Data laboriously extracted from an Antarctic ice core provide an unprecedented view of temperature, and levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, over the past 800,000 years of Earth's history.

In your Special Report 'Brazil goes to war against logging' (Nature 452, 134

Air travel shows no sign of losing its allure but its environmental impact is not going to go away. Katharine Sanderson looks at some of the ways that scientists and engineers hope to reduce the carbon wing-print of aircraft.

Few scientific creations have had greater impact on public opinion and policy than computer models of Earth's climate. These models, which unanimously show a rising tide of red as temperatures climb worldwide, have been key over the past decade in forging the scientific and political consensus that global warming is a grave danger. (Editorial)

Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here the authors show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone.