Data sets used to monitor the Earth's climate indicate that the surface of the Earth warmed from 1910 to 1940, cooled slightly from 1940 to 1970, and then warmed markedly from 1970 onward. The weak cooling apparent in the middle part of the century has been interpreted in the context of a variety of physical factors, such as atmosphere

Authigenic carbonates within the Reynella Member of the glacial Elatina Formation occur in coastal cliff exposures of the Marinoan type section in South Australia and provide constraints on the magnitude and timing of methane influence during deglaciation.

An unseen measurement bias has been identified in global records of sea surface temperature. The discrepancy will need correction, but will not affect conclusions about an overall warming trend.

The humble bucket turns out to be at the bottom of a perplexing anomaly in the climate records for the twentieth century. The time series of land and ocean temperature measurements, begun in 1860, shows a strange cooling of about 0.3

Carbon is locked away down in the Earth's crust: in magma and old carbonate rocks buried by plate tectonics, in fossil fuels like coal and oil, and in ice lattices beneath the ocean bed. It has long been assumed that this carbon was largely cut off from the surface, and could safely be ignored when analysing the effect of greenhouse gases on climate. Now it seems there may be much more "deep carbon" ready to spew out than we thought.

Two new model studies project a modest increase or even a decrease in the frequency and intensity of Atlantic tropical cyclones.

New results show that the response of marine organisms to ocean acidification varies both within and between species.

Understanding the composition of the atmosphere over geological time is critical to understanding the history of the Earth system, as the atmosphere is closely linked to the lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. Although much of the history of the lithosphere and hydrosphere is contained in rock and mineral records, corresponding information about the atmosphere is scarce and elusive owing to the lack of direct records.

The chief of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has called for the creation of a National Climate Service to manage and disseminate information about global warming.

Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawady delta region of Myanmar and the disastrous earthquake in the Sichuan province in China have each taken a toll of more than 50,000 lives. In each case, the victims were the ordinary people of the two regions in two distinct countries. Those worst hit, in both cases, are the poorest of the poor. Nature can take away more human lives than the worst terrorist in the world.

Pages