Phys.org: Earth science

Climate change has caused Greenland's ice sheet to lose 20 percent more ice than previously thought, according to research published Wednesday that used satellite imagery to track the retreat of glaciers over the past four decades.

Sea-level rise—along with increasing temperatures—is one of the clearest signals of man-made global warming. Yet exactly how rising water levels affect the coast is often misunderstood.

Three to five billion people—or up to two-thirds of the world's population—are set to be affected by projected rainfall changes by the end of the century unless the world rapidly ramps up emissions reduction efforts, according to new research by myself and colleagues.

Sustainable water management is an increasing concern in arid regions around the world, and scientists and regulators are turning to remote sensing tools like OpenET to help track and manage water resources. OpenET uses publicly available data produced by NASA and USGS Landsat and other satellite systems to calculate evapotranspiration (ET), or the amount of water lost to the atmosphere through soil evaporation and plant transpiration, at the level of individual fields.

As the threat of global warming looms, researchers are racing to understand how complex, interconnected weather systems affect one another. Unprecedented changes to weather patterns, sometimes in defiance of models and predictions, point to the need for a global perspective.

New insights from artificial intelligence about permafrost coverage in the Arctic may soon give policymakers and land managers the high-resolution view they need to predict climate-change-driven threats to infrastructure such as oil pipelines, roads and national security facilities.

Nearly 75% of the U.S. could experience damaging earthquake shaking, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey-led team of more than 50 scientists and engineers.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have upgraded a highly precise technology designed to monitor emissions of methane, a critical greenhouse gas, and other trace gases, even in harsh field conditions. Measuring methane emissions and pinpointing their source is an important step toward reducing them—the goal of the Global Methane Pledge recently signed by more than 150 nations at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

A team of oceanographers, geologists and Earth scientists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. and Germany has learned more about the history of the Melanesian Border Plateau by studying rocks they retrieved from the ocean floor in 2013 along with seismic data. Their paper is published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

A new AI program can train neural networks using just a handful of images to rapidly characterize in satellite and drone data new objects such as ocean debris, deforestation zones, urban areas and more.

The disaster near the small town of Brumadinho in southeastern Brazil occurred shortly after midday on 25 January 2019. At a nearby iron ore mine, the tailings dam—a storage area for the sludgy, fine-grained residues from ore processing, or "tailings"—collapsed.

Climate change is reshaping forests differently across the United States, according to a new analysis of U.S. Forest Service data. With rising temperatures, escalating droughts, wildfires, and disease outbreaks taking a toll on trees, researchers warn that forests across the American West are bearing the brunt of the consequences.

For a study published in the Journal of Remote Sensing, a team of scientists led by Xihan Mu from Beijing Normal University has made a leap forward in environmental monitoring and ecological research. They have created seamless maps of Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) over China at 30-meter resolution and semimonthly intervals, covering the years 2010-2020.

Between the record-breaking global heat and extreme downpours, it's hard to ignore that something unusual is going on with the weather in 2023.

The Greek archipelago of Santorini consists of the remains of a powerful volcano. Members of the international IODP expedition "Hellenic Arc Volcanic Field" have now found evidence of one of the largest eruptions ever recorded in the southern Aegean Arc.

It is common knowledge that humans have a big effect on the world and their natural environment. However, what may be less well-known is that humans can also induce earthquakes. Industrial activities such as geothermal energy production, fracking for oil and natural gas, and wastewater disposal can all lead to increased seismic activity that commonly takes the form of earthquakes. In extreme cases, these earthquakes can lead to casualties and have considerable negative social, ecological, and economic consequences for the regions affected.

Macroalgae are the most productive plants in coastal ecosystems. They have attracted worldwide interest due to their ability to sequester carbon. The growth of macroalgae can produce significant amounts of particulate organic carbon (POC), but it is unclear how these POC are metabolized and how they affect carbon sequestration.

A recent study published in Big Earth Data has shown how scientists from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) harnessed satellite altimetry to track changes in the water level of 988 Chinese lakes larger than 10 square kilometers.

Dangerous avalanche conditions will develop this weekend across the high country, prompting the Colorado Avalanche Information Center to issue a special avalanche advisory on Wednesday.

Beaches and dunes are becoming increasingly trapped between rising sea levels and infrastructure. Dutch researchers have found that nowadays, when dropped on a random beach around the world, you only need to walk 390 meters on average to find the nearest road or building. While that short walking distance may seem convenient if you want a day at the beach, it's bad news for our protection against rising sea levels, drinking water supplies and biodiversity.