Widespread phytoplankton blooms triggered by 2019-2020 Australian wildfires.

Droughts and climate-change-driven warming are leading to more frequent and intense wildfires, arguably contributing to the severe 2019-2020 Australian wildfires. The environmental and ecological impacts of the fires include loss of habitats and the emission of substantial amounts of atmospheric aerosols. Aerosol emissions from wildfires can lead to the atmospheric transport of macronutrients and bio-essential trace metals such as nitrogen and iron, respectively.

Standard assessments of climate forecast skill can be misleading.

Assessments of climate forecast skill depend on choices made by the assessor. In this perspective, we use forecasts of the El Niño-Southern-Oscillation to outline the impact of bias-correction on skill. Many assessments of skill from hindcasts (past forecasts) are probably overestimates of attainable forecast skill because the hindcasts are informed by observations over the period assessed that would not be available to real forecasts.

Insights into projected changes in marine heatwaves from a high-resolution ocean circulation model.

Global climate models project the intensification of marine heatwaves in coming decades due to global warming. However, the spatial resolution of these models is inadequate to resolve mesoscale processes that dominate variability in boundary current regions where societal and economic impacts of marine heatwaves are substantial. Here we compare the historical and projected changes in marine heatwaves in a 0.

Background nutrient concentration determines phytoplankton bloom response to marine heatwaves.

Ocean temperature extreme events such as marine heatwaves are expected to intensify in coming decades due to anthropogenic global warming. Reported ecological and economic impacts of marine heatwaves include coral bleaching, local extinction of mangrove and kelp forests and elevated mortalities of invertebrates, fishes, seabirds and marine mammals. In contrast, little is known about the impacts of marine heatwaves on microbes that regulate biogeochemical processes in the ocean.

Marine nitrogen fixers mediate a low latitude pathway for atmospheric CO drawdown.

Roughly a third (~30 ppm) of the carbon dioxide (CO) that entered the ocean during ice ages is attributed to biological mechanisms. A leading hypothesis for the biological drawdown of CO is iron (Fe) fertilisation of the high latitudes, but modelling efforts attribute at most 10 ppm to this mechanism, leaving ~20 ppm unexplained. We show that an Fe-induced stimulation of dinitrogen (N) fixation can induce a low latitude drawdown of 7-16 ppm CO.