Pub Date : 2025-11-24DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01839-5
Rosalind M. Coggon, Elliot J. Carter, Lewis J. C. Grant, Aled D. Evans, Christopher M. Lowery, Damon A. H. Teagle, Pamela D. Kempton, Matthew J. Cooper, Claire M. Routledge, Elmar Albers, Justin Estep, Gail L. Christeson, Michelle Harris, Thomas M. Belgrano, Jason B. Sylvan, Julia S. Reece, Emily R. Estes, Trevor Williams, on behalf of The South Atlantic Transect IODP Expedition 390 & 393 Scientists
Calcium carbonate precipitation in ageing ocean crust sequesters carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater through seafloor weathering reactions, influencing atmospheric CO2 concentrations on million-year timescales. However, this crustal carbon sink, and the extent it balances CO2 degassing during crustal formation at mid-ocean ridges, remain poorly quantified due to limited sampling of the vast ridge flanks where CO2 uptake continues for millions of years. Here we quantify the carbon sink hosted within talus breccias that accumulated through mass wasting 61 million years ago during rift faulting at the slow spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge, cored during International Ocean Discovery Program South Atlantic Transect Expedition 390. After 40 million years of carbonate cementation, these breccias contain ~7.5 wt% seawater-derived CO2, 2 to 40 times more than previously cored upper crust. Our estimates of talus breccia abundance based on fault geometries indicate that talus formed at slow-spreading ridges can accommodate a CO2 sink equivalent to a large proportion of the CO2 released during accretion of the underlying crust. The proportion of plate divergence accommodated by faulting, and hence talus abundance, increases nonlinearly with decreasing spreading rate. Consequently, past variations in spreading rate may have impacted the balance between ocean crust CO2 release and uptake in Earth’s carbon cycle. Mass-wasting deposits that accumulated against mid-ocean ridge faults have high porosity in which calcium carbonate precipitated, storing seawater carbon dioxide, as revealed by cores of a 61-million-year-old seafloor talus deposit.
{"title":"A geological carbon cycle sink hosted by ocean crust talus breccias","authors":"Rosalind M. Coggon, Elliot J. Carter, Lewis J. C. Grant, Aled D. Evans, Christopher M. Lowery, Damon A. H. Teagle, Pamela D. Kempton, Matthew J. Cooper, Claire M. Routledge, Elmar Albers, Justin Estep, Gail L. Christeson, Michelle Harris, Thomas M. Belgrano, Jason B. Sylvan, Julia S. Reece, Emily R. Estes, Trevor Williams, on behalf of The South Atlantic Transect IODP Expedition 390 & 393 Scientists","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01839-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01839-5","url":null,"abstract":"Calcium carbonate precipitation in ageing ocean crust sequesters carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater through seafloor weathering reactions, influencing atmospheric CO2 concentrations on million-year timescales. However, this crustal carbon sink, and the extent it balances CO2 degassing during crustal formation at mid-ocean ridges, remain poorly quantified due to limited sampling of the vast ridge flanks where CO2 uptake continues for millions of years. Here we quantify the carbon sink hosted within talus breccias that accumulated through mass wasting 61 million years ago during rift faulting at the slow spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge, cored during International Ocean Discovery Program South Atlantic Transect Expedition 390. After 40 million years of carbonate cementation, these breccias contain ~7.5 wt% seawater-derived CO2, 2 to 40 times more than previously cored upper crust. Our estimates of talus breccia abundance based on fault geometries indicate that talus formed at slow-spreading ridges can accommodate a CO2 sink equivalent to a large proportion of the CO2 released during accretion of the underlying crust. The proportion of plate divergence accommodated by faulting, and hence talus abundance, increases nonlinearly with decreasing spreading rate. Consequently, past variations in spreading rate may have impacted the balance between ocean crust CO2 release and uptake in Earth’s carbon cycle. Mass-wasting deposits that accumulated against mid-ocean ridge faults have high porosity in which calcium carbonate precipitated, storing seawater carbon dioxide, as revealed by cores of a 61-million-year-old seafloor talus deposit.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"18 12","pages":"1279-1286"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01839-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145699209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-24DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01880-4
Aliénor Lavergne
