Phys.org: Earth science

The 28 March magnitude 7.7 Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar) earthquake caused widespread and severe damage in Myanmar and neighboring countries such as Thailand, with more than 5,000 casualties now confirmed. At the Seismological Society of America's Annual Meeting, researchers from around the globe shared early insights into the earthquake's fault properties, ground shaking and infrastructure damage.

Fiber optic cable deployed on a Swiss glacier has detected the seismic signals of crevasses opening in the ice, confirming that the technology could be useful in monitoring such icequakes, according to a report at the Seismological Society of America's Annual Meeting.

At the uppermost reaches of stream networks, headwaters dry up during the summer, then burst back into existence when spring brings rain. These nonperennial headwater streams are individually small, but collectively, they make up most of the length of global stream networks, and their chemistry is consequential for downstream waters.

The 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake struck southern Turkey and Syria along the East Anatolian Fault. The magnitude 7.8 quake and its magnitude 7.5 aftershock devastated the region, killing tens of thousands of people and destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings.

Driving through almost any coastal town, you'll notice staples of being at the beach: ice-cream stands, seafood shacks, bridges leading to the shore. But what if they all washed away?

In estuaries—the transitional zones between rivers and the sea—fresh and salt water are constantly battling for dominance. But due to climate change, the saltwater is gaining ground. New research by Utrecht University's Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU) in collaboration with Deltares shows that saltwater intrusion—where seawater pushes inland into rivers—is on the rise globally.

Volcanoes inspire awe with spectacular eruptions and incandescent rivers of lava, but often their deadliest hazard is what quietly falls from the sky.

A team of scientists has cracked open one of meteorology's enduring mysteries—how hailstones grow inside storm clouds—using an innovative approach that analyzes chemical signatures locked in the ice. The findings, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, challenge long-held assumptions about hail formation and could lead to improved severe weather prediction.

Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar-led research suggests climate change, increased monsoon rainfall and expanded groundwater pumping have driven substantial vegetation growth in the Thar Desert over the past two decades.

An analysis of satellite imagery of major river systems in the Philippines has revealed surprising insights into how rivers behave, with significant implications for river management in tropical settings.

New Curtin-led research has revealed that water played a far bigger role than previously thought in shaping Earth's first continents, transforming the planet's early crust and helping to build the landmasses we see today.

Mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORBs), located far from subduction zones, are typically thought to be unaffected by subduction processes. However, some MORBs display arc-like geochemical signatures—including negative Nb anomalies and elevated H2O/Ce and Ba/Th ratios—referred to as "ghost-arc signatures."

The sun may rise every morning, but the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface can substantially vary over decades, according to a perspective article led by an international research team.

Since December, Raphel Abraham has been struggling to cope with life in his flooded home on the banks of Vembanad Lake, in Edakochi, southern India.

The El Niño phenomenon in the South Atlantic and Benguela current, which flows along the west coast of southern Africa, have a significant impact on the tropical Atlantic region, leading to extensive effects on local marine ecosystems, African climates, and the El Niño Southern Oscillation. No one has been able to predict warm events in this region until now.

Much of Earth's heat uptake is passed to the ocean, making ocean heat content key for understanding long-term climate patterns. Ocean heat content is typically lower during ice ages and rises during warmer periods of glacier retreat. Over the past 1.2 million years, ice ages and interglacials have occurred in cycles lasting about 100,000 years, and we are currently in an interglacial period after the Last Glacial Maximum occurred about 20,000 years ago.

Scientists at the University of Miami's Alfred C. Glassell Jr. SUrge‐STructure‐Atmosphere INteraction (SUSTAIN) laboratory conducted a first-of-its-kind study into how waves form and increase in windy and hurricane conditions. The research, which reconstructs the two-dimensional profile of pressure and airflow above wavy surfaces, provides new insights into understanding ocean wave growth and its broader implications for weather forecasting and coastal resilience.

A little over 5 million years ago, water from the Atlantic Ocean found a way through the present-day Strait of Gibraltar. According to this theory, oceanic water rushed faster than a speeding car down a kilometer-high slope towards the empty Mediterranean Sea, excavating a skyscraper-deep trough on its way.

Deep-sea mining (DSM) not only poses significant environmental, social, and economic risks that may have far-reaching implications for coastal communities and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), it is also likely to negatively affect the business community, including insurers and investors, says a new study by researchers from the University of British Columbia and the Dona Bertarelli Philanthropy.

In an article published in Science Advances, a collaborative team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) presents a never-before-seen image of an oceanic transform fault from electromagnetic (EM) data collected at the Gofar fault in the eastern Pacific Ocean.