Phys.org: Earth science

Floods affect more people worldwide than any other natural hazard, causing enormous damage that is expected to increase in a warming world. However, people and decision-makers in vulnerable regions are often unwilling to prepare for exceptionally severe events because they are difficult to imagine and beyond their experience.

It carries more than 100 times as much water as all the world's rivers combined. It reaches from the ocean's surface to its bottom, and measures as much as 2,000 kilometers across. It connects the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and plays a key role in regulating global climate. Continuously swirling around the southernmost continent, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is by far the world's most powerful and consequential mover of water.

Has the Holocene epoch of the past 11,700 years been supplanted by the proposed Anthropocene epoch of today? Although it's broadly accepted that planetary systems have changed as a result of human influence, a panel of experts at the International Union of Geological Sciences answered a firm "no" when they recently voted down recognizing the start of the new epoch.

The pace of discovery in the oceans leaped forward thanks to teamwork between a deep-sea robot and a human occupied submarine leading to the discovery of five new hydrothermal vents in the eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean.

The Greater Caucasus mountain range stretches between the Black and Caspian Seas across parts of Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. These formidable peaks are the result of the subduction of the Arabian plate beneath the Eurasian plate.

Yale researchers are delving deep beneath the Himalayas to investigate dynamic geological processes near the boundary of Earth's core and mantle.

Conventional nuclear measurement techniques, such as Monte Carlo simulations, are known for their extensive computational demands and prolonged processing times, especially when applied to unconventional reservoirs characterized by complex lithologies. These traditional methods often fall short in efficiently interpreting geological formations, presenting significant challenges in environments where precision and speed are critical.

To assess a community's risk of extreme weather, policymakers rely first on global climate models that can be run decades, and even centuries, forward in time, but only at a coarse resolution. These models might be used to gauge, for instance, future climate conditions for the northeastern U.S. but not specifically for Boston.

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) emitted by vegetation are important precursors of ozone and secondary organic aerosols in the atmosphere, affecting air quality, clouds, and climate. However, BVOC emissions remain highly uncertain because they depend on a variety of factors, and the relative importance of different factors is still unclear.

A vicious cycle of warming temperatures and reduced snowpack in northern forests is more severe than climate models have shown and could lead to increased fire risk and permanent damage to ecosystems.

New Curtin University research has shown the warming climate will turn Australia's soil into a net emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), unless action is taken. "A warming climate will make Australian soil a net emitter of atmospheric CO2" was published in NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science.

When allergy season hits, many blame their reactions on the local flora in the spring. However, African Saharan-Sahelian dust plumes, large enough to register on weather radar, travel around the globe every summer, bringing their own form of air pollution.

Amidst the unique landscape of geothermal development in the Tohoku region, subtle seismic activities beneath the Earth's surface present a fascinating challenge for researchers. While earthquake warnings may intermittently alert us to seismic events, there exist numerous smaller quakes that have long intrigued resource engineers striving to detect and understand them.

Most satellites are placed in orbit on 5-to-10-year missions to accomplish many tasks. One of the many functions of the satellites carrying a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is to monitor water reservoirs around the world. A significant portion of the world's freshwater lies in these reservoirs.

As more and more nutrients from land and air enter the world's oceans, the dead zones without oxygen in the water will increase in size and intensity. That is the warning that Ph.D. student Zoë van Kemenade, an organic geochemist at NIOZ, draws from her analysis of drill cores from the ocean floor off the coast of California.

Sea ice at both the top and bottom of the planet continued its decline in 2024. In the waters around Antarctica, ice coverage shrank to near-historic lows for the third year in a row. The recurring loss hints at a long-term shift in conditions in the Southern Ocean, likely resulting from global climate change, according to scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Meanwhile, the 46-year trend of shrinking and thinning ice in the Arctic Ocean shows no sign of reversing.

It is important for water management to understand how drought spreads. In a new study, researchers from the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF show that in every third case, atmospheric drought is followed by low water levels. More rarely does drought have a negative impact on groundwater.

An international team of scientists co-led by Dr. Steffen Kutterolf from GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel has found evidence of a historical submarine eruption of the Kameni volcano on Santorini for the first time. In their paper, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, they describe newly discovered pumice and ash deposits that support historical records of an underwater eruption in 726 CE.

It is estimated that 30% of the world's terrestrial carbon stocks are found in the boreal forest, 60% of which is below ground. Organic soil horizons contain about one-third of the soil carbon. Therefore, the stability of boreal soils is critical to understanding global carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change and soil management. However, the regulating factors of humus carbon sequestration in the boreal forests globally are not entirely understood.

Coastal seas form a complex transition zone between the two largest CO2 sinks in the global carbon cycle: land and ocean. Ocean researchers have now succeeded for the first time in investigating the role of the coastal ocean in a seamless model representation.