Phys.org: Earth science

The sediments underlying the Salt Lake Valley are thicker in places than previously thought, indicating that current seismic hazard models likely underestimate the amount of shaking Utah's population center could experience in future earthquakes, according to new research led by University of Utah seismologists.

Governments should ban all mining and fishing in the high seas "forever" to protect ocean biodiversity, climate stability—and humanity, climate and ocean experts said Wednesday.

The UK government recently announced plans to fund five small-scale trials related to geoengineering. It's the first time a state research funding body has put serious money into what's known as solar radiation management, or SRM, which seeks to cool the planet by reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space.

Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be triggered by very little ocean warming above present-day, leading to a devastating four meters of global sea level rise to play out over hundreds of years, according to a study now published in Communications Earth & Environment, co-authored by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). However, the authors emphasize that immediate actions to reduce emissions could still avoid a catastrophic outcome.

Mount Etna, the volcano that towers over eastern Sicily, has again captivated the world with a spectacular show, spewing smoke and high into the sky.

A team of meteorologists, Earth scientists and oceanographers at Sorbonne Université, working with one colleague from Université Paris-Saclay and another from Université Brest, all in France, has developed a simulation that they believe shows how declining coral reef calcification could slow global warming.

The clean-up and site restoration of a New Zealand research station in Antarctica has provided valuable lessons on the challenges of contaminated sites, according to a study in the journal Polar Record.

In September 2023, a bizarre global seismic signal was observed which appeared every 90 seconds over nine days—and was then repeated a month later. Almost a year later, two scientific studies proposed that the cause of these seismic anomalies were two mega tsunamis which were triggered in a remote East Greenland fjord by two major landslides which occurred due to warming of an unnamed glacier.

In the United States, earthen levees are an integral part of flood control systems, protecting around 23 million Americans and crucial infrastructure. Recently, the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2025 Report Card for America's Infrastructure rated the nation's levees a D+, with an estimated $70 billion needed for maintenance to bring them into a state of good repair.

In the southern flanks of the Indian Ocean and the central and eastern Pacific, just north of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, lie the Subantarctic Mode Waters. As part of the global ocean conveyor belt, these large masses of seawater transfer substantial amounts of heat and carbon northward into the interiors of the Indian and Pacific oceans. These waters hold about 20% of all anthropogenic carbon found in the ocean, and their warming accounted for about 36% of all ocean warming over the past two decades—making them critical players in Earth's climate system.

Along with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, iron is essential for the growth of microscopic phytoplankton in the ocean. However, a new study led by oceanographers at the University of Hawaii'i (UH) at Mānoa revealed that iron released from industrial processes, such as coal combustion and steel making, is altering the ecosystem in the North Pacific Transition Zone, a region just north of Hawai'i that is important for fisheries in the Pacific.

When it comes to carbon emissions, there's no bigger foe than the building and construction sectors, which contribute at least a third of global greenhouse gases.

A small international team of volcanologists has built a more detailed picture of the Campi Flegrei caldera's internal structure using high-resolution seismic imaging and results from rock physics experiments conducted on core samples collected from deep wells.

A newly published study finds that California's Salton Sea emits hydrogen sulfide, a toxic and foul-smelling gas, at rates that regularly exceed the state's air quality standards. The presence of these emissions in communities surrounding the Salton Sea is "vastly underestimated" by government air-quality monitoring systems, the researchers found.

A study co-led by Irina Gorodetskaya, a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR), brings together all up-to-date data on the phenomenon of atmospheric rivers in Antarctica and reveals the uncertainties arising from the effects of climate change.

New research led by the University of Sydney adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it.

North America's deepest gorge, Hells Canyon, which slithers along the border of Idaho and Oregon, is a surprisingly new addition to the Earth's ancient landscape. A recent study suggests that a monumental shift in Snake river drainage around 2.1 million years ago reshaped the topography, carving out Hells Canyon, which plunges an astonishing 2,400 m, significantly deeper than the Grand Canyon.

In the Paris Agreement of 2015, the international community of countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C, and preferably to 1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels. This refers to the increase in global surface air temperature, inspected at any time of interest as an average over 20 years.

Forests in the Peruvian Amazon aren't growing back after gold mining—not just because the soil is damaged by toxic metals, but because the land has been depleted of its water. A common mining method known as suction mining reshapes the terrain in ways that drain moisture and trap heat, creating harsh conditions where even replanted seedlings can't survive.

Flooding in coastal communities is happening far more often than previously thought, according to a new study from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study also found major flaws with the widely used approach of using marine water level data to capture instances of flooding.