Phys.org: Earth science

After a massive earthquake off the coast of Kamchatka, a peninsula in the far east of Russia, on July 30, 2025, the world watched as the resultant tsunami spread from the epicenter and across the Pacific Ocean at the speed of a jet plane.

Forests cover about 40% of the EU's land area. Between 1990 and 2022, they absorbed around 10% of the continent's man-made carbon emissions. However, the carbon dioxide absorption capacity of forests, also known as carbon sinks, is becoming increasingly weaker.

Terrestrial plants drove an increase in global photosynthesis between 2003 and 2021, a trend partially offset by a weak decline in photosynthesis—the process of using sunlight to make food—among marine algae, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

A new study shows that natural dust particles swirling in from faraway deserts can trigger freezing of clouds in Earth's Northern Hemisphere. This subtle mechanism influences how much sunlight clouds reflect and how they produce rain and snow—with major implications for climate projections.

Around 800 million years ago, during the Tonian period, the Yangtze Block in South China experienced significant tectonic activity, in which the ancient supercontinent Rodinia broke off from the area that is now South China. This created the Yangtze Block plate, which then collided with the China Ocean Plate, causing an area of subduction—where the oceanic plate slides under the lighter continental plate. This process is known to result in the creation of a string of volcanoes on the surface.

Algal growth is accelerating in lakes across Canada, including those far from human development, and a new study shows that climate change is the primary driver.

Every day, as the sun sets, billions of small animals make their way from the depths of the ocean to the surface to feed. As the next day begins, these zooplankton swim back down. It's the largest synchronous migration on the planet, responsible for carrying vast amounts of carbon from the ocean surface to the deep.

It was a single lightning flash that streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles, from eastern Texas nearly all the way to Kansas City, setting a new world record.

A new study using data collected by NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite established a novel method to determine how productive plants are worldwide. The findings were published in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.

The Gulf of Maine—home to commercial fisheries for oysters, clams and mussels—has unexpectedly avoided an increase in seawater acidity, helping to preserve the health of its fisheries.

The earthquake near the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia on July 30, 2025 generated tsunami waves that have reached Hawaii and coastal areas of the US mainland. The earthquake's magnitude of 8.8 is significant, potentially making it one of the largest quakes ever recorded.

Africa is a source of uncertainty in carbon cycle calculations. By some estimates, the continent's landscapes emit 2.1 billion tons more carbon dioxide than they take up each year—about equal to 1.5 times the annual emissions from coal-fired power plants. But other estimates are almost the complete opposite, suggesting that the continent's copious plant matter takes up 2.0 billion more tons of carbon dioxide per year than it releases.

In a world affected by climate change, the Southern Ocean plays an outsized role. It absorbs up to 40% of the human-caused emissions taken up by the oceans while also being home to some of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems.

A lot of the climate-altering carbon pollution humans release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels gets drawn into the Earth's oceans and landscapes through natural processes, mostly through photosynthesis, as plants turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass.

Some of the rainiest places on Earth could see their annual precipitation nearly halved if climate change continues to alter the way ocean water moves around the globe.

Today at about 11:30am local time, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the country's far east.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a much stronger short-term effect on warming than carbon dioxide. Over the near-term (20 years), 1 ton of methane has the warming effect of up to 84 tons of carbon dioxide, while over a hundred years, 1 ton of methane has the warming effect of about 28 tons of carbon dioxide. For this reason, controlling methane emissions is a high priority in limiting warming.

Recent climate-related crises—from severe storms and flooding to extreme heat—have raised new questions about how local governments communicate the risk of these crises and what they are doing to keep their citizens safe. To better understand what this communication looks like at local level, and the factors that may be shaping it, researchers from Drexel University analyzed climate resilience planning information available on the public-facing websites of 24 coastal communities in New Jersey that are contending with the effects of sea level rise.

A formidable new radar satellite jointly developed by the United States and India launched Wednesday, designed to track subtle changes in Earth's land and ice surfaces and help predict both natural and human-caused hazards.

A huge flood triggered by the rapid draining of a lake beneath the Greenland ice sheet occurred with such force that it fractured the ice above and burst out across its surface.