Paper Harvest Report

Date range: April 03, 2026

6 top-tier papers selected out of 61 total publications

Today’s Highlights

A compelling set of cryosphere and coastal papers headlines today’s harvest. A Nature Communications study of Icelandic jökulhlaups reveals that subglacial water flow during glacial lake outburst floods can alternate between channel and sheet flow regimes, with ponding along flow paths reshaping our understanding of these events. A companion piece examines how the shape, direction, and landfall location of atmospheric rivers modulate föhn-induced melting over Larsen C Ice Shelf. On the modeling side, a GRL study using CESM2 in a perfect-model framework finds that land initialization dominates subseasonal prediction skill beyond week four—suggesting substantial headroom for forecast improvements through better representation of land–atmosphere coupling.

Today’s Highlights
Top-Tier Journal Papers
Statistics
1. Papers by journal
Filtering Criteria

Top-Tier Journal Papers

Reefense: Living shoreline mosaics can achieve ecological and engineering outcomes with interdisciplinary design

Authors: Rebecca L. Morris, Jaden E. Akers, Sandra Casas, Justin Geldard, Alex Goad, Marco Ghisalberti et al.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2516197123

Matched topics: climate change, coastal

Living shorelines that comprise oyster reefs within a mosaic of multiple coastal habitats can be a resilient and adaptive coastal protection alternative to conventional engineered structures. The success of an oyster reef living shoreline depends on the evolution of a stable base substrate that provides initial short-term coastal protection, to the growth of a living oyster reef and associated habitats in the longer-term, which can enhance protection and provide other ecosystem services. Interdisciplinary global teams that include ecologists, biologists, engineers, techno-economists, and industry are leading the development and implementation of innovative reef-based coastal protection (“Reefense”) solutions that can be scaled to face the challenges of climate change.

Concurrent Variations in Air–Sea Heat Fluxes and Sea Ice Extensions Under Cold‐Air Outbreaks: The First Joint Buoy–Cruise Observational Results in the Bohai Sea

Authors: Yulin Lu, Xiangzhou Song, Jianxi Dong, Hongjun Su, Yunwei Yan, Xuhua Cheng et al.

Journal: Geophysical Research Letters · DOI: 10.1029/2025gl120535

Matched topics: seasonal, coastal

The air–sea interface near seasonal ice edges notably regulates the regional climate but remains poorly understood. We present the first coordinated buoy–cruise measurements in the Bohai Sea—the world’s lowest‐latitude seasonal ice zone—during the winter of 2024–2025. This season featured an initial stable ice period followed by three advance–retreat cycles triggered by cold‐air outbreaks. During the advance phases, strong northerly outbreaks created considerable air–sea contrasts and unstable stratification, leading to high mean and maximum sensible and latent heat fluxes. During the retreat phase, southwesterly winds originating from anticyclones transported warmer, more humid air over the region, which diminished the air–sea gradients and stabilized the boundary layer, thereby suppressing turbulent heat fluxes. These observations provide process‐level insights into mid‐latitude ice–ocean–atmosphere co‐variability and highlight priorities for improving predictions near the coastal ice edges.

Quantifying Sources of Subseasonal Prediction Skill in CESM2 Within a Perfect Modeling Framework

Authors: Judith Berner, Abigail Jaye, Jadwiga H. Richter, Anne A. Glanville

Journal: Geophysical Research Letters · DOI: 10.1029/2025gl120435

Matched topics: seasonal, earth system model

The success of numerical weather prediction depends on accurate atmospheric initialization, but at subseasonal lead times, land and ocean initial states become increasingly important. Predictability on these timescales arises from slowly evolving land surface conditions such as soil moisture and snowpack, convectively coupled waves such as the Madden–Julian Oscillation and from oceanic variability including the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. While operational systems provide skillful subseasonal‐to‐seasonal forecasts, it remains uncertain whether this skill can be extended or if it reflects the intrinsic predictability limit. Using the Community Earth System Model in a perfect modeling framework, we estimate the theoretical limit of subseasonal‐to‐seasonal predictability from initialization. We find that over land, land initialization is the dominant source of predictability beyond week four, while ocean initialization plays a secondary role. Although the perfect modeling framework has limitations, our results suggest substantial potential to advance prediction through improved land initialization and representation of land–atmosphere coupling.

Permafrost landsystems define regional variability in climate change effects on northern environments

Authors: Steven V. Kokelj, Stephen A. Wolfe, Niels Weiss, Duane Froese, Jennifer L. Baltzer, Trevor C. Lantz et al.

