Phys.org: Earth science

The Indiana Geological and Water Survey at Indiana University has been publishing critical research that addresses landslide risks across the Hoosier state. New high-resolution imagery and digital elevation measurements being collected by the Indiana Geographic Information Office will aid this work.

Five wildfires—the biggest of which are the Palisades and the Eaton fires—are still currently burning (as of 10 January 2025) in areas of north Los Angeles. At least 10 people are known to have lost their lives and many more properties have been burnt to the ground.

Oregon's Cascade Range mountains might not hold gold, but they store another precious resource in abundance: water. Scientists from the University of Oregon and their partners have mapped the amount of water stored beneath volcanic rocks at the crest of the central Oregon Cascades and found an aquifer many times larger than previously estimated—at least 81 cubic kilometers.

Researchers from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, alongside mainland collaborators, have uncovered an unexpected phenomenon: severe wintertime ozone (O3) pollution in Lanzhou, China, driven primarily by alkene emissions from local petrochemical industries.

Plates at subduction zones typically move just a few centimeters per year. But when accumulated stress at these convergent plate boundaries releases suddenly, the plates can slip several meters and cause some of Earth's largest earthquakes. The timing and location of such megathrust earthquakes depend on factors such as the shape, roughness, composition, and fluid content of the fault.

Melting ice sheets are often considered synonymous with climate change in the media, with evocative images of lone polar bears floating on ever-shrinking rafts of ice. While impacts such as sea level rise and salinity changes are commonly reported, one lesser-known consequence is the effect on volcanoes.

From the persistent droughts of southern Africa and Central America in the early part of the year to the more recent devastating extreme rainfall in Spain and the deadly Hurricane Helene along America's east coast, 2024 has been a year of climate events that affected the lives of billions of people.

Two of the ten most damaging earthquakes in recorded history happened on January 17th. This year is the thirtieth anniversary of Japan's Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. The Northridge Earthquake in Southern California happened just one year earlier, in 1994. The two events killed 6,400 people, injured 45,000, and left a half million people homeless.

A new study led by scientists in the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University provides the first comprehensive global estimates of the amount of water stored in Earth's plants and the amount of time it takes for that water to flow through them. The information is a missing piece of the puzzle in understanding the global water cycle and how that cycle is being altered by changes in land use and climate.

A study based on the sampling and analysis of volcanic ash at Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands, located off Africa's northwest coast, suggests that the composition of magma could drive tremors during volcanic eruptions.

A study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences has found that ocean warming in 2024 has led to new record high temperatures. The ocean is the hottest it has ever been recorded by humans, not only at the surface temperature but also for the upper 2000 meters.

A series of more than 100 small earthquakes in Surrey in 2018 and 2019 might have been triggered by oil extraction from a nearby well, suggests a new study by UCL researchers.

Neal Iverson started with two lessons in ice physics when asked to describe a research paper about glacier ice flow that has just been published in the journal Science.

Dust from open cast mining suffocates surrounding forests and inhibits trees' ability to capture carbon from the atmosphere more than previously thought, according to new research by scientists in India and the UK.

An international team of scientists announced Thursday they've successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles (2.8 kilometers) to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice they say is at least 1.2 million years old.

Los Angeles is burning, and accelerating hydroclimate whiplash is the key climate connection. After years of severe drought, dozens of atmospheric rivers deluged California with record-breaking precipitation in the winter of 2022–23, burying mountain towns in snow, flooding valleys with rain and snow melt, and setting off hundreds of landslides.

The vast Antarctic Ice Sheet holds more than half of Earth's freshwater. In several places around the continent, the ice extends over the ocean, where it forms large floating shelves. Observations suggest many of these ice shelves are thinning as they melt from below, with implications for ocean dynamics, global sea level, and Earth's climate.

Minerals underground may be part of the solution to global climate change. The most famous greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), can react with some minerals found deep underground to form stable carbonates—permanently storing the CO2. This storage mechanism has helped naturally regulate CO2 throughout Earth's history.

Marine and coastal geoscience play a critical role in understanding ancient and modern geological history, offshore and coastal hazards, and climate change. Deep-water environments prevent scientists from directly visiting field sites, so unique methods must be employed for researching the ocean floor.

To transition to a green economy, we require more critical metals such as copper, rare earth elements and cobalt than are currently available. Therefore, we need to find new resources formed in different ways in areas that have not yet been explored.