Phys.org: Earth science

The only way to visit Ken Able's office is to traverse Great Bay Boulevard, a narrow, five-mile long road in Tuckerton, New Jersey, that crosses a network of brackish tidal marshes via a series of wood bridges.

Wildfires are unplanned and unpredictable threats to Earth; while we may intuitively relate them to extreme heat at lower latitudes, they are known to occur in Arctic regions, such as those recently ravaging Russia.

A new paper on the many ways wildfires affect people and the planet makes clear that as fires become more intense and frequent, the urgency for effective and proactive fire science grows. By addressing these challenges, the fire research community aims to better protect our planet and its inhabitants.

In a new meteorological study, an international team of researchers from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF; Reading, UK), and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR; Boulder, CO) are improving scientific understanding of atmospheric waves in the tropics, including how they impact extreme weather events like hurricanes and heavy rainfall.

Hungary is a main provider in the publication of synchronized, or in other terms, georeferenced maps of the Napoleonic era. As a result of new research, Hungarian and German researchers have synchronized maps produced during the Napoleonic wars about Southern Germany with modern databases, which has made it possible to track a wealth of interesting information, historical and environmental changes.

Urban spaces are particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change, such as heat waves, floods, and storms. But which areas of a city are affected, and how can city planners respond?

Chinese scientists have recently developed a novel method for measuring dissolved oxygen (DO) levels in the ocean and a new dataset for monitoring dissolved oxygen concentration (DOC) of global oceans.

While millions of Americans vacation on beaches every year to seek out sun, sand and the sea, many might not realize how dangerous digging holes in the sand can be. In February 2024, a 7-year-old girl died after an approximately 5-foot (1.5-meter) hole she and her brother dug in the sand collapsed in on her, burying her alive.

New evidence of changes to the Gulf Stream during the last ice age could indicate additional sensitivity to future climatic changes, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

Earth system models (ESMs) are essential tools to understand climate change impacts on wetlands. However, current ESMs usually represent wetland hydrology in oversimplified ways, resulting in low confidence of their projection of wetland evolution.

The capacity of Mozambican woodlands to capture and store carbon is underestimated and potentially undervalued for their protection and restoration, finds new research from an international team of scientists including UCL researchers and led by carbon data provider Sylvera.

Plate tectonics are the driving force behind Earth's continental configurations, with the lithosphere (oceanic and continental crusts and upper mantle) moving due to convection processes occurring in the softer underlying asthenospheric mantle. Many earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and mountain formations are direct consequences of the movements of these globe-spanning plates, particularly at their margins.

With a technique called seismic tomography, researchers use the shape of traveling seismic waves from nearby or distant earthquakes to create 3D images of inner Earth, allowing them to "see" hundreds of kilometers below the surface.

In the deepest parts of the ocean, below 4,000 meters, the combination of high pressure and low temperature creates conditions that dissolve calcium carbonate, the material marine animals use to make their shells.

An international team of geophysicists has found evidence that the Earth experienced plate tectonics earlier than previously thought. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group analyzed zircons from Jack Hills in Australia.

Isabel Hernando-Alonso, a researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of a geochronological study published in the journal Quaternary Geochronology, in which the electron spin resonance and paleomagnetism methods were used to analyze the oldest sedimentary levels of the site known as Galería Complex in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos), where the Covacha de los Zarpazos and Tres Simas Central caves lie.

As climate change advances, the vast bodies of ice on Antarctica and Greenland contribute significantly to sea level rise. To project their future effect on sea level rise, additional research is required to improve scientists' understanding of these masses of ice. Now, two groups of scientists are undertaking a joint effort to address what has long been a major obstacle to such research.

As climate change advances, its impacts are not universally equal, with temperature rising differently by latitude and elevation. Climate heterogeneity is the study of this diversity in Earth's climate patterns, and the focus of recent research published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Before you decide on a specific geographical location for underground carbon storage, it is good to know exactly what you are setting in motion, both with injection, i.e. the process of pumping the greenhouse gas into the underground, and over time—for up to hundreds of years—while the gas is down there.

In a study published in One Earth on July 5, a research team led by Prof. Deng Ye from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed the core-bacteria-forecast model (CoBacFM), which links the changes of bacterial species, soil pH, and climate change together in the global grassland ecosystem.