Phys.org: Earth science

It has been long assumed that Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats was formed as its ancient namesake lake dried up 13,000 years ago. But new research from the University of Utah has gutted that narrative, determining these crusts did not form until several thousand years after Lake Bonneville disappeared, which could have important implications for managing this feature that has been shrinking for decades to the dismay of the racing community and others who revere the saline pan 100 miles west of Salt Lake City.

To learn about the first organisms on our planet, researchers have to analyze the rocks of the early Earth. These can only be found in a few places on the surface of Earth. The Pilbara Craton in Western Australia is one of these rare sites; there are rocks there that are around 3.5 billion years old containing traces of the microorganisms that lived at that time.

At the dawn of the new year in 1997, the Truckee River transformed. The winter season had thus far been great for snow, but when a subtropical storm from near the Hawaiian Islands rolled in, it carried with it unseasonably warm rain. The warm rainfall combined with snowmelt to swell the rivers, with the Truckee burying much of downtown Reno under water. Two people were killed amidst the nearly $1 billion disaster, and it wasn't the first nor the last time that warm rains triggered severe flooding in the area.

The few glaciers in Africa have long since become an important indicator of how rapidly and severely climate change is changing our planet. The ice on the high summits of the continent is rapidly disappearing, and Africa may lose its white peaks by the middle of our century.

Over the last 15 million years, Australia has slowly dried out. After humans arrived more than 65,000 years ago, they learned to use fire to their advantage. Today, fire weather is getting more frequent—and fires are following as the world heats up. This month, fires have flared in Victoria, destroying 46 houses, while Western Australia endures a heat wave and braces for potential fires.

Scientists have successfully applied a pair of advanced computer models to simulate last year's wildfire that devastated the Hawaiian town of Lahaina. The development could lay the groundwork for more detailed predictions of wildfires that advance into towns and cities, eventually helping with firefighting efforts and safer evacuations as well as the design of wildfire-resistant communities.

Marine microplastics (1 μm–5 mm diameter) are an ever-pressing concern, given their longevity in the environment (>100 years) and the effects they have on the organisms inhabiting them, particularly as ocean currents carry the particles vast distances, even reaching polar basins.

This is a simple question with perhaps not so simple an answer.

Tidal salt marshes are fairly common across the Mid-Atlantic. These coastal ecosystems provide habitat for plants, birds and fish. Existing at the intersection of land and sea, tidal salt marshes act as armor against hurricanes and shoreline erosion.

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are filaments of intense moisture transport in the atmosphere. These weather systems drive a large fraction of the extreme precipitation events over coastal regions. Detecting ARs in satellite observations has long been a challenging task due to the lack of wind information. In a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, scientists derived an approximation of the 3-dimensional (3D) wind field based on the spatial distribution of the satellite-based temperature.

In their recent publication in Nature Water, D-BAUG researchers Junyang Gou and Professor Benedikt Soja introduced a finely resolved model of terrestrial water storage using a novel deep learning approach.

The last round of atmospheric river storms drenched Southern California with historic rainfall, and by one measure, it came close to beating a record for the most rain over a three-day period.

Anoxic marine basins may be among the most viable places to conduct large-scale carbon sequestration in the deep ocean, while minimizing negative impacts on marine life. So say UC Santa Barbara researchers in a paper published in the journal AGU Advances.

Millions of dollars are being spent to add sand to Southern California beaches—but a new study suggests technology can give a better understanding of how sand moves, offering data decision-makers could use in planning how to fix the eroding coastline.

In a study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, a joint research group from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Stockholm University, and the California State University found that while land recycled water vapor contributes more than 60% to precipitation in northern China, the precipitation δ18O (δ18Op) is primarily influenced by the relative contribution of oceanic moisture.

The seven Colorado River states face a quickly approaching deadline to present a unified plan for how to manage the drying river that provides water for 40 million people across the West.

The region's cold, watery heart is nestled between Seattle and the Eastside. It uniquely supports two major roadways atop floating bridges, has offered beachgoers a summertime respite for decades and is central to the identity of the Seattle area's culture.

Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That's how the blockbuster Hollywood movie "The Day After Tomorrow" depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean's circulation and the catastrophic consequences.

The Arctic is experiencing disproportionately higher temperature increases compared to the rest of the planet, triggering a series of cascading effects. This rapid warming has profound implications for global climate patterns, human populations and wildlife.

The United Nations' flagship Global Resources Outlook report is the portrait of a juggernaut. Due to be published later this month by the UN's International Resource Panel, it highlights how global consumption of raw materials, having increased four-fold since 1970, is set to rise by a further 60% by 2060.