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Cable bacteria are multicellular, filamentous microorganisms that are capable of transporting electrons over centimeter-scale distances. Although recently discovered, these bacteria appear to be widely present in the seafloor, and when active they exert a strong imprint on the local geochemistry. In particular, their electrogenic metabolism induces unusually strong pH excursions in aquatic sediments, which induces considerable mineral dissolution, and subsequent mineral reprecipitation. However, at present, it is unknown whether and how cable bacteria play an active or direct role in the mineral reprecipitation process. To this end we present an explorative study of the formation of sedimentary minerals in and near filamentous cable bacteria using a combined approach of electron microscopy and spectroscopic techniques. Our observations reveal the formation of polyphosphate granules within the cells and two different types of biomineral formation directly associated with multicellular filaments of these cable bacteria: (i) the attachment and incorporation of clay particles in a coating surrounding the bacteria and (ii) encrustation of the cell envelope by iron minerals. These findings suggest a complex interaction between cable bacteria and the surrounding sediment matrix, and a substantial imprint of the electrogenic metabolism on mineral diagenesis and sedimentary biogeochemical cycling. In particular, the encrustation process leaves many open questions for further research. For example, we hypothesize that the complete encrustation of filaments might create a diffusion barrier and negatively impact the metabolism of the cable bacteria.

These datasets were used to describe the diversity, ecology and role of non-scleractinian corals on scleractinian cold-water coral carbonate mounds in the Logachev Mound Province, Rockall Bank, NE Atlantic. Cold-water coral carbonate mounds, created by framework-building scleractinian corals, are also important habitats for non-scleractinian corals, whose ecology and role are understudied in deep-sea environments. In total ten non-scleractinian species were identified, which were mapped out along eight ROV video transects. Eight species were identified as black corals (three belonging to the family Schizopathidae, one each to the Leiopathidae, Cladopathidae, and Antipathidae and two to an unknown family) and two as gorgonians (Isididae and Plexauridae). The most abundant species were Leiopathes sp. and Parantipathes sp. 2. Areas with a high diversity of non-scleractinian corals are interpreted to offer sufficient food, weak inter-species competition and the presence of heterogeneous and hard settlement substrates. A difference in the density and occurrence of small vs. large colonies of Leiopathes sp. was also observed, which is likely related to a difference in the stability of the substrate they choose for settlement. Non-scleractinian corals, especially black corals, are an important habitat for crabs, crinoids, and shrimps in the Logachev Mound Province.

Much of our understanding of Earth's past climate states comes from the measurement of oxygen and carbon isotope variations in deep-sea benthic foraminifera. Yet, major intervals in those records that lack the temporal resolution and/or age control required to identify climate forcing and feedback mechanisms. Here we document 66 million years of global climate by a new high-fidelity Cenozoic global reference benthic carbon and oxygen isotope dataset (CENOGRID). Using recurrence analysis, we find that on timescales of millions of years Earth's climate can be grouped into Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse and Icehouse states separated by transitions related to changing greenhouse gas levels and the growth of polar ice sheets. Each Cenozoic climate state is paced by orbital cycles, but the response to radiative forcing is state dependent.

Data refer to export fluxes of carbonate produced by calcifying phytoplankton (coccolithophores), and coccolith-CaCO₃ percent contribution to total carbonate flux across the tropical North Atlantic, from upwelling affected NW Africa, via three ocean sites along 12°N to the Caribbean. Sampling was undertaken by means of a spatial array of four time-series sediment traps (i.e., CB at 21°N 20°W; M1U at 12°N 23°W; M2U at 14°N 37°W; M4U at 12°N 49°W; Guerreiro et al., 2021) collecting particle fluxes in two-week intervals, from October 2012 to February 2014, allowing to track temporal changes along the southern margin of the North Atlantic central gyre. Auxiliary PIC (Particulate Inorganic Carbon) data from NASA's Ocean Biology Processing Group (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov) are also provided for the sediment sampling period at all four trap sites. Particle flux data (mg/m²/d) of CaCO₃, organic matter, particulate organic carbon (POC), biogenic silica (bSiO₂) and unspecified residual fraction are provided for sediment trap site CB.

Stable water isotopes in polar ice provide a wealth of information about past climate evolution. Snow-pit studies allow us to relate observed weather and climate conditions to the measured isotope variations in the snow. They therefore offer the possibility to test our understanding of how isotope signals are formed and stored in firn and ice. As stable water isotopes in the snowfall are strongly correlated to air temperature, isotopes in the near-surface snow are thought to record the seasonal cycle at a given site. Accordingly, the number of seasonal cycles observed over a given depth should depend on the accumulation rate of snow. However, snow-pit studies from different accumulation conditions in East Antarctica reported similar isotopic variability and comparable apparent cycles in the d18 O and dD profiles with typical wavelengths of ~ 20cm. These observations are unexpected as the accumulation rates strongly differ between the sites, ranging from 20 to 80mm w.e. yr -1 (~ 6-21cm of snow per year). Various mechanism have been proposed to explain the isotopic variations individually at each site; however, none of these is consistent with the similarity of the different profiles independent of the local accumulation conditions. Here, we systematically analyse the properties and origins of isotopic variations in high-resolution firn profiles from eight East Antarctic sites. First, we confirm the suggested cycle length (mean distance between peaks) of ~ 20cm by counting the isotopic maxima. Spectral analysis further shows a strong similarity between the sites but indicates no dominant periodic features. Furthermore, the apparent cycle length increases with depth for most East Antarctic sites, which is inconsistent with burial and compression of a regular seasonal cycle. We show that these results can be explained by isotopic diffusion acting on a noise-dominated isotope signal. The firn diffusion length is rather stable across the Antarctic Plateau and thus leads to similar power spectral densities of the isotopic variations. This in turn implies a similar distance between isotopic maxima in the firn profiles. Our results explain a large set of observations discussed in the literature, providing a simple explanation for the interpretation of apparent cycles in shallow isotope records, without invoking complex mechanisms. Finally, the results underline previous suggestions that isotope signals in single ice cores from low-accumulation regions have a small signal-to-noise ratio and thus likely do not allow the reconstruction of interannual to decadal climate variations.

