Phys.org: Earth science

Coastal transgressive dunefields are on the march in South Australia—retreating inland from an angry ocean at an alarming rate. Yet while this occurs in plain sight, communities are largely oblivious to long-term coastal changes, and Flinders University's Professor Patrick Hesp, strategic professor of coastal studies at Flinders University's College of Science and Engineering, is concerned this is all happening in a geological blink of the eye.

You may think of dust as an annoyance to be vacuumed and disposed of, but actually, on a grander scale, it is far more important than most people realize. Globally, dust plays a critical role in regulating our climate, radiation balance, nutrient cycles, soil formation, air quality and even human health.

Australia could soon see megadroughts that last for more than 20 years, according to new modeling from The Australian National University (ANU) and the ARC Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

A new method of measuring sediment thickness across Australia's interior offers a cost-effective and straightforward solution for estimating seismic hazard and resource potential while reducing carbon footprint, according to the largest study of its kind from The Australian National University (ANU), published in the Geophysical Journal International.

Hail is a semi-frequent visitor to winter, and occasionally summer, seasons across the globe and tends to pass by in a short but sharp downpour that can often be overlooked. However, sometimes these meteorological phenomena are hard to ignore. This was the case on 30 August 2022, when Gerona, north-eastern Spain, experienced a severe event in which individual hailstones reached a massive 12cm—the largest ever documented in the country. This led to serious damage to buildings, cars and agricultural areas, as well as 67 injuries and one fatality.

Every year, the South Asian monsoon season brings heavy rain to over a billion people in the Indian subcontinent between June and September. The rain falls in oscillations: Some weeks see 1 to 4 inches of water, while other weeks are mostly dry. Predicting when these dry and wet periods will occur is critical for agricultural and urban planning, enabling farmers to know when to harvest crops and helping city officials prepare for flooding. However, while weather predictions are mostly accurate within one or two days, precisely predicting the weather a week or month out is very difficult.

Deadly heat in the Southwest. Hot-tub temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Sweltering conditions in Europe, Asia and South America.

In a study published in Global Change Biology, scientists from the Institute of Earth Environment and the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have shed light on understanding the effects of nitrogen addition on soil organic carbon storage across soil profiles. Their findings may help address the recent controversial issues of managing soil as a carbon sink under elevated nitrogen deposition.

Gross Primary Production (GPP), the process through which plants convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into glucose and oxygen, is the Earth's largest carbon flux. Accurate quantification of GPP is crucial for understanding carbon budgets and their implications on climate change and land management policies. However, traditional methods for estimating global GPP are challenged by the complexity of integrating biophysical and biochemical processes at various scales.

The core-mantle boundary (CMB) is crucial for the Earth's magnetic field and rotation. It is known that this boundary harbors complex structures, including ultralow velocity zones (ULVZs), characterized by significantly slowed seismic wave velocities. The origin and structure of these zones are key to unraveling and understanding some secrets in related fields, especially the Earth's science.

El Niño, a climate pattern where warm waters in the eastern Pacific fuel hotter weather, is finally beginning to wane after bringing a long stretch of record heat and heavy precipitation across the world since last summer.

Tropical cyclones, also known as hurricanes and typhoons, are meteorological phenomena that occur over tropical and subtropical oceans experiencing low atmospheric pressure, where water vapor from the warm oceans condenses to produce spiraling cloud formations hundreds of meters wide. The resulting heavy rain and wind speeds exceeding 74 miles per hour can bring devastation to communities in their path when these tropical storms make landfall.

A new analysis based on simple equations has reduced uncertainty about how clouds will affect future climate change.

In the effort to combat the catastrophic impacts of global warming, we must accelerate carbon emissions reduction efforts and rapidly scale strategies to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and the oceans. The technologies for reducing our carbon emissions are mature; those for removing carbon from the environment are not, and need robust support from governments and the private sector.

As society grapples with the intensifying consequences of climate change, decision-makers are increasingly looking to carbon dioxide removal as a necessary complement to emission reductions. One of the strategies that has received the most attention is the idea of fertilizing parts of the ocean with iron to stimulate phytoplankton growth.

A recent study published in the journal Science Bulletin was led by Dr. Shugui Hou (Nanjing University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and Dr. Hongxi Pang (Nanjing University). Shugui Hou drilled an ice core with a length of 127.8 m from the Zangser Kangri (ZK) ice cap in the central Tibetan Plateau (TP) in April 2009. The ice core was not well dated until the development of 14C dating technique at the microgram level in glacier ice in the past decade.

In Antarctica, heavy glaciers are always on the move. Conveyor belts of ice, known as ice streams, are the corridors of faster flow that carry most of the vast glaciers' ice and sediment debris out toward the ocean.

A new study, led by Carbon Mapper scientists alongside researchers from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Scientific Aviation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, provides the largest comprehensive assessment of hundreds of U.S. landfills using direct observations through airborne surveys.

An international subcommittee of geologists recently voted to reject a proposal to make the Anthropocene an official new geological epoch, defined by humanity's enormous impact on the planet. Assuming some protests do not overturn the ruling, it will now take another decade for the decision to be reviewed.

In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely oblivious to the changes.