Phys.org: Earth science

By 2050, offshore wind power capacity in the North Sea is set to increase more than tenfold. Researchers at the Helmholtz Center Hereon have analyzed the long-term overall impact of this large number of wind farms on the hydrodynamics of the North Sea for the first time. They found that the current pattern could change on a large scale. The study highlights approaches for minimizing potential risks to the environment at an early stage. The work was recently published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

It's one of the latest technologies for sequestering carbon: crush silicate rocks, add to crop soil, and let the rock dust naturally react with carbon dioxide. The reactions bind carbon into stable mineral forms that can persist for millennia, while also enriching the soil with nutrients, boosting crop yields and increasing farmer profits.

Deforestation in the Amazon is causing significant regional changes in climate compared to areas with forest cover above 80%. The loss of vegetation leads to an increase in surface temperature, a decrease in evapotranspiration, and a reduction in precipitation during the dry season and in the number of rainy days.

Gravity feels reliable—stable and consistent enough to count on. But reality is far stranger than our intuition. In truth, the strength of gravity varies over Earth's surface. And it is weakest beneath the frozen continent of Antarctica after accounting for Earth's rotation.

Extreme rainfall is reshaping coastal waters along South Korea's shoreline, flushing nutrients from land into the sea and fueling the growth of algal blooms. A new multi-year study, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, tracked water quality in and around a major river estuary and shows how intense downpours can shift where and when these blooms appear, with consequences for marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

The Mediterranean Sea is rapidly changing under ongoing climate change. In the eastern basin, tropicalization is already well documented and driven by a combination of strong warming and the influx of tropical species through the Suez Canal. In contrast, the western Mediterranean has, until now, shown fewer such signals. However, a recent study demonstrates that the expansion of microscopic warm-water species provides a clear and early indication of tropicalization impacts on marine ecosystems.

The southern Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia is becoming less salty at an astonishing rate, largely due to climate change, new research shows.

A new study shows that during the last two deglaciations, i.e., the transition from an ice age to the warm interglacial periods, meltwater from the Antarctic ice sheet intensified stratification in the Southern Ocean. The results highlight the key role of the Antarctic ice sheet on ocean circulation and the regulation of the global climate. The study was led by François Fripiat, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and was conducted in collaboration with researchers from Princeton University and the Alfred Wegener Institute. It is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, with average temperatures increasing by about 4°C in the last four decades. A new study, led by the University of Exeter, shows peatlands have expanded since 1950, with some peatland edges moving by more than a meter a year. The work has been published in Global Change Biology.

A new collaborative study, led by University of Utah Professor of atmospheric sciences Kevin Perry, provides policymakers, agency leaders, and the public with the most comprehensive assessment to date of potential dust control options for the Great Salt Lake, as declining water levels continue to expose vast areas of lakebed to wind erosion.

Researchers from the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, have developed a high-resolution daily atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) dataset covering China from 2016 to 2020. The dataset offers new insights into the spatiotemporal variations of column-averaged dry-air CO2 mole fraction (XCO2). The work is published in the journal Scientific Data.

Minerals form the building blocks of almost everything on Earth. They are made up of crystals—regular, repeating atomic structures that fit together like a three-dimensional pattern. When minerals deform, their normally ordered crystal lattices develop linear imperfections known as dislocations. These are small breaks or shifts in the atomic arrangement that allow crystals to change shape under stress. Some deformed crystals contain large numbers of dislocations, while in others they are sparse and searching for them is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

While most of the world's glaciers are retreating as the climate warms, a small but significant population behaves very differently—and the consequences can be severe. A team of international scientists, led by the University of Portsmouth, has carried out a comprehensive global analysis of surging glaciers, examining the hazards they cause and how climate change is fundamentally altering when and where these dramatic events occur.

It is well documented that the Gulf Stream plays a pivotal role in the climate system through its transfer of heat, which ultimately supplies warmth to northern latitudes in the North Atlantic. What remains less well understood is how the Gulf Stream influences the climate system by transporting nutrients and carbon. These materials stimulate plankton growth, which in turn plays a vital role in naturally absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

There's been a seismic shift in science, with scientists developing new AI tools and applying AI to just about any question that can be asked. Researchers are now putting actual seismic waves to work, using data from the world's largest repository of earthquake data to develop "SeisModal," an AI foundation model designed to explore big questions about science. The effort, known as Steel Thread, involves researchers from five national laboratories operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

For obvious reasons, it would be useful to predict when an earthquake is going to occur. It has long been suspected that large quakes in the Himalayas follow a fairly predictable cycle, but nature, as it turns out, is not so accommodating. A new study published in the journal Science Advances shows that massive earthquakes are just as random as small ones. A team of researchers led by Zakaria Ghazoui-Schaus at the British Antarctic Survey reached this conclusion after analyzing sediments from Lake Rara in Western Nepal.

Geologists from St. Petersburg State University, as part of an international scientific team, have analyzed rock data from East Antarctica and determined that the magnetic anomaly in this region resulted from the convergence of continents and the birth of the supercontinent Rodinia approximately 1 billion years ago. The research is published in the journal Polar Science.

Current global climate models (GCMs) support with high confidence the view that rising greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic forcings account for nearly all observed global surface warming—slightly above 1 °C—since the pre-industrial period (1850–1900). This is the conclusion presented in the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) published in 2021.

Geographic information system (GIS) maps help researchers, policymakers, and community members see how environmental risks are spread throughout a given region. These types of interactive, layered maps can be used for storytelling, education, and environmental activism. When community members are involved in their use and creation, GIS maps can also be a tool for equity.

A new study reports that climate warming can increase soil carbon accumulation in boreal Sphagnum peatlands by boosting plant productivity, protecting iron, and inhibiting microbial decomposition. These responses contrast sharply with warming-enhanced soil carbon mineralization—the process by which carbon is released as CO2—in boreal forests and tundra. Together, these contrasting processes highlight the vital yet often overlooked role of Sphagnum peatlands in counteracting boreal carbon loss under future warming.