{"title":"Fingerprints of stratospheric particle transport and fallout","authors":"Aliénor Lavergne","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01880-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01880-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"19 1","pages":"5-5"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145583074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-21DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01856-4
Jinghao Qiu, Yao Zhang, Mengyang Cai, Trevor F. Keenan, Hongying Zhang, Pierre Gentine, Xiangzhong Luo, Mitra Cattry, Sha Zhou, Shilong Piao
Ecosystems are not only affected by current climate but are also shaped by antecedent climate through their influences on vegetation growth and environmental conditions. These lagged responses, known as memory effects, can either exacerbate or mitigate the impacts of climate extremes on ecosystem functions. However, the direction, strength and influential duration of memory effects on ecosystem productivity remain poorly understood. Here we implement an interpretable machine-learning framework based on eddy covariance data to model ecosystem gross primary productivity over the period 1995–2020 and further investigate the characteristics of memory effects on positive and negative extremes of ecosystem productivity. Our results show a large contribution from antecedent climate conditions (38.2%) to ecosystem productivity during extremes, with precipitation accounting for 42.2% of the memory effects, followed by temperature (22.1%) and vapour pressure deficit (20.8%). Extreme events conditioned by long-term climatic variations often cause higher productivity losses than short-term extremes, with semi-arid ecosystems exhibiting the largest productivity anomalies and prolonged memory effects. Our results highlight the role of memory effects in regulating carbon flux variations and provide an observation-constrained benchmark for these effects. Extreme events driven by long-term variations in precipitation, temperature and vapour pressure deficit often result in greater losses in ecosystem productivity than short-term extremes, according to an analysis of global eddy covariance flux data from 1995 to 2020.
{"title":"Large contribution of antecedent climate to ecosystem productivity anomalies during extreme events","authors":"Jinghao Qiu, Yao Zhang, Mengyang Cai, Trevor F. Keenan, Hongying Zhang, Pierre Gentine, Xiangzhong Luo, Mitra Cattry, Sha Zhou, Shilong Piao","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01856-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01856-4","url":null,"abstract":"Ecosystems are not only affected by current climate but are also shaped by antecedent climate through their influences on vegetation growth and environmental conditions. These lagged responses, known as memory effects, can either exacerbate or mitigate the impacts of climate extremes on ecosystem functions. However, the direction, strength and influential duration of memory effects on ecosystem productivity remain poorly understood. Here we implement an interpretable machine-learning framework based on eddy covariance data to model ecosystem gross primary productivity over the period 1995–2020 and further investigate the characteristics of memory effects on positive and negative extremes of ecosystem productivity. Our results show a large contribution from antecedent climate conditions (38.2%) to ecosystem productivity during extremes, with precipitation accounting for 42.2% of the memory effects, followed by temperature (22.1%) and vapour pressure deficit (20.8%). Extreme events conditioned by long-term climatic variations often cause higher productivity losses than short-term extremes, with semi-arid ecosystems exhibiting the largest productivity anomalies and prolonged memory effects. Our results highlight the role of memory effects in regulating carbon flux variations and provide an observation-constrained benchmark for these effects. Extreme events driven by long-term variations in precipitation, temperature and vapour pressure deficit often result in greater losses in ecosystem productivity than short-term extremes, according to an analysis of global eddy covariance flux data from 1995 to 2020.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"19 1","pages":"25-32"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145560287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-20DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01850-w
Nitrite, a key player in the ocean’s nitrogen cycle, accumulates in deoxygenated waters for reasons that remain unclear. Our chemostat and three-dimensional models showed that competition amongst aerobic (oxygen-dependent) and anaerobic (oxygen-independent) microbes, rather than a lack of nitrite consumers, contributes to nitrite’s accumulation in anoxic waters.
