Phys.org: Earth science

When you think of Antarctica, you might imagine a stark, otherworldly continent of endless, white ice, with the only sound being the wind punctuated by the crack of a glacier calving in the distance.

The Euphrates River is the longest river in Western Asia and runs through the eastern side of the Fertile Crescent. Flowing over 1,700 miles from Turkey through Syria and Iraq, the river played a crucial role in sustaining the region known as the "Cradle of Civilization." Yet, researchers aren't sure about the river's origins or how tectonic activity might have shaped its evolution. A new study, published in Nature Geoscience, suggests that two ancient rivers, diverted by shifting plate tectonics, merged to form this vital river.

Scientists have identified the two biggest reasons that once-pristine rivers across the Arctic are growing cloudy with toxic orange iron particles that smother insects and suffocate fish.

Researchers have uncovered a key mechanism behind Japan's extreme winter weather, revealing how distant climate patterns interact to intensify cold waves and heavy snowfall.

A collaborative study with the University of Cologne, recently published in Nature Communications, provides compelling evidence that the extreme aridity in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert began over 40 million years ago—significantly earlier than previously assumed. The findings require a reconsideration of how deserts form and offer a new perspective on the long-term evolution of Earth's most extreme environments. Researchers from SUERC Centre for the Isotope Sciences are co-authors of a study which casts new light on the history of Earth's driest region, the Atacama Desert in Chile.

A fault line running alongside the Hunua Ranges in South Auckland is now identified as active and has the potential to cause a major earthquake with serious consequences, University of Auckland researchers say.

Mid-latitude Asian drylands, stretching from Central Asia to northern China, are among the largest dryland systems in the world. Home to extensive agricultural activities and fragile ecosystems, the region is highly vulnerable to climate change and water scarcity.

Researchers at iC3 have found a way to improve records of past high latitude ocean change using tiny plankton shells called foraminifera. By growing these foraminifera under controlled cold-water conditions, the team has extended a key temperature tool into the range most relevant for subpolar and polar oceans.

The Indian monsoon has shifted over the past quarter century. Northwest India now receives substantially more rain than it once did, while a lack of rain sends the Indo-Gangetic Plain toward drought.

New research from a team of scientists led by Cornell is transforming how researchers understand one of the atmosphere's most abundant and least understood constituents: mineral dust.

After another spell of wet weather along Australia's east coast, with storms, heavy rain and flash flooding across Sydney and parts of New South Wales, it is natural to ask whether our cities are shaping the rainfall that descends upon them.

Cities around the world are planting more trees to cope with rising urban heat. But our research shows trees alone are often not enough. In some cases, the wrong kind of greening can even make streets feel less comfortable on a hot day.

Across much of the northern hemisphere, extreme weather events like heat waves and heavy precipitation have increased in frequency and severity over the last several decades. A new study from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) shows that one proposed partial explanation, so-called "quasiresonant amplification of quasistationary Rossby waves," may not be capable of explaining any of this increase in severe weather events.

New research led by Monash University sheds a new perspective on forecasts of future rainfall in Victoria, showing that recent dry conditions may not fully reflect long-term climate change signals.

One of the most devastating extinctions in Earth's history is best known for what didn't die—dinosaurs. But the end-Triassic extinction 201 million years ago wiped out roughly 60% of Earth's species, and scientists are still piecing together how it unfolded.

A new analysis of global wildfire activity in 2025 reveals the world experienced some of the most destructive and deadly fire events in recent history, despite the second lowest area burned since 2002. It highlights a continued trend toward fires becoming increasingly extreme, costly, and disastrous—both economically and in lives lost.

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, a research team led by Prof. Liu Lingli from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS) has identified a mean annual precipitation (MAP) threshold of approximately 700 mm, beyond which the dominant controls on ecosystem nitrogen retention shift.

Climate change is exacerbating rainfall, flooding and sea-level rises in coastal and low-lying areas. During the past few years, disastrous floods have swept through Lismore in New South Wales, Northern Queensland, and the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Large waves have pounded beaches, causing erosion in Byron Bay and Wamberal Beach in NSW and Lancelin, Western Australia.

Some 350,000 years ago, the center of New Zealand's North Island appeared much different than the mountainous, scrub-covered landscape it is today. Amid a glacial period, temperatures were colder and conditions harsher. Vast beech and podocarp forests blanketed the region, providing habitat for abundant native birdlife.

For the past several years, Penn State geoscientist Sarah Ivory and her students have been among a team of scientists scaling the East African Rwenzori Mountains, collecting sediment core samples from lakes formed at the end of the last ice age as glaciers began receding in the region some 12,000 years ago.