EOS

Source: Earth’s Future

The space industry is surging. In coming years, nearly 10,000 spacecraft are slated to launch into low-Earth orbit for a variety of purposes, such as global surveillance, space tourism, and satellite “megaconstellations” providing internet service.

Rocket engine exhaust, as well as the burnup of inactive satellites and rocket parts reentering Earth’s atmosphere, releases a suite of pollutants. These chemicals have long been considered to pose little threat to our climate, given the historically small size of the space industry. Now, the sector’s rapid growth will send its emissions skyrocketing—but scientists don’t yet have a clear picture of the environmental ramifications.

An analysis by Vliex et al. of rockets launched in 2022 revealed that spaceflight depletes the ozone layer and contributes to global warming, with a significant portion of this ozone loss attributable to nitrogen oxide emissions released by objects reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

The researchers calculated emissions from all 186 rockets launched in 2022, as well as all 472 objects—with a combined total mass of nearly 5,000 tons—that reentered the atmosphere that year. They conducted computational simulations of each launch’s trajectory and emissions at various altitudes up to 100 kilometers, and they calculated emissions released by object reentry. They also accounted for the effects of chemical reactions that occur in rocket exhaust plumes, which alter emissions’ chemical composition.

Incorporation of the calculated emissions into GEOS-Chem, a computational model of atmospheric chemistry, revealed their ozone-depleting and Earth-warming effects, with reentry emissions identified as playing a key role in ozone depletion. The researchers found that accounting for plume reactions reduced the estimated effects of spaceflight emissions, highlighting the value of considering plume chemistry in future assessments.

The analysis also underscored the varying effects of different rocket fuel types. Solid-state fuels, used recently in rocket boosters for NASA’s Artemis II mission to return astronauts to the Moon, appeared to cause the greatest amount of ozone depletion relative to propellant mass, while rocket-grade kerosene caused the greatest amount of warming.

On the basis of their findings, the researchers call for further research into reentry emissions and rocket plume chemistry as the space industry continues to expand and evolve. (Earth’s Future, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF007795, 2026)

—Sarah Stanley, Science Writer

Citation: Stanley, S. (2026), Rocket launches and reentries harm Earth’s ozone layer, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260183. Published on 8 June 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Initial analyses suggest that the earthquake this morning has the potential to have triggered significant numbers of landslides and areas of liquefaction.

At the time of writing, the impacts of the M=7.8 earthquake that occurred offshore the south coast of Mindanao in the Philippines remain unclear. Initial reports in the local press suggest 15 fatalities so far, but as always it could be the case that there is no information from those areas most seriously impacted.

The USGS Pager site is the best source of information about potential landslide impacts, bearing in mind there is a high level of uncertainty. This estimates that the area exposed to landslides is at the high end of the “significant” scale and that the population exposed to landslides lies in the 1,000 to 10,000 people range. This is the Pager landslide hazard map:-

Initial Pager map of landslide hazard from the 8 June 2026 earthquake offshore Mindanao in the Philippines. Source: USGS.

The area with the highest level of landslide hazard is remote and rural, so we may not get good information from this area for a while.

The potential for liquefaction may be even more serious, with a broad swathe having a high level of hazard:-

Initial Pager map of liquefaction hazard from the 8 June 2026 earthquake offshore Mindanao in the Philippines. Source: USGS.

Past earthquakes have generated large liquefaction-related landslides on low angle slopes, with devastating effects. Hopefully, there won’t have been an event on this scale in Mindanao.

One final point to note is that the Philippines is just entering the typhoon season. Fortunately, Mindanao is sufficiently far south to be away from the main typhoon zone. However, these storms are so large that they can bring very heavy rainfall – see for example Typhoon Bopha in 2012. A similar event this year could have very significant consequences.

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: Earth’s Future

Mangrove forests straddle the edge of land and sea along some tropical and subtropical coastlines. These trees and shrubs have distinctive tangles of roots that trap sediment and produce organic matter, forming dense soils and efficiently storing carbon. Though mangroves cover only 1% of Earth’s surface, they store a whopping 15% of global ocean carbon in their trapped soils.

Their location along coastlines means mangroves are at the mercy of changing sea levels and sediment availability. Rising sea levels can drown mangroves or push them landward. At the same time, sediment supplies, belowground root growth, and organic matter accumulation can help build up mangrove soils, allowing forests to keep pace with sea level rise. So over time, will mangroves keep locking carbon into their soils, or will they start losing it?