{"title":"Consumers of nitrite help nitrite accumulate in anoxic oceanic zones","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01850-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01850-w","url":null,"abstract":"Nitrite, a key player in the ocean’s nitrogen cycle, accumulates in deoxygenated waters for reasons that remain unclear. Our chemostat and three-dimensional models showed that competition amongst aerobic (oxygen-dependent) and anaerobic (oxygen-independent) microbes, rather than a lack of nitrite consumers, contributes to nitrite’s accumulation in anoxic waters.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"18 12","pages":"1198-1199"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145554309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-18DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01859-1
Ping Chang, Dan Fu, Xue Liu, Frederic S. Castruccio, Andreas F. Prein, Gokhan Danabasoglu, Xiaoqi Wang, Julio Bacmeister, Qiuying Zhang, Nan Rosenbloom, Teagan King, Susan C. Bates
Extreme precipitation events are driven by complex multiscale atmospheric dynamic interactions, fuelled by available moisture. They are expected to intensify with climate change, posing increasing risks to human communities and ecosystems. However, current low-resolution climate models struggle to accurately represent key extreme precipitation-generating phenomena, limiting our ability to generate robust and reliable future projections. Here we present an ensemble of climate simulations with a 10-to-25-km resolution and an improved representation of mesoscale convective systems to assess future changes in daily extreme precipitation and its drivers. Our high-resolution simulations more realistically capture the observed spatial distribution and intensity of daily extreme precipitation over the historical period than the 100-km resolution counterparts. In a future scenario with high carbon dioxide emissions, daily extreme precipitation over land could increase by about 41% by 2100, mainly as a result of increased mesoscale moisture convergence. The impact of this dynamical contribution to extreme precipitation is underestimated by a factor of three in the low-resolution model. These results highlight the crucial role of high-resolution climate modelling in constraining future extremes and informing more effective climate risk assessments and adaptation strategies. Extreme daily precipitation events over land could increase by about 41% by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario with an increase in mesoscale moisture convergence, according to an ensemble of climate simulations with a resolution of 10–25 km.
{"title":"Future extreme precipitation amplified by intensified mesoscale moisture convergence","authors":"Ping Chang, Dan Fu, Xue Liu, Frederic S. Castruccio, Andreas F. Prein, Gokhan Danabasoglu, Xiaoqi Wang, Julio Bacmeister, Qiuying Zhang, Nan Rosenbloom, Teagan King, Susan C. Bates","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01859-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01859-1","url":null,"abstract":"Extreme precipitation events are driven by complex multiscale atmospheric dynamic interactions, fuelled by available moisture. They are expected to intensify with climate change, posing increasing risks to human communities and ecosystems. However, current low-resolution climate models struggle to accurately represent key extreme precipitation-generating phenomena, limiting our ability to generate robust and reliable future projections. Here we present an ensemble of climate simulations with a 10-to-25-km resolution and an improved representation of mesoscale convective systems to assess future changes in daily extreme precipitation and its drivers. Our high-resolution simulations more realistically capture the observed spatial distribution and intensity of daily extreme precipitation over the historical period than the 100-km resolution counterparts. In a future scenario with high carbon dioxide emissions, daily extreme precipitation over land could increase by about 41% by 2100, mainly as a result of increased mesoscale moisture convergence. The impact of this dynamical contribution to extreme precipitation is underestimated by a factor of three in the low-resolution model. These results highlight the crucial role of high-resolution climate modelling in constraining future extremes and informing more effective climate risk assessments and adaptation strategies. Extreme daily precipitation events over land could increase by about 41% by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario with an increase in mesoscale moisture convergence, according to an ensemble of climate simulations with a resolution of 10–25 km.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"19 1","pages":"33-41"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145536233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-18DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01854-6
Geochemical heterogeneity in near-continent oceanic volcanism hints at overlooked mantle enrichment processes. Models and data from the Indian Ocean suggest that rift-related convective instabilities can disturb the ancient roots of continents. This process sweeps geochemically enriched domains into the oceanic asthenosphere over tens of millions of years, explaining the observed longevity of geochemical mantle anomalies.
