Phys.org: Earth science

Thick smoke from massive wildfires has been spreading in North America and Europe once again in 2026. The health impacts of breathing this particle-filled air are becoming well known, but wildfires' influence on the weather is less widely recognized.

A brewing "super" El Nino cycle is poised to unleash heat waves, floods and drought worldwide, with the effects amplified by long-term human-caused climate change.

A team of Brazilian researchers discovered the first direct evidence that goethite—the mineral responsible for the brown color of soils—can withstand extreme pressures and temperatures all the way to the planet's interior inside a diamond just 3 millimeters (0.1 inch) long, within a microscopic impurity. Goethite forms in soil and on the ocean floor from iron-rich minerals in the presence of water. It incorporates some of these water molecules into its mineral structure. The study suggests that goethite may transport and release water into a region known as the lower mantle.

Facing wind and cold, with only half as much oxygen to breathe as in the valley, a German-Turkish research team surveyed the glacier on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey for the first time in July, at more than 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) above sea level. For two weeks, the team explored the ice field, which until then had been a blank page for researchers. Their goal was to find out whether the ice on Turkey's highest mountain preserves a unique archive of climate and cultural history.

An international team of volcanologists working on Carlingford Mountain has found that liquid "magma chambers" do not always exist beneath volcanoes. The team instead demonstrated that magma "plumbing systems" beneath Earth's surface can fluctuate between solid- and liquid-dominated states, providing an improved view of how active volcanoes evolve through time.

The rapid intensification of a hurricane ranks among the most dangerous weather events on Earth. Storms such as Hurricane Michael, which crashed ashore in the Florida Panhandle with winds of 160 mph (about 257 km/h), and Hurricane Otis, the costliest hurricane to strike Mexico's Pacific coast, caught communities unawares when they intensified at a rate that computer models failed to anticipate.

Recently, a government minister in the Northern Territory, pitching a plan to make Darwin "the data center capital of the globe," suggested it might be a good idea to pump out groundwater to keep Earth's spin steady. If we don't, she said, we might risk "flipping the poles again."

Permafrost in the Arctic stores large quantities of organic carbon. When frozen ground thaws or coastal sections erode, this carbon can enter the sea, where microorganisms can break it down and convert it into climate-damaging greenhouse gases. The extent to which this carbon actually enters the atmosphere, however, and how much remains in the ocean have hardly been quantified to date.

Two of the world's most fire-prone regions have followed strikingly different wildfire trajectories despite both experiencing a warming climate. Burned forest area has surged across the U.S. Southwest, while eastern Australia has not seen the same increase.

Coastal cities are at increasing risk of compound flooding events, such as when heavy rainfall and storm surges occur simultaneously during hurricanes. However, the processes that contribute to urban compound flooding aren't well understood at smaller scales.

Summer days featuring conditions that promote wildfire ignition, intensity and spread have more than doubled across large parts of the Iberian Peninsula, France, Italy and Greece since 1981, according to a study in Scientific Reports. The findings suggest that hotter, drier weather is increasing wildfire risk across Southern Europe, despite fewer fires occurring in the region since the 1980s.

When catastrophic wildfires capture global headlines, such as the unprecedented blazes sweeping through southern Europe this summer or the devastating 2019–20 "Black Summer" in Australia, they are almost always preceded by severe drought. Dry vegetation and parched landscapes are necessary ingredients for infernos.

The ocean absorbs roughly a quarter of humanity's carbon dioxide emissions each year. Understanding how that happens, and how it might change, is essential for predicting our climate's future. To do that, scientists need models that simulate not just the ocean's physical processes, such as currents and temperature, but the full web of biological and chemical processes that move carbon through the water column.

A 113-million-year-old marine murder mystery may finally be solved. Using chemical clues locked inside microscopic fossils, Northwestern University scientists found evidence that ocean acidification drove one of the largest extinction events in the history of planktic foraminifera—tiny shell-building organisms that help regulate Earth's carbon cycle.

Sea-surface salinity, the concentration of dissolved salts in the upper layer of the ocean, is much more than a measure of how salty the sea is. It responds rapidly to changes in rainfall, evaporation, river discharge and, specifically in polar regions, the melting and formation of sea ice. Salinity is both an important driver of ocean circulation and a tracer of the movement of water masses and surface currents.

Before rain falls, the moisture that forms it may have traveled anywhere from just a few kilometers to hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. It usually begins as water that evaporated from oceans, lakes, forests or fields. According to a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, rain in parts of the United States is increasingly arriving from farther away.

For around 12,000 years, the Earth has been in the Holocene epoch, a warmer period following a glacial period. During this epoch, however, there have been around 22 abrupt cold phases, each lasting up to several centuries and leading to the expansion of glaciers.

A new framework to cool urban areas which integrates AI-driven technical solutions with cooling schemes that are acceptable and doable for the host community, has been proposed by QUT Urban AI Hub researchers.

Assessing how climate change will affect different regions usually requires running a complex chain of models. While this approach provides valuable insights, it is expensive and can cover only a limited set of scenarios and model runs. Together with partners, IIASA researchers have developed a faster alternative that uses available projections from Earth system or climate impact models to generate new regional climate and impact projections while capturing the uncertainty essential for understanding climate risk.

In August 2023, the German research vessel METEOR set sail on Expedition M192 to the Greek island of Milos with Dr. Solveig Bühring as chief scientist. The mission was to locate and investigate previously unknown hydrothermal systems. Now, three years later, a new study highlights the surprising discoveries resulting from this expedition. At a newly discovered hydrothermal system at intermediate water depths of 100 to 250 meters (328 to 820 feet), researchers demonstrated how different intensities of hydrothermal fluid flow shape microbial communities and control mineral formation on the ocean floor.