Phys.org: Earth science

Government agencies, insurance companies and disaster planners rely on national flood risk models from the private sector that aren't reliable at smaller levels such as neighborhoods and individual properties, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

In July and August 2021, smoke from wildfires in northwestern Ontario and Manitoba affected air quality in Montreal, according to a study led by Patrick Hayes, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Université de Montréal, and published in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry.

Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America. But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall—and potentially more destruction—from landfalling storms, according to a study in Science Advances.

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) has found that the Southern Ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously thought.

Nitrogen fertilizers and nitrogen oxides from fossil fuels are known for their environmental damage: they pollute the air and drinking water, lead to over-fertilization of water and land ecosystems, reduce biodiversity and damage the ozone layer.

A new analysis of rocks thought to be at least 2.5 billion years old by researchers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History helps clarify the chemical history of Earth's mantle—the geologic layer beneath the planet's crust.

The Southern Ocean plays a central role in the global uptake of heat and carbon, which is widely thought to be due to its unique upwelling and circulation. An international research team, led by the University of Liverpool, explored whether there are differences in how the Southern Ocean contributes to the global uptake of heat and carbon.

A significant portion of recent improvements in air quality in India resulted from favorable meteorological conditions that are unlikely to persist as the climate changes, a new study has found.

Nestled high in the Eastern Lesotho Highlands, scientists have uncovered fascinating evidence of an ancient mountain lake that flourished thousands of years ago. This discovery, made by Professor Jennifer Fitchett from the University of the Witwatersrand and Prof Anson Mackay from University College London, sheds light on a hidden chapter of Lesotho's natural history, revealing how climate and geography have shaped the region over millennia.

An international group of experts in mountain hydrology argue that the traditional understanding of the mountain water cycle has largely ignored the role that cryosphere-groundwater interactions play. This oversight could lead to incomplete or inaccurate predictions of water availability in mountain regions, especially in the context of climate change, suggest the authors in a Perspective Paper appearing in Nature Water.

A new automated system of monitoring and classifying persistent vibrations at active volcanoes can eliminate the hours of manual effort needed to document them.

The wildfire season of 2023 was the most destructive ever recorded in Canada and a new study suggests the impact was unprecedented. It found that four of the year's wildfires in mine-impacted areas around Yellowknife, Northwest Territories potentially contributed up to half of the arsenic that wildfires emit globally each year.

Rocks undergo changes over millions of years. Yet it is possible to extract information from them about the climate at the time of their formation.

"Core on deck!" For two months, whenever I heard that cry, I would run up to the deck of the JOIDES Resolution to watch the crew pull up a 30-foot (10-meter) cylindrical tube filled with layered, multicolored rock and sediment drilled from the seafloor beneath our ship.

For years, scientists believed that changes in the Earth's interior, such as volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate collisions, primarily affected the surface environment. Events such as the mass extinction around 66 million years ago and the transitions between icehouse and greenhouse climates were thought to be driven mainly by these deep Earth processes. However, a new study published in Nature Communications has revealed a surprising new aspect: solar radiation can also affect the Earth's deep interior.

A machine learning model capable of both accurate weather predictions and climate simulations was published in Nature this week. The model, named NeuralGCM, outperforms some existing weather and climate prediction models and has the potential to make large savings in computational power over conventional models.

Lead levels in moss are as much as 600 times higher in older Portland, Oregon, neighborhoods where lead-sheathed telecommunications cables were once used compared to lead levels in nearby rural areas, a new study of urban moss has found.

A newly enhanced database is expected to help wildfire managers and scientists better predict where and when wildfires may occur by incorporating hundreds of additional factors that impact the ignition and spread of fire.

Research led by Curtin University reveals that Earth's largest iron ore deposits—in the Hamersley Province of Western Australia—are about one billion years younger than previously believed, a discovery which could greatly boost the search for more of the resource.

A small area of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, near New Zealand and Australia, can trigger temperature changes that affect the entire Southern Hemisphere, a new study has found.