{"title":"Continental rifting sweeps enriched mantle from the roots of continents into the oceanic mantle","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01854-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01854-6","url":null,"abstract":"Geochemical heterogeneity in near-continent oceanic volcanism hints at overlooked mantle enrichment processes. Models and data from the Indian Ocean suggest that rift-related convective instabilities can disturb the ancient roots of continents. This process sweeps geochemically enriched domains into the oceanic asthenosphere over tens of millions of years, explaining the observed longevity of geochemical mantle anomalies.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"18 12","pages":"1200-1201"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145536234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-18DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01831-z
Mattia Poinelli, Lia Siegelman, Yoshihiro Nakayama
Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers—located in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica—are responsible for more than one-third of the total ice loss from Antarctica. These glaciers are experiencing accelerated retreat due to a combination of complex air–sea-ice processes. The ice cavities—the ocean-filled spaces beneath glaciers where the ice becomes afloat in the form of ice shelves—are particularly vulnerable to warm water intrusions but remain severely understudied due to their remote location and the lack of numerical models capable of resolving small-scale ice–ocean processes. Here we show that ocean submesoscale features (1–10 km size) regularly form in the open ocean, propagate towards Thwaites Glacier, intrude its cavity and melt the ice from below. We use an ice–ocean numerical model at 200-m resolution and observations below the ice to reveal that submesoscale motions are ubiquitous year round in the Amundsen Sea Embayment. Results show that submesoscales account for one-fifth of the total submarine melt variance in the area and highlight a positive feedback loop between submesoscale motions and submarine melting. Following this loop, as future climate warming implies greater ocean-induced melting, these events will become increasingly frequent, with far-reaching implications for ice-shelf stability and global sea-level rise. Submesoscale ocean features deliver heat beneath Thwaites Ice Shelf and contribute to submarine melting, according to numerical modelling combined with available observations.
{"title":"Ocean submesoscales as drivers of submarine melting within Antarctic ice cavities","authors":"Mattia Poinelli, Lia Siegelman, Yoshihiro Nakayama","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01831-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01831-z","url":null,"abstract":"Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers—located in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica—are responsible for more than one-third of the total ice loss from Antarctica. These glaciers are experiencing accelerated retreat due to a combination of complex air–sea-ice processes. The ice cavities—the ocean-filled spaces beneath glaciers where the ice becomes afloat in the form of ice shelves—are particularly vulnerable to warm water intrusions but remain severely understudied due to their remote location and the lack of numerical models capable of resolving small-scale ice–ocean processes. Here we show that ocean submesoscale features (1–10 km size) regularly form in the open ocean, propagate towards Thwaites Glacier, intrude its cavity and melt the ice from below. We use an ice–ocean numerical model at 200-m resolution and observations below the ice to reveal that submesoscale motions are ubiquitous year round in the Amundsen Sea Embayment. Results show that submesoscales account for one-fifth of the total submarine melt variance in the area and highlight a positive feedback loop between submesoscale motions and submarine melting. Following this loop, as future climate warming implies greater ocean-induced melting, these events will become increasingly frequent, with far-reaching implications for ice-shelf stability and global sea-level rise. Submesoscale ocean features deliver heat beneath Thwaites Ice Shelf and contribute to submarine melting, according to numerical modelling combined with available observations.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"18 12","pages":"1209-1215"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145536232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-14DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01877-z
