Phys.org: Earth science

Planetary heating is intensifying and key climate indicators are deteriorating, top scientists said Thursday, warning that funding decisions affecting Earth observation systems in the United States and other countries threaten efforts to track global warming.

In 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle triggered an estimated 800,000 landslides across the North Island, making it one of the most extreme landslide events ever recorded. New research by Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) and Earth Sciences New Zealand suggests that under a warmer climate, future storms similar to Cyclone Gabrielle could be even more extreme, triggering tens of thousands more landslides across parts of the North Island and highlighting the need for targeted planning in vulnerable areas.

A new study finds that burning 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) of California conifer forests each year with prescribed fire could cut deadly pollution from wildfire smoke by roughly 10% over a decade.

In a new paper published in Science, leading scientists and climate policy experts show that 15% of current global warming (0.3°C) from human emissions stems from pollutants that fall outside most existing climate policy frameworks. Most of these overlooked pollutants are called "indirect greenhouse gases" and include carbon monoxide, non-methane volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and molecular hydrogen.

Researchers combining two methods to reconstruct the rupture evolution of the July 2025 magnitude 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake found the rupture from the megathrust event extended about 500 kilometers (311 miles) from its epicenter.

Climate change could make historically rare tropical storms in Southern California produce significantly more precipitation in the next few decades, and when they strike, landslides are likely to become a bigger risk across the region, according to new research in Nature Climate Change.

Strong and consistent evidence shows that the entire climate system is continuing to heat, driving rapid global warming. Human activities pushed global warming to 1.37°C in 2025, and its level is projected to surpass 1.5°C in about four years. Crucially, the rate at which heat is accumulating in Earth's system suggests high levels of future warming. These are some of the key findings from the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) report, published in Earth System Science Data.

For almost a century, researchers have known that vertical land motion—the lifting and sinking of the ground—affects sea level locally. As the ground sinks, the sea level rises relative to the land. Scientists also assumed this process generally occurred at a steady rate over time. But a research team that includes Thomas Wahl, a UCF researcher and associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, has found that ground subsidence has undergone phases of variable change, creating significant implications for coastal communities.

A brown mass—a mixture of water, boulders and fine matter—plows through the landscape. The mountains wash more than a thousand lorryloads of material into the valley on a fairly regular basis, causing damage in excess of CHF 100 million per year in Switzerland alone. A better understanding of this natural hazard requires data from the debris flow channels, of which there is very little because of the complex surveying process.

Ice-age sea-level declines may have turned seafloor volcanoes into natural iron fertilizer for plankton, potentially enhancing ocean carbon storage, Boston College researchers report in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The quest to identify a new way to potentially counter one of the world's most widely discussed solar geoengineering proposals has taken a new, exciting turn—raising questions about how future climate interventions could be governed.

Human-caused sea-level rise has significantly increased the frequency of extreme coastal flooding worldwide, according to a new study led by a Tulane University researcher. The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that coastal flooding events expected only once every 100 years are now, on average, about 12 times more likely to occur.

The number of icebergs in the Arctic has increased sharply since the 2000s. This is due to the destabilization of large glaciers in northeast Greenland and parts of the Russian Arctic, as well as the increasing mobility of sea ice. The result: Stones rain down from the melting icebergs, forming new hard-substrate habitats for marine life on the soft seafloor.

Human activities have significantly altered the freshwater cycle, threatening its ability to support vital climatic and ecological Earth system processes. A new study led by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland shows that the freshwater cycle has increasingly moved away from a stable state due to climate change and large-scale water and land use. The newly published study updates the status of the freshwater change planetary boundary, which is one of the core components in the annual Planetary Health Check reports.

Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo (UTokyo-IIS), have developed a real-time data assimilation system that substantially improves streamflow and flood forecasting accuracy across Japan. This new data assimilation system outperforms Japan's current early warning system. Compared with the previous early warning system, the new data assimilation system yields improved forecasts for 80% of the major river reaches in Japan and enables reliable flood prediction across more than 60% of the observation stations in Japan.

The first few billion years of Earth's history saw the rise of life, the atmosphere and the oceans. Still, that time is shrouded in mystery: Not many rocks remain that preserve a record of those early iterations of our modern world. Dynamic geologic processes like erosion, subduction and burial mean the surface is constantly being reshaped, and older rocks aren't very common. But that time period is critical to understanding our own origins and how catastrophic events like asteroid impacts might have affected early life on the planet.

Researchers at Geosciences Barcelona (GEO3BCN-CSIC) have developed a novel way to monitor the silent accumulation of volcanic gases beneath Earth's surface using seismic ambient noise. The results could significantly improve early warning systems for volcanic eruptions.

Following the devastating urban fire that broke out in Wajima City after Japan's 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake, investigators struggled to identify a clear ignition source, despite widespread destruction and unusual reports of flames emerging from areas with no visible combustible material. While previous studies have linked earthquakes to secondary disasters such as tsunamis and infrastructure failures, the possible role of underground methane release has remained poorly understood.

Ocean currents are not just horizontal motions that flow from side to side. There are also vertical currents that act like deep-sea elevators, pushing heat and carbon down into the deep, while bringing up vital nutrients and dissolved gases to the surface.

Our novel artificial intelligence model can predict extreme storm surges with high accuracy, including under future climate conditions. Because the AI model runs much faster, it can help researchers and practitioners better assess coastal flood risk for adaptation planning.