Phys.org: Earth science

A vital waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Panama Canal relies on fresh water supplied by a reservoir to raise and lower the locks that allow the transit of thousands of ships a year.

Typhoons and their Atlantic counterparts—hurricanes—can develop into massively destructive storms that can take a severe toll on both infrastructure and human life. Climate change is additionally spurring even more intense storms with higher wind speeds and rainfall.

Earth scientists often face huge challenges when researching Earth's history: many significant events occurred such a long time ago that there is little direct evidence available. Consequently, researchers often have to rely on indirect clues or on computer models.

The highest rock wall in the Alps—the Monte Rosa East Face on the border between Italy and Switzerland—has for the first time been surveyed three-dimensionally with high precision. An international research team from the universities of Milan, Prague and Heidelberg has taken more than 3,000 high-resolution photos from a helicopter. Using a special method, a detailed 3D model is now emerging.

Tornadoes on the outer edges of a typhoon's spiral rain bands are a severe convective weather phenomenon that occurs on the periphery of tropical cyclone systems. Compared to the core region near the typhoon's center, the atmospheric instability and vertical wind shear conditions in these outer areas often combine in more subtle and easily overlooked ways, making their occurrence and development more sudden and localized. This poses greater challenges for forecasting and early warning.

A joint research group has identified that the spatial scale of "heterogeneity" in the upper mantle, caused by a large-scale flow called a mantle plume rising from deep Earth, is less than 10 kilometers.

Most Californians are familiar with earthquakes. But researchers say the state faces an overlooked threat: "supershear" earthquakes that move so fast they outrun their own seismic waves.

Tens of thousands of earthquakes shook the Greek island of Santorini and the surrounding area at the beginning of the year. Now, researchers have published a comprehensive geological analysis of the seismic crisis in the journal Nature.

Human settlements around the world are moving inland and relocating away from coastlines as sea levels rise and coastal hazards grow more severe, but a new international study shows the poorest regions are being forced to stay put or even move closer to danger.

The Ganges River is in crisis. This lifeline for around 600 million people in India and neighboring countries is experiencing its worst drying period in 1,300 years. Using a combination of historical data, paleoclimate records and hydrological models, researchers from IIT Gandhinagar and the University of Arizona discovered that human activity is the main cause. They also found that the current drying is more severe than any recorded drought in the river's history.

Researchers have built on past studies and introduced new methods to explore the nature and role of subsurface fluids, including water, in the instances and behaviors of earthquakes and volcanoes. Their study suggests that water, even heavy rainfall, can play a role in or even trigger seismic events. This could potentially lead to better early warning systems.

If you've ever held or beheld a diamond, there's a good chance it came from a kimberlite. Over 70% of the world's diamonds are mined from these unique volcanic structures. Yet despite decades of study, scientists are still working to understand how exactly kimberlites erupt from deep in Earth's mantle to the surface.

The largest salt flat in the world is Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, a popular tourist attraction due to its stunning mirror-like surface when covered with a thin layer of water. While considered by many to be the "world's largest natural mirror," this claim had not been scientifically verified. Now, in a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, scientists set out to confirm the effect and discovered that the surface is more complex than previously thought.

Ephemeral desert rivers known as wadis—lifelines for biodiversity and water in some of the world's driest landscapes—are being dangerously constricted by human activity, new research has found.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in the Republic of Korea reveals that global warming is accelerating the risk of multi-year droughts that can lead to extreme water scarcity, threatening water demands in cities, agriculture, and livelihoods worldwide, already within the coming decades.

University of Nebraska–Lincoln's S. Kathleen Lyons is providing a new framework—Earth system engineering—for examining how organisms, including humans, have fundamentally altered ecosystems on a global scale across hundreds, thousands or millions of years.

Andean glaciers advanced during an acute period of climate change at the end of the last Ice Age, new research has found.

Australia's worrying future under climate change was laid bare last week when the first National Climate Risk Assessment was released. It revealed extreme heat, fires, floods, droughts and coastal inundation already threatens lives and livelihoods—and will wreak further havoc in coming decades.

As the frequency and intensity of heat waves increase across the U.S., a similar but more striking phenomenon is occurring in American rivers.

Is your city prepared for flooding caused by extreme rainfall under climate change? In many regions, the uncertainty surrounding this threat is a major cause for concern and an obstacle to adaptation. However, according to researchers from Japan, their new statistical method increases the accuracy of flood risk projections across about 70% of Earth's landmass.