Naomi Ochwat, Ted Scambos, Robert S. Anderson, J. Paul Winberry, Adrian Luckman, Etienne Berthier, Maud Bernat, Yulia K. Antropova
{"title":"Author Correction: Record grounded glacier retreat caused by an ice plain calving process","authors":"Naomi Ochwat, Ted Scambos, Robert S. Anderson, J. Paul Winberry, Adrian Luckman, Etienne Berthier, Maud Bernat, Yulia K. Antropova","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01877-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01877-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"18 12","pages":"1319-1319"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01877-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145509166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-14DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01861-7
Bo Li, Sigurjón Jónsson, Cahli Suhendi, Jihong Liu, Duo Li, Arthur Delorme, Yann Klinger, Paul Martin Mai
Seismic gaps are fault sections that have not hosted a large earthquake for a long time compared to neighbouring segments, making them likely sites for future large events. The 2025 Mw 7.7 Mandalay (Myanmar) earthquake, on the central section of the Sagaing Fault, ruptured through a known seismic gap and ~160 km beyond it, resulting in an exceptionally long rupture of ~460 km. Here we investigate the rupture process of this event and the factors that enabled it to breach the seismic gap by integrating satellite synthetic aperture radar observations, seismic waveform back-projection, Bayesian finite-fault inversion and dynamic rupture simulations. We identify a two-stage earthquake rupture comprising initial bilateral subshear propagation for ~20 s followed by unilateral supershear rupture for ~70 s. Simulation-based sensitivity tests suggest that the seismic gap boundary was not a strong mechanical barrier in terms of frictional strength, and that nucleation of the earthquake far from the gap boundary, rather than its supershear speed, allowed the rupture to outgrow the gap and propagate far beyond it. Hence, we conclude that the dimension of seismic gaps may not reflect the magnitude of future earthquakes. Instead, ruptures may cascade through multiple fault sections to generate larger and potentially more damaging events. The 2025 Mw 7.7 Mandalay earthquake in Myanmar breached and propagated beyond a long-quiescent segment owing to a mechanically weak barrier at the segment boundary and distant nucleation, according to seismic, geodetic and numerical analyses.
{"title":"Seismic gap breached by the 2025 Mw 7.7 Mandalay (Myanmar) earthquake","authors":"Bo Li, Sigurjón Jónsson, Cahli Suhendi, Jihong Liu, Duo Li, Arthur Delorme, Yann Klinger, Paul Martin Mai","doi":"10.1038/s41561-025-01861-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41561-025-01861-7","url":null,"abstract":"Seismic gaps are fault sections that have not hosted a large earthquake for a long time compared to neighbouring segments, making them likely sites for future large events. The 2025 Mw 7.7 Mandalay (Myanmar) earthquake, on the central section of the Sagaing Fault, ruptured through a known seismic gap and ~160 km beyond it, resulting in an exceptionally long rupture of ~460 km. Here we investigate the rupture process of this event and the factors that enabled it to breach the seismic gap by integrating satellite synthetic aperture radar observations, seismic waveform back-projection, Bayesian finite-fault inversion and dynamic rupture simulations. We identify a two-stage earthquake rupture comprising initial bilateral subshear propagation for ~20 s followed by unilateral supershear rupture for ~70 s. Simulation-based sensitivity tests suggest that the seismic gap boundary was not a strong mechanical barrier in terms of frictional strength, and that nucleation of the earthquake far from the gap boundary, rather than its supershear speed, allowed the rupture to outgrow the gap and propagate far beyond it. Hence, we conclude that the dimension of seismic gaps may not reflect the magnitude of future earthquakes. Instead, ruptures may cascade through multiple fault sections to generate larger and potentially more damaging events. The 2025 Mw 7.7 Mandalay earthquake in Myanmar breached and propagated beyond a long-quiescent segment owing to a mechanically weak barrier at the segment boundary and distant nucleation, according to seismic, geodetic and numerical analyses.","PeriodicalId":19053,"journal":{"name":"Nature Geoscience","volume":"18 12","pages":"1287-1295"},"PeriodicalIF":16.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01861-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145508806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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