The shift from denser forests to open, grass-dominated vegetation in west-central North America between 26 and 15 million years ago is a major ecological transition with no clear driving force. This open habitat (OHT) considered by some be evidence for drier summers, more seasonal precipitation, or cooler climate, but others have proposed that wetter conditions and/or warming initiated the OHT....

Solar flare events of high importance were utilised to study solar latitudinal frequency distribution of the solar flares in northern and southern hemisphere for the solar cycle 22 to recent solar cycle 23. A statistical analysis was performed to obtain their relationship with sudden storm commencement (SSCs) and Forbush decrease events (Fd) of cosmic ray intensity. An 11-year cyclic variation ...

The impacts of summer heat extremes are mediated by humidity. Increases in temperatures due to human-caused climate change generally expected increase specific humidity; however, it remains unclear how humidity may change, especially climatologically dry (low-humidity) regions. Here we show that on days during (defined here as July–September) has decreased over the past seven decades United Sta...

An analysis of 68 floras from the Pennsylvanian and Early Permian of Euramerica reveals distinct patterns of environmental distribution. Wetland assemblages are the most commonly encountered floras from the Early and Middle Pennsylvanian. Floras from drier habitats characterize the Permian. Both wetland and dry-site floras occur in the Late Pennsylvanian, but floristic overlap is minimal, which...

The "dry gets drier, wet gets wetter" (DGDWGW) paradigm is widely accepted in global moisture change. However, Greve et al. have declared that this paradigm has been overestimated. This controversy leaves a large gap in the understanding of the evolution of water-related processes. Here, we examine the global moisture trends using satellite soil moisture for the past 35 years (1979-2013). Our r...

reproduced by historical simulations with anthropogenic and natural forcings, but are absent if only natural forcings are considered, pointing to new potential fingerprints of anthropogenic warming. These results suggest a fundamental pattern of global warming over land that depend on the dryness of ecosystems in midand lowlatitudes, likely reflecting primarily the first order large-scale therm...

Analysis of stacked Permo-Pennsylvanian palaeosols from north-central Texas documents the influence of palaeolandscape position on pedogenesis in aggradational depositional settings. Palaeosols of the Eastern shelf of the Midland basin exhibit stratigraphic trends in the distribution of soil horizons, structure, rooting density, clay mineralogy and colour that record long-term changes in soil-f...