Phys.org: Earth science

When glaciers and ice sheets melt, they can destabilize slopes and reactivate faults, which in turn can trigger landslides and reshape the surface of Earth over long periods of time. Researchers can monitor some locations in real time to determine which combinations of factors lead to landslides, but understanding what triggered landslides thousands of years ago is more difficult.

Deeply hidden in Earth's mantle there are two huge "islands" the size of a continent. New research from Utrecht University shows that these regions are not only hotter than the surrounding graveyard of cold sunken tectonic plates, but also that they must be ancient: at least half a billion years old, perhaps even older.

The Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, reached historic low levels in 2022, raising economic, ecological and public health concerns for Utah.

Iron is one of the main elements found in the Earth's inner core, which is characterized by extremely high temperatures and pressures. Determining how iron behaves in these extreme conditions could thus help to advance the current understanding of our home planet's structure and geodynamics.

Land clearing for nickel mines is causing a more severe threat to the climate than initially thought, a study led by a University of Queensland researcher has found.

A study provides compelling new evidence that a colossal "megaflood" refilled the Mediterranean Sea, ending a period during which the Mediterranean was a vast expanse of salt flats. The research suggests the Zanclean Megaflood ended the Messinian Salinity Crisis, which lasted between 5.97 and 5.33 million years ago.

A study led by researchers at The University of Manchester has exposed significant gaps in global research on transboundary rivers, revealing that the water needs of people in the Global South are being disproportionately overlooked.

After millennia as a carbon deep-freezer for the planet, regional hotspots and increasingly frequent wildfires in the northern latitudes have nearly canceled out that critical storage capacity in the permafrost region, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

The Dutch TROPOMI space instrument creates daily global maps of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere. Researchers from SRON and TNO have now measured CO emissions over a full year from the 21 largest European steel plants. The preprint is available on EGUsphere.

Imagine a glacier. Are you thinking "glittering snow" or "plastic pollution?" A new study underscores the pervasive nature of plastic pollution, even in such remote and apparently pristine areas.

Ethiopia's Afar and Oromia regions have been hit by several earthquakes and tremors since the beginning of 2025. The strongest, with a magnitude of 5.7, struck on 4 January. The US Geological Survey and the German Research Centre for Geosciences reported that its epicenter was 142km east of the capital, Addis Ababa, which is in the Oromia region. It came just a day after a quake with a magnitude of 5.5 hit the same area. Two more quakes were reported over the weekend of 11 January.

Eastern North America and Central Europe could see their most extreme heat waves become twice as intense as previously projected due to variations in soil moisture, according to a new study.

Near-inertial internal waves (NIWs) are crucial energy sources for deep-sea mixing, but the origins of deep NIWs have remained largely unknown. A research team led by Prof. Wang Fan from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) has made advancements in understanding the generation mechanisms of deep near-inertial kinetic energy (NIKE). Their findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The processes that form continental crust from the denser basaltic rocks of the upper mantle may make the lower lithosphere denser than the underlying mantle. One theory holds that the lower lithosphere splits away and sinks into the mantle in a process called foundering. Conclusive evidence of foundering, however, has been hard to come by.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at rates that are incompatible with staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming, a Met Office study warns.

Extreme climate events endanger groundwater quality and stability when rain water evades natural purification processes in the soil. This was demonstrated in long-term groundwater analyses using new analytical methods, as described in a recent study in Nature Communications. As billions of people rely on sufficient and clean groundwater for drinking, understanding the impacts of climate extremes on future water security is crucial.

Directly measuring soil carbon rather than relying on predictive models can provide hard evidence of how much carbon is being stored, allowing for better assessments of confidence in carbon markets for croplands, according to a study co-authored by Yale School of the Environment scientists and recently published in Environmental Research Letters.

The Arctic is heating up particularly fast as a result of global warming—with serious consequences. The widespread permafrost in this region, where soils currently store twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, is thawing. Scientists are using increasingly detailed climate models to investigate what this means for the global climate and which striking feedbacks need to be taken into account.

A new study finds that climate change may have a range of contrasting effects on coastal forests, both slowing and enabling growth in areas where sea levels are rising and storms are more common.

On the basis of current carbon emissions rates and climate policies, average global temperatures are projected to increase to 2.9°C above preindustrial averages by the end of the century. Such an increase would severely strain global agriculture, making large tracts of current production areas unsuitable for crops and livestock. At the same time, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that food production needs to increase by 70% to keep pace with population growth.