Palaeoclimate

Ice loss from the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica is rapidly accelerating. Here, the authors reveal that this region also underwent thinning and retreat from 9 to 6 thousand years ago, due to atmospheric connections with a warming tropical Pacific.

The last deglaciation of the marine parts of the Eurasian Ice Sheet was driven mainly by oceanic temperature change in the north and by changes in solar insolation in the south, based on a reconstruction of the marine parts of the Eurasian Ice Sheet and Nordic Seas palaeoceanographic data.

Pulses of silicic arc magmatism—and associated volatile emissions—helped set the timing and magnitude of the environmental disruptions that caused the end-Permian mass extinction, according to U–Pb zircon dating of silicic volcanic and related tephra sequences in eastern Australia.

Continental flood basalt emplacement is facilitated by basaltic intrusions, which crystalize and release carbon dioxide leading to pre-eruptive global warming, according to numerical models and a comparison with Deccan Traps and Columbia River Basalt records.