Earth is clingy when it comes to copper. Nature conspires at scales both large and small — from the realms of tectonic plates down to molecular bonds — to keep most of Earth’s copper buried dozens of miles below ground. A new study gives new insight into the way continents form and could help locate new sources of copper.

As ESA’s Envisat satellite continues to observe the rapid retreat of one of Antarctica’s ice shelves due to climate warming. One of the satellite’s first observations following its launch on 1 March 2002 was of break-up of a main section of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica – when 3200 sq km of ice disintegrated within a few days due to mechanical instabilities of the ice masses triggered by climate warming.

Many scientists have long suspected that rising levels of carbon dioxide and the global warming that ended the last Ice Age were somehow linked, but establishing a clear cause-and-effect relationship between CO₂ and global warming from the geologic record has remained difficult. A new study identifies this relationship and provides compelling evidence that rising CO₂ caused much of the global warming.