North American tree species, subspecies and genetic varieties have primarily evolved in a landscape of extensive continental ice and restricted temperate climate environments. Here, we reconstruct the refugial history of western North American trees since the last glacial maximum using species distribution models, validated against 3571 palaeoecological records. We investigate how modern subspe...

Reduced surface-deep ocean exchange and enhanced nutrient consumption by phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean have been linked to lower glacial atmospheric CO2. However, identification of the biological and physical conditions involved and the related processes remains incomplete. Here we specify Southern Ocean surface-subsurface contrasts using a new tool, the combined oxygen and silicon isotop...

Some of Earth’s greatest relief occurs where glacial processes act on mountain topography1,2. This dramatic landscape is thought to be an imprint of Pleistocene glaciations3,4. However, whether the net effect of glacial erosion on mountains is to increase5–7 or decrease8–10 relief remains disputed. It has been suggested that in the European Alps, the onset of widespread glaciation since the mid...

Atmospheric dust levels may play important roles in feedbacks linking continental source areas, tropical convection, marine productivity, and global climate. These feedbacks appear to be particularly significant in the tropical Pacific, where variations in local convection and productivity have been demonstrated to have impacts on climate at higher latitudes. Modeling of past dust levels and re...

A mechanism is proposed in which climate, carbon cycle and icesheets interact with each other to produce a feedback that can lead to quasi-100 ky glacial-interglacial cycles. A central process is the burial and preservation of organic carbon by icesheets which contributes to the observed glacial-interglacial CO2 change (the glacial burial hypothesis, Zeng, 2003). Allowing carbon cycle to intera...

Most physiology comparisons of C3 and C4 plants are made under current or elevated concentrations of atmospheric CO2 which do not reflect the low CO2 environment under which C4 photosynthesis has evolved. Accordingly, photosynthetic nitrogen (PNUE) and water (PWUE) use efficiency, and the activity of the photosynthetic carboxylases [Rubisco and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC)] and decarb...

The timing and extent of latest Pleistocene and Holocene alpine glacier fluctuations in the Himalaya and Tibet are poorly defined due to the logistical and political inaccessibility of the region, and the general lack of modern studies of the glacial successions. Nevertheless, renewed interest in the region and the aid of newly developing numerical dating techniques have provided new insights i...

We have detected dozens of previously unknown, moderate earthquakes beneath large glaciers. The seismic radiation from these earthquakes is depleted at high frequencies, explaining their nondetection by traditional methods. Inverse modeling of the long-period seismic waveforms from the best-recorded earthquake, in southern Alaska, shows that the seismic source is well represented by stick-slip,...

The Gangotri Glacier, at the source of the Ganges River, has fluctuated greatly throughout the late Quaternary in response to climatic oscillations. This has resulted in impressive moraines, paraglacial debris flow fans and terraces along the upper stretches of the Bhagirathi Valley. Cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) dating of glacial and paraglacial landforms shows that fans, terraces and associat...

It is an open question to what extent wetlands contributed 4 to the interglacial-glacial decrease in atmospheric methane concentration. 5 Here we estimate methane emissions from glacial wetlands, using newly avail-6 able PMIP2 simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) climate from 7 coupled atmosphere-ocean and atmosphere-ocean-vegetation models. These 8 simulations apply improved boundary ...