Permafrost thaw and ice wedge degradation lead to drastic landscape changes in the permafrost region. With this data set we investigated the cliff retreat of the Sobo-Sise Cliff (SSC), a high ice-bearing yedoma cliff in the Lena River Delta. The 1,660 m long cliff SSC extends from 72°32'34 N / 128°15'59 E to 72°32'06 N / 128°18'21 E and is located on the Sardakhskaya channel, which is one of the main Lena river branches in the Lena River Delta. Erosion rates for the SSC were determined based on satellite images from different sensors (Corona, Hexagon, Landsat, Planet cube-sat) for the period 1965-2018. Cliff front lines were manually digitized and erosion rates were calculated with the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) tool (Himmelstoos et al. 2018). The study Fuchs et al. (2020) (doi:10.3389/feart.2020.00336) shows that the up to 27.7 m high SSC erodes in average 15.7 m yr-1 (2015-2018). During the entire observed time period from 1965-2018, the SSC retreated in average 484 m (ranging from 322 - 680 m). This data set compilation consist of three GIS shapefiles with a corresponding metadata file and a table of the mean annual erosion rates of the yedoma SSC for the time periods 1965-1975, 1975-2000, 2000-2005, 2005-2010, 2010-2015, and 2015-2018, as well as the absolute cliff retreat rates over the entire period 1965-2018, which are derived from remote sensing imagery analyzed with the DSAS tool. In addition, the cliff front lines for each investigated time step are provided as well as the separation between yedoma and alas deposits for each time step. Related trend data for this region, based on Landsat trend analysis are available at: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.884136 (Nitze, 2018).

High-resolution atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) records derived from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) Dome C ice core covering Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 9e - 12a (~330 - 450 ka BP). The majority of the CO2 data were measured at an average temporal resolution of ~300 years using a novel dry-extraction device called the Centrifugal Ice Microtome (CIM) employed at Climate and Environmental Physics (CEP), Physics Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland. Additional 33 data points were measured at the Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement (IGE), Univ. Grenoble Alpes, France using the Ball Mill dry-extraction system. The CH4 data were measured at both CEP and IGE, improving the temporal resolution of existing data previously published by the same laboratories to ~350 years on average. These ice core records are complemented by high-resolution planktic and benthic stable isotope (δ18O and δ13C) records from the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Site U1385 located on the Iberian Margin off the coast of Portugal (Shackleton Site) covering MIS 9e - 11c (~330 - 410 ka BP). All marine sediment data were measured at an average temporal resolution of ~150 years at the Godwin Laboratory of Palaeoclimate Research, University of Cambridge, UK.

The number concentration of cloud particles is a key quantity for understanding aerosol–cloud interactions and describing clouds in climate and numerical weather prediction models. In contrast with recent advances for liquid clouds, few observational constraints exist regarding the ice crystal number concentration (Ni). This study investigates how combined lidar–radar measurements can be used to provide satellite estimates of Ni, using a methodology that constrains moments of a parameterized particle size distribution (PSD). The operational liDAR–raDAR (DARDAR) product serves as an existing base for this method, which focuses on ice clouds with temperatures Tc<-30 ∘C. Theoretical considerations demonstrate the capability for accurate retrievals of Ni, apart from a possible bias in the concentration in small crystals when Tc≳−50 ∘C, due to the assumption of a monomodal PSD shape in the current method. This is verified via a comparison of satellite estimates to coincident in situ measurements, which additionally demonstrates the sufficient sensitivity of lidar–radar observations to Ni. Following these results, satellite estimates of Ni are evaluated in the context of a case study and a preliminary climatological analysis based on 10 years of global data. Despite a lack of other large-scale references, this evaluation shows a reasonable physical consistency in Ni spatial distribution patterns. Notably, increases in Ni are found towards cold temperatures and, more significantly, in the presence of strong updrafts, such as those related to convective or orographic uplifts. Further evaluation and improvement of this method are necessary, although these results already constitute a first encouraging step towards large-scale observational constraints for Ni. Part 2 of this series uses this new dataset to examine the controls on Ni.

The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979–2008) and a climate change projection (2039–2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850–2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate – specifically the Madden–Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).

Sponges host a remarkable diversity of microbial symbionts, however, the benefit their microbes provide is rarely understood. Here, we describe two new sponge species from deep-sea asphalt seeps and show that they live in a nutritional symbiosis with methane-oxidizing (MOX) bacteria. Metagenomics and imaging analyses revealed unusually high amounts of MOX symbionts in hosts from a group previously assumed to have low microbial abundances. These symbionts belonged to the Marine Methylotrophic Group 2 clade. They are host-specific and likely vertically transmitted, based on their presence in sponge embryos and streamlined genomes, which lacked genes typical of related free-living MOX. Moreover, genes known to play a role in host–symbiont interactions, such as those that encode eukaryote-like proteins, were abundant and expressed. Methane assimilation by the symbionts was one of the most highly expressed metabolic pathways in the sponges. Molecular and stable carbon isotope patterns of lipids confirmed that methane-derived carbon was incorporated into the hosts. Our results revealed that two species of sponges, although distantly related, independently established highly specific, nutritional symbioses with two closely related methanotrophs. This convergence in symbiont acquisition underscores the strong selective advantage for these sponges in harboring MOX bacteria in the food-limited deep sea.