Phys.org: Earth science

When fire broke out at the world's largest battery energy storage facility in January 2025, its thick smoke blanketed surrounding wetlands, farms and nearby communities on the central California coast.

Around 12,000 years ago, the last Ice Age ended, global temperatures rose and the early Holocene began, during which time human societies became increasingly settled. A new study published in Nature Geoscience shows the important role played by the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica in this transition.

Slow earthquakes have been discovered to exhibit anomalously slow, long-lasting and small slips, adjacent to regular earthquakes where we sometimes feel catastrophic vibration. However, no one knows the reason why slow earthquakes show such strange characteristics. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at The University of Osaka succeeded in experimentally reproducing the multiple features of slow earthquakes in the lab and suggested the grain-scale origin of them based on their direct observations.

The United Nations' global climate summit has finished for another year. Some progress was made in Brazil on climate finance and adaptation. But efforts to end reliance on fossil fuels were stymied by—you guessed it—fossil fuel power.

A new study published in Science Advances overturns a long-standing paradigm in climate science that stronger Northern Hemisphere summer insolation produces stronger tropical rainfall. Instead, a precisely dated 129,000-year rainfall reconstruction from a Cuban cave shows that the Caribbean often did the opposite, drying during intervals of intensified summer insolation.

Researchers from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Riverside, have investigated how the loss of forest soil gaseous nitrogen (NO, N2O, and N2) is affected by climate warming, highlighting the critical role of these gases in regulating forest nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning.

There are fewer ice nuclei in the air above the large ice surfaces of Antarctica than anywhere else in the world. This is the conclusion reached by an international research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) based on filter measurements of cloud particles at three locations in Antarctica. These are the first of their kind on the continent. The data fills a knowledge gap and could explain the large proportion of supercooled liquid water in the clouds of the southern polar region.

Successive major droughts, each lasting longer than 85 years, were likely a key factor in the eventual fall of the Indus Valley Civilization, according to a paper published in Communications Earth & Environment. The findings may help explain why this major ancient civilization—a contemporary of ancient Egypt located around the modern India-Pakistan border—slowly declined, and highlights how environmental factors could shape ancient societies.

A satellite deployed to measure ocean surface heights was up to the challenge when a massive earthquake off the Kamchatka Peninsula triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami in late July.

Shallow seas serve as critical transition zones connecting land and the deep ocean, supplying essential resources for navigation, fisheries, energy exploration, and island reef development. Accurate bathymetric data form the foundation for marine engineering, channel safety, resource assessment, and ecological restoration. However, nearly 50% of global shallow-water areas still lack reliable depth information, creating a major barrier to coastal management and sustainable ocean development.

An international research team has shown that avalanches are crucial to the survival of many glaciers worldwide. The study aims to contribute to better predictions of water resources and natural hazards in the context of global warming.

It's safe to say Rhode Islanders have a symbiotic relationship with Narragansett Bay.

Canada has a marine coastline twice as long as any other country and shares four Great Lakes with the United States. A new report warns that without coordinated planning, coastal communities face increasing flooding and erosion as climate change accelerates.

The next global volcanic disaster is more likely to come from volcanoes that appear dormant and are barely monitored than from the likes of famous volcanoes such as Etna in Sicily or Yellowstone in the US.

The Qinling-Bashan Mountains (QBMs) serve as an important boundary between southern and northern China and are dubbed China's Central Water Tower (CCWT). However, the spatiotemporal structures and dynamics of the summer hydroclimate, as well as the water vapor sources and mechanisms in this CCWT during the peak and most concentrated precipitation period, which is crucial for forest growth, crop yield, and water management, remain unclear.

High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide intensify climate change, but high carbon dioxide levels can also stimulate plant growth. Plant growth removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, partially mitigating the effects of climate change. However, plants only grow faster in the presence of high levels of carbon dioxide if they can also acquire enough nitrogen from the atmosphere to do so.

Up to 30% of life, by weight, is underground. Seismic activity may renew the energy supply for subterranean ecosystems. Published in PNAS Nexus, Eric Boyd and colleagues chronicled the ecological changes in subsurface microbial communities that took place after a swarm of small earthquakes rattled the Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field in 2021.

The Hayli Gubbi volcano in northeast Ethiopia, believed to have been dormant for up to 12,000 years, erupted on 23 November 2025, sending a massive plume of ash and sulfur dioxide high into the atmosphere.

Earth's ocean, the planet's life-support system, is experiencing rapid and widespread transformations that extend far below its surface. A promising international study published in Nature Climate Change reveals that vast regions of the global ocean are experiencing compound state change, with simultaneously warming, becoming saltier or fresher, losing oxygen, and acidifying—clear indicators of climate change pushing marine environments into uncharted territory.

Mountains worldwide are experiencing climate change more intensely than lowland areas, with potentially devastating consequences for billions of people who live in and/or depend on these regions, according to a major global review.