Phys.org: Earth science

A vast sheet of volcanic rock in the Andes has preserved clues to a buried landscape that existed 22 million years ago, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers.

For the first time, important features of the Antarctic coastal zone have been mapped at high resolution around the continent by training an artificial intelligence tool to accurately recognize grounded icebergs in satellite radar images.

Northern India experiences some of the world's worst winter air pollution, with dangerous episodes often prompting emergency control efforts. In major cities like Delhi, the Air Quality Index has reached levels above 999—over 30 times the World Health Organization's safety limit.

The southern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is known as the Copperbelt because of its rich deposits of copper and other minerals.

Dozens of glacial lakes have formed across northern India in the last three decades, while existing lakes have expanded rapidly, highlighting the need to monitor a landscape reshaped by climate change.

The historic droughts of 2023 and 2024 in the Amazon reduced river flows and altered the region's rainfall composition. Daily monitoring in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, revealed these changes through the use of isotopes, which act as a kind of water "fingerprint." This method demonstrated how El Niño and warming in the North Atlantic affected the origin of moisture and precipitation dynamics.

Some 550 million years ago, Earth looked very different than it does today. The Southern Hemisphere was dominated by an enormous single continent known as Gondwana.

A University of the Basque Country-EHU research group has determined the causes of a 255 m (837 feet) crustal uplift of the Atlantic slope and a 167 m (548 feet) uplift of the Mediterranean slope, as well as the development of rivers in these areas.

Peatlands store large amounts of carbon. However, when they are drained, they can become substantial sources of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).

In early 2017 and 2023, California experienced two catastrophic and record-breaking floods that caused billions of dollars in damage, triggered mudslides and forced thousands of people to evacuate. Why this happened left scientists scratching their heads. Both disasters struck during La Niña conditions, which normally bring drier-than-normal weather to California.

Extreme heat has become more common—both research and lived experience document this—but when it arrives is a different question. A new study finds that, rather than occurring only during warm seasons, extreme heat events have become more frequent in the months before and after, too.

In November 2025, NASA and its European partners launched the Sentinel-6B satellite to improve hurricane forecasts, help protect infrastructure and benefit commercial industries, including shipping. The satellite is now flying 30 seconds behind its predecessor, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich. Both satellites are providing precise sea level height measurements during what oceanographers expect to be a historic El Niño, a naturally occurring oceanic phenomenon in which warmer-than-usual Pacific waters shift global weather patterns.

Fieldwork is a vital part of geoscience research, allowing scientists and students to directly observe, interact with and collect data about Earth processes that cannot be replicated in the lab.

Rising sea levels and storm surges could cost $855 billion in economic losses across Australia by the end of the century, according to new research, the first of its kind in Australia.

From the Vredefort Dome in South Africa (the world's oldest and largest known meteorite impact structure) to the volcanic lakes of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, Africa's landscapes hold some of Earth's oldest stories. Morocco's M'Goun UNESCO Global Geopark records more than 200 million years of geological history, while Tanzania's Ngorongoro-Lengai landscape brings together a vast caldera, an active volcano and the fossil record of Olduvai Gorge.

The Anthropocene became part of the zeitgeist after Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen launched the idea in 2000. This is the notion that a crescendo of human impacts has recently propelled Earth out of the relatively stable climatic conditions of the Holocene epoch, during which human civilization developed and flourished, to produce a new kind of planet.

Canada's last epishelf lake drained into the Arctic Ocean following the 2020 breakup of the Milne Ice Shelf and will not recover, a new study confirms.

Indonesia's Mount Anak Krakatau has erupted again this week, sending plumes of volcanic ash high into the sky and disrupting hundreds of flights. More than 300,000 passengers have been affected.

Southeast Asia has spent decades trying to tackle haze from forest fires. Yet every few years, the region finds itself breathing it again. The transboundary environmental problem has become a recurrent phenomenon in the region.

Since the 1950s, the Tibetan Plateau has experienced pronounced warming and wetting. However, an overall shift toward wetter conditions does not necessarily mean that drought risk has diminished. On the contrary, against the backdrop of continued warming, compound hot-dry events—characterized by the simultaneous occurrence of high temperatures and drought—have become an increasingly important climate risk across the plateau.