Nature Geoscience, Published online: 21 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02126-7

An enormous ice shelf spanned Baffin Bay during the last glacial period, and its rapid retreat during the last deglaciation probably destabilized the surrounding ice sheets, according to an analysis of bathymetric data

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 20 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02117-8

Delayed bedrock uplift can allow rapid warming to trigger Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat before classical instability thresholds are reached, lowering critical warming thresholds by up to 0.5 K in East Antarctica, according to coupled model simulations.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 19 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02124-9

Uncritical extrapolation of soil erosion models developed in the Global North to Global South settings for which they were not designed reflects and perpetuates neocolonial biases in geoscience. To build a more accurate and equitable understanding of land degradation, we must rethink erosion research.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 19 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02135-6

Global environmental changes can induce contrasting responses of soil organic and inorganic carbon, according to an 8-year field experiment in a semi-arid grassland and a meta-analysis.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02123-w

Forecasts of future Arctic Ocean sea ice loss can be substantially improved using Holocene proxy records by applying a model weighting approach.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 14 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02119-6

Progressive oxidative weathering in the Archaean may have raised the proportion of oxidized sulfur recycled during subduction, suggesting a feedback between the surface and increasingly oxidized arc magmatism, according to sulfur in apatite inclusions.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 12 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02138-3

Much of the water on Earth could have been produced from dry silicate pebbles falling through the hot, hydrogen-rich primordial atmosphere as the planet formed. High-temperature experiments in streams of pure hydrogen demonstrate that the reduction of iron oxide in the silicates can produce water vapour in minutes or hours, and suggest that water production on Earth-sized exoplanets should be widespread.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 12 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02125-8

The Western Eurasian Steppe has undergone an abrupt and persistent transition to a hotter and drier summer climate that exceeds the range of natural variability, driven by external climate forcing and amplified by internal variability and land–atmosphere feedbacks, according to observations and Earth system model simulations.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 07 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02097-9

Whitlockite can trace ancient impacts in space, human activity at archaeological sites, and may even be a tool for detecting early-stage breast cancer, as Alix Ehlers and Elizabeth Thompson explain.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 07 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02109-8

Water-ice clouds are common across the Solar System, but their formation typically requires pre-existing dust particles to coax water vapour into ice. Atmospheric simulations now suggest that gravity waves over a Martian volcano can bypass the need for dust, generating ice clouds through spontaneous nucleation of water vapour.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 07 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02128-5

Despite its thin, carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, Mars is proving a valuable laboratory for understanding atmospheric transport, cloud formation, and climate processes on Earth and beyond.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 07 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02111-0

The Agulhas Leakage is a set of currents that carry salty water from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean around the southern tip of Africa. It helps drive modern Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, but evidence suggests this link wasn’t present in the Pliocene.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02099-7

Rapid caldera collapse during submarine eruptions could increase tsunami magnitude, suggests an analysis of the geomorphological evolution of the caldera formed in the climactic eruption of Hunga volcano (Tonga) in 2022.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02082-2

Our global analysis of multi-source, multilayer soil moisture datasets shows that droughts become particularly damaging when moisture deficits occur simultaneously throughout the soil profile, eliminating vertical hydrological buffering. These vertically compound droughts have intensified across much of the globe and pose a growing threat to carbon uptake in forests and croplands.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02094-y

The single-cell Hadley circulation on Mars limits the mixing of materials across the cell’s interior and exterior, and it also leads to a pole-to-pole connection. This regime is created by the dominance of the mean flow over turbulences, which are dampened by the rapid temperature relaxation in the Martian atmosphere.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02069-z

Since 1725, weather extremes in Western Europe have been closely linked to the Atlantic–European jet stream, which is projected to strengthen by 2100 while becoming less extreme, according to daily sea-level pressure records and climate model simulations.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02093-z

An analysis of data from 15 subduction zones finds no relationship between metrics of the topography of the plate interface and the largest earthquake it can generate, implying that this topography is not a key control on subduction zone seismicity.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02116-9

Publisher Correction: Hadley circulation drives material isolation and pole-to-pole teleconnection on Mars

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02088-w

The minerals needed to transport water into the deepest parts of the Earth’s mantle remain unclear. High-pressure and -temperature experiments conducted at lower-mantle conditions suggest that iron oxyhydroxide phases may be important to such transport.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41561-026-02067-1

Dense iron oxyhydroxide phases may form from an early basal magma ocean, trapping water and potentially contributing to the formation of thermochemical anomalies in the deep mantle, according to high-pressure and high-temperature experiments.