Pizolgletscher, Swiss Alps, was already a very small glacier when the monitoring of length change was initiated 130 years ago. In situ mass balance measurements at seasonal resolution began in 2006. During the last 18 years, the glacier has lost 98% of its volume and is considered extinct since 2022. However, a tiny remnant of ice of a few thousand square metres is preserved under rockfall debris. The case of Pizolgletscher allows tracking the extinction of a glacier with a comprehensive long-term observational series. Furthermore, the vanished glacier has a touristic and cultural significance, as exemplified by a commemoration ceremony held in 2019. Here, detailed monitoring data sets (mass balance, area, volume, length) are presented that shed light on the processes of glacier disintegration before ultimate disappearance. Comparison to regional mass balance variations indicates that the signal from very small glaciers can remain representative at larger scales even during the final phase of a glacier’s lifecycle.

Our ability to accurately quantify the total ice volume in glaciers and the loss of glacier volume, discharge and freshwater in response to climate change is limited by a paucity of ice thickness and bed topography observations. Consequently, glacial ice thickness is often inferred indirectly from more easily obtained surface measurements. Here, we present a simple inversion building on the assumption of perfect plasticity. In the traditional perfect-plastic approximation, the ice thickness (or bed) can be inferred from the surface elevation and yield strength. Here, we extend this to demonstrate that, provided glaciers are changing, we can simultaneously determine the yield strength and bed topography from observations of surface elevation alone. We demonstrate that the ice thicknesses and bed topographies we infer perform comparably to other inversions documented in the Ice Thickness Models Intercomparison eXperiment. Unlike other inversions, we do not require surface mass balance or glacier velocities, which can be inaccurate and difficult to obtain. Given the increasing availability of high-resolution surface elevation data, it may be possible to apply this method to glaciers worldwide to better constrain the ice thickness, bed topography and volume of glaciers globally.

Reliably identifying and understanding temporal precursors to extreme wind gusts is crucial for early warning and mitigation. This study proposes a simple data-driven approach to extract key predictors from a dataset of historical extreme European winter windstorms and derive simple equations linking these precursors to extreme gusts over land. A major challenge is the limited training data for extreme events, increasing the risk of model overfitting. Testing various mitigation strategies, we find that combining dimensionality reduction, careful cross-validation, feature selection, and a nonlinear transformation of maximum wind gusts informed by Generalized Extreme Value distributions successfully reduces overfitting. These measures yield interpretable equations that generalize across regions while maintaining satisfactory predictive skill. The discovered equations reveal the association between a steady drying low-troposphere before landfall and wind gust intensity in Northwestern Europe.

Spacecraft assembly facilities (SAFs) house clean rooms where interplanetary spacecraft are built, thereby reducing the bioburden on spacecraft to protect planetary environments from terrestrial microbes that may interfere with the search for life or disturb potential native ecosystems. The most plausible environments for living systems on celestial bodies involve brines with depressed freezing points. Here, we specifically measure the abundance of salinotolerant microbes on SAF surfaces. Most probable number analyses performed with salty liquid media were applied to washes of SAF floor wipes. Microbial abundance was measured using Salt Plains medium at low salt or supplemented with (all w/v) 10% NaCl (1.7 M; aw = 0.92), 50% MgSO4 (2.0 M as epsomite; aw = 0.94), 5% NaClO3 (0.5 M; aw = 0.98), or 5% NaClO4 (0.4 M; aw = 0.98). The abundance of salinotolerant microbes was generally 1 to 10% (102 to 104 cells m−2) of the total population of microbes observed in low-salt medium (105 cells m−2). Microbes were isolated by repetitive streak-plating of positive enrichment cultures and then characterized. All of the 38 isolates were Gram-positive bacteria, mainly spore-forming Bacillaceae, with some Staphylococcus. The isolate collection showed strong tolerance to high concentrations of NaCl (to 30%), MgSO4 (to 50%) and sucrose (to 70%). There also was substantial tolerance to pH (5 to 10) and temperature (4 to 60 °C). Taken together, these SAF isolates are polyextremophiles that are in substantial abundance in the clean rooms where spacecraft are assembled.

