Phys.org: Earth science

In a first-of-its-kind study, Stanford researchers have measured how the abundance of ocean life has changed over the past half-billion years of Earth's history.

As Britain's first heat wave of 2025 hits with temperatures climbing above 30°C, Yorkshire has joined the northwest in official drought status.

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that glaciers in western Canada, the United States, and Switzerland lost around 12% of their ice between 2021 and 2024.

The past year of 2024 was characterized by repeated runs of extreme rainfall and floods worldwide. Among these, one of the most devastating events was the Central Asian flood in the spring of 2024.

Research led by Earth scientists at the University of Southampton has uncovered evidence of rhythmic surges of molten mantle rock rising from deep within the Earth beneath Africa. These pulses are gradually tearing the continent apart and forming a new ocean.

Earth is hotter than it has been in 125,000 years, scientists say, and Las Vegas continues to break temperature records. The extreme heat claimed more than 500 lives in southern Nevada last year alone, and scientists and city officials are clamoring for solutions.

Peak wind gusts in Boulder and possibly other locations along the Front Range don't pack the same punch they used to, according to a new analysis led by scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR).

The Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) functions like Earth's atmospheric traffic controller, directing summer monsoon flows that regulate rainfall and temperatures across East Asia. When this high-pressure system misbehaves, the consequences can be dramatic—from the devastating Yangtze River floods of 1931 and 1998, to 2020's endless rainy season, and the record-shattering 2022 heat waves that baked the Yangtze basin.

From sugar plantations in Brazil to tea estates in India, crushed rock is being sprinkled across large stretches of farmland globally in a novel bid to combat climate change.

Researchers have revealed the declining health of coastal marshes several years before visible signs of decline, providing an early warning and an opportunity to protect an ecosystem that serves as the first line of defense against coastal flooding.

New research from the University of California, Davis, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Texas A&M University reveals that massive emissions, or burps, of carbon dioxide from natural Earth systems led to significant decreases in ocean oxygen concentrations some 300 million years ago.

The Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology (KIOST) has revealed that marine microalgae are responsible for ocean aggregates of buoyant microplastics (MPs), increasing the density of MP aggregates and causing them to sink.

Unexpected severe turbulence injured crew and passengers on a Qantas Boeing 737 during descent at Brisbane on May 4, 2024. The subsequent Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation suggested the severity of the turbulence caught the captain by surprise.

At any given time, about two-thirds of Earth's surface is covered by clouds. Overall, they make the planet much cooler than it would be without them.

In the last few decades, Arctic sea ice has receded ever further, including increasingly in winter when the extent of sea ice is at its most prominent. One of the main drivers of this development is thought to be the warming of Atlantic water that flows from Europe's Norwegian Sea into the Arctic Ocean, passing through the Barents Sea and the Fram Strait in the process.

When visiting Godrevy beach on the north Cornish coast, most people look out to sea at the lighthouse, surfers and seals rather than the cliffs behind. But these cliffs hold a history of past climate and sea levels that is incredibly valuable to scientists like me, who are trying to determine how quickly sea level is going to rise in the future.

Years after wildfires burn forests and watersheds, the contaminants left behind continue to poison rivers and streams across the Western U.S.—much longer than scientists estimated.

How does climate change affect the way humans organize themselves? How has it shaped the course of human evolution? An international team of scientists, including scientists from the Université de Montréal, think the key to answering those questions is to pay more attention to the archaeological record.

For more than a century, a patch of cold water south of Greenland has resisted the Atlantic Ocean's overall warming, fueling debate among scientists. A new study identifies the cause as the long-term weakening of a major ocean circulation system.

A study led by researchers from Brown University finds that rainfall patterns across northern Africa remained largely stable between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago—a pivotal period in Earth's climate history when the Northern Hemisphere cooled and places like Greenland became permanently glaciated.