Phys.org: Earth science

Of all the ways that humans consume water, there is no practice that uses more water than irrigation, which accounts for more than 90% of humanity's water consumption. While irrigation is necessary to help increase global crop production, it can simultaneously lead to stress on freshwater resources if it is not done in a sustainable manner—leaving insufficient supply for nature and for other human needs.

Susanne Nielsen realizes that it is probably only a matter of time before her parents' summer house at Slettestrand in North Jutland is affected by flooding. Because under the house, which is just 400 meters from the bay of Jammerbugt in the municipality of the same name, the groundwater level is now often so high that there is a risk that large amounts of rain will not be able to seep away, but rather enter the house.

Inland waters such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and ponds may release copious amounts of greenhouse gases, but this possibility is not well understood. In a new review published in theJournal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, Qianqian Yang and colleagues summarize what's known about carbon dioxide and methane release from China's inland waterways and suggest that a widespread monitoring network could help researchers understand this important aspect of climate change.

Soil carbon is exactly what it sounds like: carbon collected and stored in soil. Plants pull carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and deposit it into the soil as their leaves, stems, and roots decompose. In fact, soil contains more than three times as much carbon as the atmosphere.

How extreme weather and climate events change is an intriguing issue in the context of global warming. As IPCC AR6 points out, cold extremes have become less frequent and less severe since the 1950s, mainly driven by human-induced climate change. However, cold extremes could also exhibit robust interdecadal changes at regional scale.

The Great Southern Australian Coastal Upwelling System is an upward current of water over vast distances along Australia's southern coast. It brings nutrients from deeper waters to the surface. This nutrient-rich water supports a rich ecosystem that attracts iconic species like the southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) and blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda).

Flood risk maps are an essential public good. Indeed, many countries like the United Kingdom already offer flood risk mapping.

Imagine a landscape shaped by fire, not as a destructive force but as a life-giving tool. That's the reality in Australia, where Indigenous communities have long understood the intricate relationship between fire, soil and life. Cultural burning has been used for millennia to care for landscapes and nurture biodiversity. In contrast, government agencies conduct "prescribed burning" mainly to reduce fuel loads.

The Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP) established a scientific expedition team for the water vapor channel of the Yarlung Tsangbo Grand Canyon in the southeast of the Tibetan Plateau. In the past five years, the expedition team has conducted observations and research on water vapor transport and heavy precipitation around the Yarlung Tsangbo Grand Canyon.

A team of scientists from the University of Exeter, Met Office, and Imperial College have found a new way to calculate the total carbon emissions consistent with the Paris climate targets of 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming.

Many pesticides, industrial chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, as well as their degradation products, end up in streams and rivers after use.

For many hundreds of millions of years, the average temperature at the surface of the Earth has varied by not much more than 20° Celsius, facilitating life on our planet. To maintain such stable temperatures, Earth must have a 'thermostat' that regulates the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over geological timescales, influencing global temperatures.

The accuracy of climate models depends on many factors—greenhouse gas emissions from industrial and transportation activity, farm animal "emissions," urban growth and loss of forests, and solar reflections off snow and ground cover. Natural phenomena like volcanic eruptions also contribute and are incorporated into models.

New research is shaking up what we know about Idaho earthquakes and the faults that cause them as scientists try to better understand the state's seismic activity.

Land subsidence is a geohazard caused by the sudden or gradual settling (years to decades) of the land surface due to the removal of subsurface material. This can be due to a variety of factors, both natural (such as earthquakes, volcanic activity and compaction of fine-grained unconsolidated sediments) and anthropogenic (for example, mining and groundwater abstraction). It poses a major issue in urban zones where it can cause building collapse and damage to infrastructure that may be a hazard to life and a resource management problem.

Researchers in Europe have identified an underground signal that may be a precursor to strong quakes.

Deep sea and sediments bring iron to Antarctic waters. The iron that fertilizes the waters around Antarctica mostly comes from the deep, upwelling waters and the sediments around the continent.

Land–atmosphere interactions play a crucial role in shaping Earth's climate system, profoundly influencing weather patterns, climate variables, and ecological processes. Despite being located at similar latitudes, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and Yangtze River region (YRR) represent two distinct climate zones, garnering significant attention in this field.

Getting climate models to mimic real-time observations when it comes to warming is critical—small discrepancies can lead to misunderstandings about the rate of global warming as the climate changes. A new study from North Carolina State University and Duke University finds that when modeling warming trends in the Pacific Ocean, there is still a missing piece to the modeling puzzle: the effect of wind on ocean currents in the equatorial Pacific.

After more than seven years of development, MethaneSAT recently launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. A collaboration between the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Environmental Defense Fund and other partners, MethaneSAT will be capable of spotting methane emissions from space, producing data from high-resolution images that can cover hundreds of square kilometers at a time.