Phys.org: Earth science

In a world affected by climate change, the Southern Ocean plays an outsized role. It absorbs up to 40% of the human-caused emissions taken up by the oceans while also being home to some of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems.

A lot of the climate-altering carbon pollution humans release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels gets drawn into the Earth's oceans and landscapes through natural processes, mostly through photosynthesis, as plants turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass.

Some of the rainiest places on Earth could see their annual precipitation nearly halved if climate change continues to alter the way ocean water moves around the globe.

Today at about 11:30am local time, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the country's far east.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a much stronger short-term effect on warming than carbon dioxide. Over the near-term (20 years), 1 ton of methane has the warming effect of up to 84 tons of carbon dioxide, while over a hundred years, 1 ton of methane has the warming effect of about 28 tons of carbon dioxide. For this reason, controlling methane emissions is a high priority in limiting warming.

Recent climate-related crises—from severe storms and flooding to extreme heat—have raised new questions about how local governments communicate the risk of these crises and what they are doing to keep their citizens safe. To better understand what this communication looks like at local level, and the factors that may be shaping it, researchers from Drexel University analyzed climate resilience planning information available on the public-facing websites of 24 coastal communities in New Jersey that are contending with the effects of sea level rise.

A formidable new radar satellite jointly developed by the United States and India launched Wednesday, designed to track subtle changes in Earth's land and ice surfaces and help predict both natural and human-caused hazards.

A huge flood triggered by the rapid draining of a lake beneath the Greenland ice sheet occurred with such force that it fractured the ice above and burst out across its surface.

Wildfire season is no longer something that comes and goes; it's becoming a year-round concern. In BC, wildfires can shape the entire year, and we want to know what's coming, what's at risk and how to prepare.

A large region of unusually hot rock deep beneath the Appalachian Mountains in the United States could be linked to Greenland and North America splitting apart 80 million years ago, according to new research led by the University of Southampton.

QUT researchers have developed an advanced remote sensing method for accurately detecting and mapping Antarctica's delicate moss and lichen growth, the mainstays of the continent's fragile ecosystems. The research team also developed a way to survey Antarctica's vegetation that is noninvasive and will enable accurate surveys more quickly and cheaply than before. The paper is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers have devised a new machine learning method to improve large-scale climate model projections and demonstrated that the new tool makes the models more accurate at both the global and regional level. This advance should provide policymakers with improved climate projections that can be used to inform policy and planning decisions.

New research from UNSW shows climate change could cause hailstorms to get worse in some of Australia's most densely populated cities.

A lot of attention has been paid to how climate change can drive biodiversity loss. Now, MIT researchers have shown that the reverse is also true: Reductions in biodiversity can jeopardize one of Earth's most powerful levers for mitigating climate change.

The findings are important because methane is over 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Arctic lakes are already major natural methane sources globally, but the processes that control how methane is produced and released from lake sediments have remained poorly understood—until now.

Wetlands are among the most efficient ecosystems for carbon sequestration, storing more than 30% of global soil carbon in only 3%–13% of Earth's land surface. However, the spatiotemporal patterns of wetland carbon uptake and their role in regulating global land carbon sink dynamics have been poorly quantified.

Though scientists have long understood how lightning strikes, the precise atmospheric events that trigger it within thunderclouds have remained a perplexing mystery. The mystery may now be solved, thanks to a team of researchers led by Victor Pasko, professor of electrical engineering in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, that has revealed the powerful chain reaction that triggers lightning.

New findings from studying over two decades of satellite observations reveal that Earth's continents have experienced unprecedented freshwater loss since 2002, driven by climate change, unsustainable groundwater use and extreme droughts. The study, led by Arizona State University and published today in Science Advances, highlights the emergence of four continental-scale "mega-drying" regions, all located in the northern hemisphere, and warns of severe consequences for water security, agriculture, sea level rise and global stability.

Heat waves aren't just getting worse on land, the majority of the world's oceans are experiencing record-breaking temperatures too. These marine heat waves are getting longer, more intense and reaching farther than ever before. In particular, 2023's marine heat waves (MHWs) exhibited the longest duration, widest extents, and highest intensities on record—and 2024 wasn't any better.

The soil in high-elevation, cooler, drier tropical forests in the Colombian Andes stores more carbon from fires than lower, warmer regions, new research shows.