Phys.org: Earth science

Since 2020, the Barry Landslide in Alaska's Prince William Sound has been outfitted with instruments monitoring seismic signals from the area, as researchers hope to catch a destructive, tsunami-generating landslide before it starts.

When hurricanes or strong storms sweep up the United States' East Coast and meet the shores of the country's largest estuary, Chesapeake Bay, the familiar pattern of storm activity gets a little more complicated. A new study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, shows that water levels inside the bay can spike far more dramatically than along the open ocean, raising flood risks for coastal and inland communities.

Major storms are spreading industrial contaminants across entire neighborhoods, raising concerns about future well-being, especially in communities of color, according to new research from Rice University and the University of Alberta.

A new algorithmic framework that can predict flooding could help save lives and reduce the devastation as climate change drives more intense and unpredictable rainfall.

More than 900 people are dead, thousands more missing and millions affected by a band of cyclones and extreme monsoonal weather across southern Asia. Torrential rain has triggered the worst flooding in decades, accompanied by landslides. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia have been hit hardest. The death toll is likely to rise significantly.

A new study published in Scientific Reports reports the discovery of a remarkably extensive hydrothermal vent field on the shelf of Milos Island, Greece. The vents were identified during the METEOR expedition M192, where the research team used a combination of different methods, including underwater technologies such as autonomous and remotely operated vehicles, to survey the seafloor.

In a step toward better understanding how the ocean sequesters carbon, new findings from UC Santa Barbara researchers and collaborators challenge the current view of how carbon dioxide is "fixed" in the sunless ocean depths. UCSB microbial oceanographer Alyson Santoro and colleagues, publishing in the journal Nature Geoscience, present results that help to reconcile discrepancies in accounting for nitrogen supply and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fixation at depth.

A new Tulane University study published in Science Advances sheds light on how floods influence the way rivers move, offering fresh insight into how changing flood patterns may reshape waterways and the communities that depend on them.

Coral reefs have long been celebrated as biodiversity hotspots—but new research shows they have also played a much deeper role: conducting the rhythm of Earth's carbon and climate cycles for more than 250 million years.

When fire broke out at the world's largest battery energy storage facility in January 2025, its thick smoke blanketed surrounding wetlands, farms and nearby communities on the central California coast.

Around 12,000 years ago, the last Ice Age ended, global temperatures rose and the early Holocene began, during which time human societies became increasingly settled. A new study published in Nature Geoscience shows the important role played by the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica in this transition.

Slow earthquakes have been discovered to exhibit anomalously slow, long-lasting and small slips, adjacent to regular earthquakes where we sometimes feel catastrophic vibration. However, no one knows the reason why slow earthquakes show such strange characteristics. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at The University of Osaka succeeded in experimentally reproducing the multiple features of slow earthquakes in the lab and suggested the grain-scale origin of them based on their direct observations.

The United Nations' global climate summit has finished for another year. Some progress was made in Brazil on climate finance and adaptation. But efforts to end reliance on fossil fuels were stymied by—you guessed it—fossil fuel power.