Phys.org: Earth science

On 30 July, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula triggered a tsunami that spread across the Pacific Ocean.

A team of scientists led by Rutgers researchers has uncovered evidence that modern sea level rise is happening faster than at any time in the past 4,000 years, with China's coastal cities especially at risk.

The trunks and branches of trees in Australia's tropical rainforests—also known as woody biomass—have become a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, according to a new international study.

A team of researchers, led by Cambridge University, has now formulated a method to assess whether carbon removal portfolios can help limit global warming over centuries. The approach also distinguishes between buying credits to offset risk versus claiming net-negative emissions.

A new study led by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience (CCCR) and East Carolina University (ECU) has found that mangroves significantly reduced storm surges and property damages during Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022.

Earthquakes often bring to mind images of destruction, of the Earth breaking open and altering landscapes. But after an earthquake, the area around it undergoes a period of post-seismic deformation, where areas that didn't break experience new stress as a result of the sudden change in the surroundings. Once it has adjusted to this new stress, it reaches a state of recovery.

A new study has uncovered how tiny differences in boron atoms can help scientists better predict the long-term behavior of glass used to store hazardous waste. The findings, published in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes, could improve forecasts of how radioactive materials are released from storage over thousands of years.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that is more than 25 times as potent as CO2 in warming the Earth. Reducing methane emissions is necessary to reduce the impact of global warming.

Around the world, we are already witnessing the detrimental effects of climate change, which we know will only become more severe. Extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, tropical cyclones, and heat waves are projected to intensify, and this will negatively impact both human society and natural ecosystems.

Lightning-induced wildfires are severe natural disasters. However, because of the regionality and random nature of lightning, there is still an incomplete understanding within the scientific community regarding the characteristics of lightning that cause fires.

A team led by Prof. Liu Xueyan from the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new plant-soil nitrogen isotope process model that quantifies the fractional contribution of three nitrogen forms (nitrate, ammonium, and dissolved organic nitrogen) to the total nitrogen in global terrestrial plants.

The lyrics of traditional Okinawan songs were found to record past climate and geological history of the Ryukyu Islands (21st-century Okinawa Prefecture, Japan), according to a new study by a University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Earth scientist and fellow Ryukyuan music practitioners. Their study was published today in Geoscience Communication and was selected as an Editor's Choice article by the journal's publisher.

Groundwater commonly contains methane, but the amount of this important greenhouse gas that can escape to surface waters or the atmosphere is highly uncertain. A team from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and University of Jena has shown that microbes in groundwater significantly reduce methane emissions, as revealed in a study published in PNAS.

Throughout most of Earth's geological history, its paleoclimate has remained hospitable to life—largely thanks to continental silicate weathering, which acts as a long-term planetary thermostat.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides scientists with a powerful new tool for monitoring and predicting tectonic activity deep beneath the seafloor at mid-ocean ridges—vast underwater mountain chains that form where Earth's tectonic plates diverge.

Greenland is being twisted, compressed, and stretched. This happens due to plate tectonics and movements in the bedrock, caused by the large ice sheets on top melting and reducing pressure on the subsurface.

Earth's Ediacaran Period, roughly 630 to 540 million years ago, has always been something of a magnetic minefield for scientists.

For billions of years, Earth's continents have remained remarkably stable, forming the foundation for mountains, ecosystems and civilizations. But the secret to their stability has mystified scientists for more than a century. Now, a new study by researchers at Penn State and Columbia University provides the clearest evidence yet for how the landforms became and remained so stable—and the key ingredient is heat.

Deep inside caves, water dripping from the ceiling creates one of nature's most iconic formations: stalagmites. These pillars of calcite, ranging from centimeters to many meters in height, rise from the cave floor as drip after drip of mineral-rich water deposits a tiny layer of stone.

Accurately modeling gross primary productivity (GPP) and evapotranspiration (ET) in terrestrial ecosystems is essential for understanding and predicting the global carbon and water cycles. However, current models face considerable uncertainties and limitations when estimating these two core components.