Human-caused climate change drove large decreases in snowpack and streamflow as well as increases in irrigation demand in the western US (2014-2024), with roughly half attributable to the Carbon Majors, according to a study applying a source-to-impact attribution approach.

Climate change is increasing the risk of ice-rock avalanches in the Himalaya while preparedness and recognition remain limited, according to a reassessment of the 2021 Chamoli disaster, lessons from the Blatten near-miss, and analysis of institutional gaps that motivate an anticipatory hazard governance framework.

Integrating agentic AI within a shared governance framework for wildfire management would help overcome cooperation problems and improve collaboration and coordination in decision-making across agencies, suggests a synthesis of inefficiencies and options for improvement.

Large scale offshore wind may reduce coastal precipitation by 10–15 percent and wind speeds by 2–3 meters per second while increasing rainfall over farms, according to decade long simulations of scenarios for 2023 to beyond 2050 across the Northwest European Shelf and Baltic Sea.

Surface water quality in China’s karst regions improved substantially, with top-quality waters increasing by up to 36 percent and 4.86 million people benefiting, but gains may reverse without continued controls, according to remote sensing and machine learning.

Aerosol particles over north western Amazonia have ice nucleating abilities, according to analyses of aerosol data from a measurement site in Colombia.

No statistically significant acceleration in drought is detected across ~99% of quasi-global land area, according to a study that applied multiple Penman-type and energy-based potential evapotranspiration formulations to Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index records from 1981–2024.

A scaling relation unifying diffusional earthquakes is derived from prolonged natural earthquake swarms in Northeast Japan and a compilation of cataloged slow earthquakes, injection-induced seismicity, and natural earthquake swarms, with earthquake magnitude constrained by diffusive envelopes.

Abyssal benthic megafaunal density exhibit a unique U-shaped response to polymetallic nodule cover in the Northwest Pacific that is distinct from other well-studied areas, highlighting the need for region specific management of deep-sea mining, according to photographic surveys.

Beneath the deep ocean floor may not seem like a natural place for a prospering ecosystem, yet microbial life can thrive in subsurface sediments. The International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 385 led by Drs. A. Teske and D. Lizarralde set out to drill and sample the deep biosphere, at eight sites of the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California. Dr Edgcomb and colleagues analysed these data and found active microbial life across a range of sediment and temperature conditions, especially around hydrothermal structures. Their work demonstrates that subsurface microbial life can flourish, even in the most challenging of conditions.

Heat stress risk is increasingly assessed using composite indices that were derived for narrowly defined applications and then extrapolated far beyond those use cases. This Comment argues that users must understand each index’s origins and be transparent about the sometimes-significant limitations these impose on its application.

Urban decarbonisation depends on materials such as aluminium, graphite and lithium. This Comment argues that disruptions to their supply pose a neglected climate risk and calls for a strategic reserve system to protect cities’ energy transitions.

A Just Transition to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement has been recognised as a global aim for climate governance, yet it has so far lacked a binding implementation mechanism. This Comment proposes three design features for the 2026 operationalisation negotiations to break the procedural lock-in.

Fire-conditioned degradation now rivals deforestation as an independent source of carbon loss across Amazonia. This Comment argues that fire and degradation are first-order risks to Nature-based solutions and must be embedded explicitly in monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), as well as crediting and jurisdictional finance.

The twentieth century saw a rapid expansion in Arctic tundra vegetation. Dr Ingrosso and colleagues examined these changes over time by using plant-derived biomarkers (biopolymers from plant leaves and cell walls) from a sediment core in Svalbard. They found that Svalbard’s greening was driven by a decline of summer sea ice and glacier retreat, and that the expansion was associated with vascular plant species that are adapted to warmer conditions. These interactions could shape the future Arctic environment in the face of ongoing climate change.