In discussions on European Neogene continental chronology, the Kastellios Hill section has played an important role because of the presence of strata with planktonic foraminifers and strata with mammalian remains. With the primary papers written in the 1970s and 1980s, the time is ripe for an update on age and taxonomy of the murid rodents from Kastellios Hill by comparing the fauna with time-equivalent southern and central European faunas. This comparison results in a partly revised faunal list consisting of the dominant Progonomys mixtus n. sp., the less common Cricetulodon cf. C. hartenbergeri Freudenthal, 1967 and P. cathalai Schaub, 1938, and the rare P. hispanicus Michaux, 1971 and cf. Hansdebruijnia neutra (de Bruijn, 1976). Based on the updated species list and magnetic polarity data, the most probable age of the Kastellios Hill mammal localities is 9.3–9.1 Ma (Chron C4Ar.1r, late Vallesian, MN10). The genus Hansdebruijnia is narrowed down to two species in an ancestor–descendant relationship: the ancestral type species H. neutra, which is restricted to southeastern Europe and Anatolia, and the descendant species H. magna (Sen, 1977), representing a new combination and including ‘Occitanomys alcalai’ Adrover et al., 1988 and ‘O. debruijni’ (Hordijk and de Bruijn, 2009). H. magna colonized both southeastern and southwestern Europe.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/ebe0f64c-6900-4efc-ab43-8a4045de6810

Earth’s lithospheric mantle is dominated (usually >90% vol.%) by a nominally volatile-free mineral paragenesis with peridotitic composition. The remaining lithologies are typically hydrous and/or carbonate-bearing assemblages (the latter mostly stable at P >2 GPa), representing the products of mantle metasomatism with, or without, involvement of subduction. Despite their importance, the modal compositions of these metasomes are poorly constrained, probably containing hydrous phases (amphibole and/or phlogopite), coupled with accessory minerals, such as apatite, ilmenite, rutile and/or carbonates. These assemblages are usually considered to be the source of unusual magmas, in particular ultrapotassic compositions, especially kamafugites (K2O-rich, commonly ultracalcic, basic/ultrabasic lithologies). To evaluate if partial melting of such metasomes could effectively produce kamafugites, we performed partial melting experiments at 2.7 and 5 GPa, and 1200°C to 1550°C on clinopyroxenites variably enriched in phlogopite, olivine and accessory phases (apatite, oxides, titanite), and on a clinopyroxene glimmerite (with apatite and magnetite).

At low degrees of melting, the glasses show extremely high TiO2 (<15 wt.%), CaO (<18 wt.%) and P2O5 (<7.4 wt.%), coupled with low SiO2 (>21.6 wt.%), as accessory minerals are the principal contributors in the melting reactions. Although there are no known natural counterparts for these low-degree melt compositions, they might play a key role in re-fertilisation events in the upper mantle. At increased degrees of partial melting (∼50 to ∼90%), the experimental melts approach the compositions of silica-poor, potassic/ultrapotassic and ultracalcic rocks. Indeed, experimental-produced glasses share several geochemical similarities with natural kamafugites, partially overlapping for most of the major oxides. Clinopyroxene- and phlogopite-rich lithologies, variably enriched in olivine and accessory phases (apatite, oxides, titanite) probably occur as veins pervading the lithospheric peridotitic matrix, and their partial melting, especially at high degrees, may be a plausible explanation for the genesis of SiO2-poor, K2O- and CaO-rich compositions.

Sea ice outflow through the Transpolar Drift (TPD) is essential in Arctic sea ice loss. Twenty-four buoys deployed in the Arctic Ocean during the summer of 2021 were used to analyse sea ice kinematics and deformation across the pack ice zone (PIZ) and marginal ice zone (MIZ), mainly focusing on the TPD region. Three stages were identified as sea ice transitions from melt to growth and to melt again. In Stage 1, sea ice exhibited active internal motion, with a high deformation rate (5.7 d−1) determined using the buoy trajectory-stretching exponents. In Stage 2, ice consolidation reduced wind response and deformation rates (2.3 d−1), but still with intermittently enhanced ice deformation over 6.0 d−1 caused by severe storms. In Stage 3, the combined impacts of a super cyclone, MIZ ice and oceanic conditions, and tidal dynamics north of Svalbard remarkably altered the ice kinematic regime. Variations in sea ice kinematics along the TPD region support the MIZ definition by the threshold of certain sea ice concentration variability. This study demonstrates how seasonal transitions, spatial heterogeneities of sea ice conditions, atmospheric or oceanic forcings, and extreme cyclones collectively shape sea ice dynamics in the TPD region, amplifying its seasonal changes relative to those in the central Arctic Ocean.