Iwantoro et al. created a new model that examines the links between coastal processes to investigate vegetation growth and carbon accumulation in mangrove forests.

The researchers modeled a simplified tidal embayment to explore how different rates of sea level rise and sediment supplies would affect the mangroves. In these experiments, they found that carbon accumulation can increase at specific locations as waters rise because the increased water can lead to more mangrove growth—a result that matches existing data. However, when looking at landscape scales, they found sea level rise generally reduces total carbon sequestration through mangrove loss and soil erosion. The results showed that rising sea levels can alter mangroves from carbon storage sinks to carbon emitters.

The findings demonstrate that local trends in carbon sequestration may not be representative of larger-scale outcomes in mangrove forests. The study shows that understanding coastal landscapes as an interconnected system is crucial to understanding how mangroves can respond to climate and human-induced pressures, the researchers say. However, new assessments and approaches are needed to better understand future mangrove vulnerabilities. (Earth’s Future, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006984, 2026)

—Sarah Derouin (@sarahderouin.com), Science Writer

Citation: Derouin, S. (2026), Mangroves may be losing their grip on carbon storage as sea levels rise, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260144. Published on 5 June 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: AGU Advances

Asteroids and planetesimals regularly bombarded Earth between about 4.6 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, in the Hadean and Archean eons. Because few rocks today are more than 4 billion years old, our understanding of the planet’s environment during that time is limited. However, samples from the Moon and its cratered surface hint at the period’s rate of cosmic impacts.

Early asteroid strikes were responsible for significant changes in Earth’s crust, which was primarily basalt-like at the time. The shock waves from collisions fractured the crust and increased porosity, allowing fluids and gases to move through the rocks. Prior research suggests that the resulting hydrothermal systems—such as the network of geysers around Yellowstone National Park—provided the environment for the origin and evolution of early life on Earth.

Alexander et al. explored how surface impacts during the Hadean and Archean allowed fluids and gases to maneuver through crustal environments. The authors built a large suite of impact simulations with the iSALE shock physics code, toggling parameters such as basalt crust thickness, geothermal gradients, and the presence or absence of a 5-kilometer-deep ocean. The simulations detailed how collisions on the surface shaped permeability in the crust. They then integrated a model for ancient bombardment data to understand the cumulative effects of repeated strikes over time.

The results indicate that prior to 4.3 billion years ago, impacts may have made the crust far more permeable, particularly in its top 8 kilometers. From the simulations, the authors inferred that the size of permeable regions was dependent on impact energy, and that geothermal gradients and rock composition in the crust affected the degree of fragmentation after impact. These porous domains formed potential settings for prebiotic chemistry within the early crust.

The research is the first comprehensive study of impact-generated permeability in early Earth’s outermost layer. The results provide a novel framework for evaluating how bombardment influenced hydrothermal circulation and geochemical alteration during the Hadean and Archean eons, with implications for our understanding of life’s origin and evolution in Earth’s earliest days. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002097, 2026)

—Aaron Sidder, Science Writer

Citation: Sidder, A. (2026), Cosmic bombardment created potential for prebiotic chemistry, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260180. Published on 5 June 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

After centuries of overharvesting and environmental degradation reduced the world’s oyster reefs by 85%, restoration is bringing the conglomerations of thick-shelled mollusks back to coastal waters. And their return may have more benefits than scientists realized, new research suggests.

“Oysters build the foundation of an entire ecosystem.”

Oysters were initially restored to boost depleted fisheries, according to Rachel Smith, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As oysters cement their shells together into reefs, they create habitats for myriad species, including fish. “Oysters build the foundation of an entire ecosystem,” Smith said.

These days, oyster reefs are restored for reasons extending beyond ecology, including to rid coastal water of excess nutrients such as nitrogen. This pollutant enters coastal waters when wastewater, sewage, and fertilizer wash into the sea.

Past studies of nitrogen removed by oyster reefs largely looked at denitrification, a process in which microbes transform organic nitrogen in dead oysters and their excrement into inert gas. If organic nitrogen evades these microbes, it can be buried in reefs, but measurements of this mechanism are few.

Researchers collected cores from 20 oyster reefs in coastal North Carolina. Credit: Antonio Rodriguez/Institute of Marine Sciences, UNC-Chapel Hill

“[Burial] is definitely much less explored,” said Smith.

