Phys.org: Earth science

When Katey Walter Anthony heard rumors of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, ballooning under the lawns of fellow Fairbanks residents, she nearly didn't believe it.

A few miles south of Yosemite's famed Glacier Point, ringed by striking granite domes, lies the Illilouette Basin. This small stretch of the Sierra Nevada Mountains has become a sort of fire laboratory, a place where natural wildfires have been allowed to burn since 1972. In contrast with the long-supported program of fire suppression that has dominated American forests since the late 19th century, resulting in dense and unhealthy forests, the Illilouette Basin's story is about the benefits that natural fire can bring to the landscape.

It was a monster wave that hit a fjord on Greenland's east coast on 16 September 2023. In certain places, the traces of the flooding reached 200 meters high. Researchers led by Angela Carrillo Ponce from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) have now evaluated the seismic signals from earthquake measuring stations worldwide and discovered another unusual event: Triggered by the megatsunami, a standing wave sloshed back and forth in the narrow bay of the uninhabited Dickson Fjord for more than a week.

Scientists often seek answers to humanity's most pressing challenges in nature. When it comes to global warming, geological history offers a unique, long-term perspective.

Scientists have recovered the first long section of rocks that originated in the Earth's mantle, the layer below the crust and the planet's largest component.

The isotopic composition of carbon in iron formations from the Saglek-Hebron Complex in Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador) has been seen as evidence of the earliest traces of life on Earth. But a new study by the University of Ottawa, Carleton University and University College London suggests otherwise.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica live up to their name. The region is one of the driest places on Earth—mountains form a wall around the valleys and prevent melting glacier water from intruding, humidity is extremely low, and no rain was documented in the valleys between the 1960s and the early 2020s.

An international study led by researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI has used a new method to identify the various sources of aerosols that create smog in Beijing.

Researchers led by Prof. Husi Letu from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a novel algorithm for measuring cloud properties using neural networks.

On 10 November 2023, authorities evacuated the city of Grindavík on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula. Months of seismic turbulence and other signs of an impending volcanic eruption (which would not actually occur until December) had come to a head with rapid-fire earthquakes and dramatic reshaping of the ground—including faults that cracked through roads, pipelines, and houses.

Using data collected from a 2022 magnitude 6.8 earthquake in Luding County in China's Sichuan Province, researchers have tested whether Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations could be used for rapid prediction of earthquake-triggered landslides.

Sea surface temperatures are on the rise around the world, but the problem is pronounced in South Florida, according to a series of studies published by researchers at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science.

A new study out of The University of Texas at Arlington shows that frozen land in Alaska is eroding faster than it can be replaced due to climate change.

Scientists at the University of Southampton have answered one of the most puzzling questions in plate tectonics: how and why "stable" parts of continents gradually rise to form some of the planet's greatest topographic features.

Even though climate change is bringing more frequent and severe heat waves, there is no standard, global way to measure heat-wave severity, and existing indices have different thresholds for defining dangerous heat-stress conditions.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a type of remote sensing from satellites that uses the reflection of radio waves to relay information about the surface of the earth. This reflection, or backscatter, is responsive to physical properties, such as roughness, vertical structure, and moisture. SAR is widely used for different types of mapping and monitoring, but signal interference in urban environments can cause distortions that make SAR data difficult to interpret.

Dense hydrous magnesium silicates (DHMSs) are generally considered as primary water carriers from the shallow lithosphere to the deep mantle transition region (MTR; 410–660 km in depth). Among DHMSs, Superhydrous phase B (hereafter, SuB) holds the chemical formula, Mg10Si3H3O18.

Climate models compute vast amounts of information about Earth's climate system—from small water droplets to large-scale weather patterns—to re-create past climate or predict future climate. Accurately re-creating how Earth's energy (measured in watts) is balanced between the atmosphere, land surface, oceans, and sea ice helps scientists understand what factors are causing changes in climate and allows us to better prepare for the future.

Forests absorb carbon by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making forest carbon stocks an important resource against climate change. In research published in Ecology and Evolution, investigators examined existing tree regeneration patterns to develop an indicator of potential changes to future carbon stocks across forests in the northeastern and midwestern United States.

NOAA's 2024-25 Annual High Tide Flooding Outlook predicts fewer high-tide flood days than last year.