Phys.org: Earth science

Early in 2023, a series of storms dumped record-breaking amounts of rain and snow across California. Flooding, power outages, and mudslides from the deluge resulted in 21 deaths and more than $3 billion in losses.

Deglaciation during the Holocene (last ~17,000 years) has had significant impacts on the surrounding mountainous environments as glaciers retreated and left distinct landforms in their wake, such as debris ridges (moraines) deposited at the snout during retreat.

A team of scientists led by a Tulane University oceanographer has found that deposits deep under the ocean floor reveal a way to measure the ocean oxygen level and its connections with carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere during the last ice age, which ended more than 11,000 years ago.

A unique experiment that began in Aberdeen during the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how the humble moss could be used by citizen scientists to monitor air pollution levels in urban environments worldwide.

Even if global warming were to stop completely, the volume of ice in the European Alps would fall by 34% by 2050. If the trend observed over the last 20 years continues at the same rate, however, almost half the volume of ice will be lost as has been demonstrated by scientists from the University of Lausanne (UNIL, Switzerland) in a new international study.

From late June to mid-July of 2021, the Pacific Northwest was scorched under an unprecedented heat dome, shattering temperature records and igniting a wave of concern over climate extremes. As cities like Portland and Seattle, known for their mild summers, grappled with triple-digit heat, scientists delved into the whys and hows of this meteorological anomaly.

A scientific drilling mission in the Gulf of Mexico has returned with 44 cores from a methane hydrate reservoir deep under the seafloor. Globally, energy-rich methane hydrates hold an estimated 15% of the world's organic carbon but are poorly understood by the scientific community.

Scientists at British Antarctic Survey are using satellite images to track the colossal iceberg A23a.

The 6 Feb. 2023 earthquakes of eastern Turkiye were the most devastating in the region for the past century. Researchers from China University of Geosciences, US Geological Survey, and Middle East Technical University were on the scene one day after the quakes, and used drones and field surveys to make the most detailed maps of a major continental earthquake ever, so soon after major earthquakes.

The cost of climate change may take six months off the average human lifespan, according to a study published January 18, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Amit Roy from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and The New School for Social Research, U.S.

Over the past few days, extremely cold Arctic air and severe winter weather have swept southward into much of the U.S., breaking daily low-temperature records from Montana to Texas. Tens of millions of people have been affected by dangerously cold temperatures, and heavy lake-effect snow and snow squalls have had severe effects across the Great Lakes and Northeast regions.

Fountains of lava erupted from the Sundhnúkur volcanic system in southwest Iceland on Jan. 14, 2024. As the world watched on webcams and social media, lava flows cut off roads and bubbled from a new fissure that invaded the outskirts of the coastal town of Grindavík, burning down at least three houses in their path.

Protecting the world's oceans against accelerating damage from human activities could be cheaper and take up less space than previously thought, new research has found.

Man-made earthquakes, or induced seismicity, have become an increasing concern. These events can occur during fluid injection or extraction, such as in oil or gas reservoirs, wastewater disposal, or geothermal reservoirs.

The source and amounts of different types of mineral dust reaching the Earth's atmosphere needs to be re-evaluated so its effects on human health and climate change can be more accurately understood, scientists claim.

The latest climate models show a weakening of the subtropical circulation under stable greenhouse warming scenario, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

The way science is funded is hampering Earth system models, and may be skewing important climate predictions, according to a new comment published in Nature Climate Change by Woodwell Climate Research Center and an international team of model experts.

When combined with data from tree-ring records, stalagmites can open up a unique archive to study natural climate fluctuations across hundreds of years, a research team including geoscientists from Heidelberg University and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have demonstrated.

In Japan, the summer season is characterized by stagnant rain fronts, causing persistent heavy rainfall. This phenomenon is reportedly associated with global-scale atmospheric and oceanic anomalies. Remote influences from the tropical and extratropical regions have been identified as the main causes, respectively. However, the link between the two causes remains unclear.

On September 4, 2022, Hayato Ueda, a geologist at Niigata University, boarded a submarine vehicle with pilot, Chris May, and took a dive into the Japan Trench within the epicenter area of the 2011 Tohoku-oki megaquake, which caused the devastating tsunami disaster.