Phys.org: Earth science

Five hundred million years ago, the so-called Cambrian "SPICE" event made oxygen levels in the oceans drop dramatically.

Mobile measuring devices enable the research of atmospheric processes in higher air layers that have not yet been recorded by conventional measuring stations on the ground. The airborne flight systems therefore make an important contribution to research into the causes of climate change in the Arctic.

The carbon stored globally by plants is shorter-lived and more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, according to a new study.

Microfossil analysis allows us to map the subsurface and understand past geological times. In research labs all over the world, geologists spend countless hours looking through the microscope identifying and counting microfossils extracted from sedimentary rock below the seabed.

A team of Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists plan to use artificial intelligence modeling to forecast, and better understand, a growing threat to water caused by toxic algal blooms. Fueled by climate change and rising water temperatures, these harmful algal blooms, or HABs, have grown in intensity and frequency. They have now been reported in all 50 U.S. states.

Communications companies such as Starlink plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites into orbit around Earth over the next decade or so. The growing swarm is already causing problems for astronomers, but recent research has raised another question: What happens when they start to come down?

Our planet was born around 4.5 billion years ago. To understand this mind-bendingly long history, we need to study rocks and the minerals they are made of.

At approximately 4:10 p.m. on January 1, 2024, the Noto region of Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan was hit by a large earthquake with a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.5. This earthquake, known as the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake, registered a maximum seismic intensity of 7 on the Japanese scale and caused widespread damage, including numerous casualties.

In the late 2000s, Scott Saleska noticed something strange going on in the Amazon rainforest. In 2005, a massive drought struck the region. Two years later, Saleska—a University of Arizona professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology—published surprising research that used satellite images to find that the drought resulted in more green growth in large swaths of the Amazon. On the other hand, field researchers saw plants turn brown and some die in response to the drought.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have conducted the most detailed spatial analysis to date of storm surges along the coast of the UK and Ireland.

The Sun Corridor in Arizona in the semi-arid Southwestern U.S. is a land of seeming unlimited growth that is constantly colliding with physical constraints. It is mountainous but also home to a large valley that includes one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the U.S.

Roughly one in four U.S. households have soil exceeding the new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's lead screening levels of 200 parts per million (ppm), halved from the previous level of 400 ppm, a new study found. For households with exposure from multiple sources, the EPA lowered the guidance to 100 ppm; nearly 40% of households exceed that level, the study also found.

The endeavor to keep tabs on and curb air pollution has been stymied by the enigmatic nature of the planetary boundary layer (PBL). This atmospheric strip is a hotbed for pollutants. Yet, its mercurial dance through time and across geographies presents a formidable scientific puzzle. Given these hurdles, an in-depth dissection of the thermal contrast (TC) that delineates this layer is imperative.

Forecasters can use images in social media to better communicate weather related hazards of hurricanes, according to a pair of new studies. The findings are published in the journals Natural Hazards Review and Weather, Climate, and Society

Europe experienced its coldest winter in 600 years during 1739–1740, ~4 °C cooler than the present average, also coinciding with negative temperature anomalies across North America and Eurasia. Indeed, for northern midlatitudes (35–70 °N) as a whole, it may have been the coldest season in the last 300 years.

A new UC Riverside study shows soot from large wildfires in California traps sunlight, making days warmer and drier than they ought to be.

In coal-rock formations, many micro-fractures exist, and the expansion of these micro-fractures is the internal catalyst for the macroscopic destruction of coal-rock. Moreover, the occurrence state of gas changes with the expansion of micro-fractures. In engineering practice, most coal-rock mass needs cyclic operation in the blasting excavation or mechanical drilling, and the dynamic load of coal-rock mass is cyclic impact load.

Nano and microplastics are a well-known menace, found practically everywhere in nature, including soil, oceans, drinking water, air, and even the human body. Studies show that soils in particular hold a significant portion of N/MPs.

Abrupt shifts within complex systems such as the Earth's climate system are extremely hard to predict. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have now succeeded in developing a new method to anticipate such tipping points in advance.

With ESA's Arctic Weather Satellite due to launch in a few weeks, the satellite is now at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California being readied for its big day. Once in orbit, this new mission will show how short-term weather forecasts in the Arctic and beyond could be improved.