Phys.org: Earth science

Global sea levels may rise faster than previously expected, suggests a new study in Nature Communications. The reason is that warming oceans appear to be melting Antarctic ice shelves from below much more rapidly than expected.

The biological productivity of the Southern Ocean in the summertime is substantially greater than many previous estimates have suggested, according to new airborne research by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR). The findings provide new insight into the global carbon cycle and point to a reason why Earth system models have struggled to accurately capture the role of the Southern Ocean: Models that underestimate the ocean's biological productivity also tend to underestimate the ocean's capacity to uptake carbon.

The vast, deserted South Pacific is considered unspoiled nature. But this ocean is not as unspoiled as we would like to think. A new study by a group of researchers from ETH Zurich and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel sheds light on this premise.

Almost 60 countries, representing about a third of the global economy, met in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta for the first international summit on the transition away from fossil fuels.

Around two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest could shift into degraded forest or savanna-like ecosystems at 1.5–1.9°C of global warming if deforestation increases to roughly 22–28% of the Amazon, according to a new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published in Nature. Without additional deforestation, by contrast, such large-scale changes would likely occur only at much higher warming levels of around 3.7–4°C.

Near-constant activity continues on the volcano in Russia. Shivelyuch (also called Shiveluch), the most northerly active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. On a near-daily basis, satellites detect new signs of activity within its horseshoe-shaped caldera, including thermal anomalies, hot avalanches and debris flows, and ash deposits that darken the surrounding landscape.

In 2023 and 2024, Earth's average global surface temperature spiked nearly 0.3 degrees Celsius above what was already expected from climate change. Each year was declared the hottest on record and coincided with deadly wildfires, heat waves and historic numbers of climate-related disasters.

In a new paper, an international team led by scientists from Charles University, Czechia, has brought evidence linking widespread release of methane (CH₄)—a strong greenhouse gas—from the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) to a warmer period 9–4 thousand years ago. CH₄ has been detected at retreating glacier margins worldwide, raising concerns about potential climate feedbacks associated with their widespread retreat, but this is the first time that a study has systematically investigated the whole margin of an entire ice sheet. The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

About 600 million years ago, the continents wandered Earth, yet to settle into their current positions. Their locations during the Ediacaran (as this time is called) have been tough for scientists to pin down. Earth's magnetic field appears to have behaved in erratic ways, and applying standard techniques to calculate the continents' positions based on records of the magnetic field yields implausible results. In particular, scientists debate the location of an ancient continent called Baltica, which is now part of Europe.

Florida State University researchers have discovered how to accurately predict winter weather forecasts months in advance, affording sectors such as agriculture, water management, energy use and public health a longer lead time to prepare for inclement conditions. The research, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, shows a method for forecasting how the stratospheric polar vortex, or SPV, will behave from winter through summer, before winter even starts.

For generations, the mild and temperate climate of northwestern Europe has been credited to one legendary force: the Gulf Stream. This idea is so deeply entrenched in our cultural identity that in James Joyce's Ulysses, the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, refuses to take a bath, arguing that "all Ireland is washed by the Gulf Stream."

From a geothermal hotspot to the one-time "Lighthouse of the Pacific," the heat is on beneath the volcanic landscape of western El Salvador.

Heavy rains causing repeated river flood intrusions into Florida's freshwater springs are changing the function of the clear natural resource. Findings from University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researchers Paul Donsky and Matt Cohen reveal that these intrusions can cause flow reversal, worsening already present problems.

There's more bad news about microplastics. We already know they pose a risk to health and can pollute ecosystems, but now researchers have discovered that tiny plastic particles drifting in Earth's atmosphere could be a significant contributor to global warming.

Earth's ice is melting. As icebergs break away from glaciers and melt away, the fresh meltwater mixes into its saltwater surroundings. However, icebergs do not exist in isolation. In Greenland, for example, jammed collections of icebergs and sea ice make up what are known as mélanges. Determining how these pieces of ice are affected by the meltwater of their neighbors is key to understanding—and eventually reducing—global ice loss.

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool built by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) can help forecasters look further into the future as they work to identify the potential for deadly severe weather outbreaks.

More than two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's irrigation water and a third of the country's drinking water comes from groundwater, yet aquifers are being depleted faster than they recharge. At the same time, sewage treatment generates large volumes of treated wastewater: 1.6 billion cubic meters of treated wastewater is underutilized throughout the country each year, says Mohammed Benaafi, a research scientist at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.

An international team led by researchers from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) has identified a key mechanism that has shaped Earth's continents over billions of years. This mechanism is the deep re-lamination of subducted continental crust, a process that explains the origin of certain magmas and offers a new perspective on continental evolution from the Archean (between 3.8 and 2.5 billion years ago) to recent times.

Urbanization, climate change, and fire suppression practices are contributing to increased wildfire risk at the densely populated wildland-urban interface. These factors make fires more unpredictable and harder to manage. In January 2025, this was made devastatingly clear in Los Angeles, when massive wildfires engulfed entire hillsides and canyons, destroying neighborhoods and damaging surrounding ecosystems.

A solar storm like the one that caused a nine-hour blackout across Quebec in 1989 could have even more dramatic effects if it struck the eastern United States today. Now, scientists have developed new tools to detect these storms before they strike by mapping the hidden electrical structure beneath our feet, revealing how the ground itself could influence the impact on our power grid.