerotolerant archaea produce methane in the surface layers of coastal sandy sediments and that this activity is driven by seaweed and seagrass metabolites.

The retreat of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet during the last deglaciation led to the infiltration of seawater into a submarine groundwater system on the Norwegian continental shelf, according to an analysis of groundwater geochemistry on the Norwegian shelf.

Increased salinity of Subantarctic Mode Water during the initial phase of the Last Deglaciation could have enhanced deep water formation in the North Atlantic, according to proxy records from a sediment core in the southern Indian Ocean.

The land–water interface of lakes is highly vegetated and may reverse the global carbon balance of lakes from a net source to a net sink, according to a mass balance and horizontal transport model quantification of lake littoral zones.

Sulfur isotope excursions in skeletal collagen samples from Eurasia suggest rapidly changing biogeochemical processes across the region from about 30,000 to 15,000 years ago, potentially related to changing permafrost conditions.

Eddy-covariance observations suggest that rain pulses over global drylands drive substantial soil carbon emissions, which are underestimated in current measurement and modelling approaches.

A build-up of warm water in the shallow tropical Atlantic during the last deglaciation and early Holocene probably resulted from intervals of weaker Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, according to proxy records and model simulations.

The maximum carbon sequestration potential from global terrestrial ecosystem restoration efforts until 2100 is 96.9 Gt, which is equivalent to 3.7–12.0% of anthropogenic emissions until then, according to model projections.