Journal: Nature Communications · DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-71216-2

Matched topics: climate change

Anticipating the environmental and societal consequences of climate-driven permafrost thaw requires knowledge of terrain and subsurface conditions, which prove challenging to obtain at spatial scales necessary for rigorous prediction and decision-making. Analysis of a systematic inventory of permafrost landforms across northwestern Canada demonstrates that landform assemblages co-develop with ecosystems, distinguishing fundamental permafrost properties across a continental-scale ecoclimatic gradient (10⁶ km²) and among finer-scale ecological regions (10³ to 10⁴ km²). This approach quantifies variation in geological and climatic legacies and delineates the diverse consequences of thaw. Here we show that permafrost landsystems, defined by characteristic landform assemblages, express spatial variation in soil, ground ice, geochemical, and carbon characteristics, enabling these intrinsic conditions to be inferred at regional scales through integrated mapping and analyses. Permafrost landsystems also provide a conceptual framework to inform predictions of thaw-driven change, and to formulate, share, and apply permafrost knowledge across scales, disciplines, and ways of knowing.

Föhn-induced melting over Larsen C modulated by atmospheric river shape, direction and landfall location

Authors: Xun Zou, Penny M. Rowe, Irina V. Gorodetskaya, Andrew Orr, David H. Bromwich, Dan Lubin et al.

Journal: Nature Communications · DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-71359-2

Matched topics: river, climate change, coastal

Recent decades have seen record-high temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) due to combined atmospheric rivers (ARs) and föhn warming. While ARs frequently enhance föhn, not all events cause surface warming over the entire Larsen C Ice Shelf (LCIS). Using high-resolution Polar WRF simulations, we examine the relationship between ARs and föhn over the AP during austral summers and identify four distinct AR shapes associated with föhn-induced surface warming over the LCIS: zonal-perpendicular, zonal-like, convex, and concave. Zonal-like ARs associated with coupled low-high-pressure systems and convex ARs linked to blocking highs produce strong föhn warming across the entire LCIS, primarily affecting its northern and southern sectors, respectively. In contrast, zonal-perpendicular and concave ARs generate moderate-to-weak warming, owing to either weaker AR intensity or AR curvature. Although downward shortwave radiation dominates surface warming, enhanced moisture suppresses its increase from föhn-induced cloud clearance while enhancing downward longwave radiation near mountain gaps. Sensible heat flux also contributes substantially along the mountain foothills. As ARs intensify under climate change, their interaction with föhn over the AP can critically influence the future stability of coastal ice shelves.

Subglacial water flow and ice dynamics during glacial lake outburst floods observed from space

Authors: Eyjólfur Magnússon, Vincent Drouin, Finnur Pálsson, Tómas Jóhannesson, Joaquín M. C. Belart, Jan Wuite et al.

Journal: Nature Communications · DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-70428-w

Matched topics: flood

Glacial lake outburst floods (jökulhlaups) are challenging to study because they often take place below hundreds of meters of ice, and the complex interplay between lifting of the glacier and melting of the flood path is not well understood. Here, we provide unique insights into the mechanics of jökulhlaups and how they affect three-dimensional glacier motion using satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and field observations, acquired before, during and after two recent jökulhlaups (in 2021 and 2022) from the subglacial lake Grímsvötn in Iceland. The results indicate that the same event may alternate between channel flow and sheet flow and that ponding of water along the subglacial flood path can play a major role in jökulhlaup dynamics. This has important implications for physical jökulhlaup modeling and for better understanding the role of subglacial hydraulics on glacier dynamics, required for improved predictions of the future evolution of glaciers and ice sheets.

Statistics

Metric	Count
Journals searched	11
Total papers fetched	61
Passed deterministic filter	9
After LLM relevance filtering	6
Rejected (not relevant)	3

Papers by journal

Journal	Papers
Nature Communications	3
Geophysical Research Letters	2
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences	1

Filtering Criteria

Topics: hydrology, hydrologic, hydrological, hydraulics, water resources, streamflow, runoff, river, reservoir, dam, flood, drought, irrigation, hydropower, watershed, catchment, precipitation, evapotranspiration, snowmelt, snowpack, groundwater, aquifer, soil moisture, land surface model, earth system model, climate change, remote sensing, satellite, machine learning, deep learning, neural network, LSTM, coastal, estuary, estuarine, sea level, ocean, marine heatwave, ocean biogeochemistry, paleoclimate, paleohydrology, Quaternary, Holocene, Pleistocene, fluvial, geomorphology, loess, luminescence, OSL, drainage network, river capture, terrace, glacier, seasonal, subseasonal, surface water, water cycle, water balance, MOSART, E3SM, ELM, CLM

Fields: Environmental Science, Geology, Geography, Engineering