A study published in PLoS One looked beyond denitrification and found significant amounts of nitrogen become sequestered within oyster reefs as they grow, offering evidence that restored oyster reefs actually remove far more nitrogen than we thought.

Before she started this research, Anne Margaret Smiley, lead author of the new paper and a biogeochemist at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, suspected that the amount of nitrogen buried in oyster reefs would be small because organisms at the surface transform so much of it, leaving little left to bury. She was pleasantly surprised by the results.

“We’ve been looking at denitrification all this time, and now we found out that [oysters themselves] are really good at doing this too,” she said. “What an amazing thing to know.”

In Search of Buried Nitrogen

To explore how nitrogen is buried over time, scientists turned to 20 oyster reefs in the Rachel Carson National Estuarine Research Reserve near Beaufort, N.C., that were restored nearly 3 decades ago by UNC scientists.

Using a jackhammer and metal pipe, they extracted cores from the oyster reefs in 2011. About 10 centimeters in diameter, the cores sampled the full thickness of each reef, which ranged from 10 to 55 centimeters. Shortly after they were collected, the cores were sectioned off into 5-centimeter increments, sealed, and stored in a walk-in freezer. In the years since, the samples have proved useful for studying oyster reef growth during sea level rise and how much carbon the reefs sequester and in other areas of research. Recently, Smiley measured the nitrogen levels in each of these 5-centimeter sections.

Below the top 10 centimeters or so, where microbes break down organic matter, nitrogen levels increased. Looking at all samples, Smiley found that on average, a square meter of reef buried more than 6 grams of nitrogen each year, which is similar to the rate of nitrogen transformed by denitrification at oyster reefs.

“The more they can build up and out, the more [nitrogen] they can bury underneath.”

However, there was a large range in the amount of nitrogen buried, between 1 and 15 grams of nitrogen per square meter. The variability, the researchers found, was related to where the different oyster reefs grew.

For oyster reefs in sand flats, those in intertidal areas (between high and low tide on a shore) buried more than twice as much nitrogen as subtidal reefs, on average. Intertidal reefs grow faster and so bury more nitrogen. “The more they can build up and out, the more [nitrogen] they can bury underneath,” said Smiley.

But intertidal reefs that fringed the edge of salt marshes buried less nitrogen than other intertidal reefs. “They’re not able to grow as quickly,” she said, speculating that sediment from the neighboring marshes may slow reef growth.

Put Your Money Where Your Mollusk Is Intertidal oyster reefs, like this one in coastal North Carolina, are exposed above water at low tide. Credit: Johanna Rosman/Institute of Marine Sciences, UNC-Chapel Hill

North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality places the economic value of each kilogram of nitrogen removed from the environment at $26.39 (in 2024 dollars, which is about $28.50 in 2026). Using this figure, Smiley and her colleagues calculated that nitrogen removed from coastal waters and buried each year by a hectare of oyster reef has a value of $1,700 on average. This finding increases previous estimates of the value of oysters’ nitrogen removal services by 25% to 42%.

“A really valuable part of the study is not just taking those measurements, but then also translating that into valuation,” said Smith, who was not involved with the new study. The value of nitrogen burial can be added to oyster reef ecosystem services—the monetary value of benefits that humans gain from oyster reefs, such as clean water, food, and flood control. “[Buried nitrogen] is definitely an ecosystem service that I think is underappreciated,” she said.

Looking more broadly at the county that is home to the Rachel Carson Reserve, Smiley and her colleagues found that all the oyster reefs countywide bury about 120,000 kilograms of nitrogen each year—more than $3 million of value in the county’s shallow sounds and bays.

—Lisa S. Gardiner (@lisasgardiner.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Gardiner, L. S. (2026), Oysters clean up more nitrogen pollution than we thought, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260182. Published on 4 June 2026. Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

Mesoscale and submesoscale ocean processes influence ocean circulation, air-sea fluxes, ecosystem variability, and transport of materials. A new article in Reviews of Geophysics examines how these fine-scale processes shape the Indian Ocean, an ocean basin with unique monsoon behavior and a disproportionate impact on global climate. Here, we asked the authors to explain what mesoscale and submesoscale processes are, the techniques and challenges of observing and modeling fine-scale processes, and how biogeochemical cycles and climate change interact with these processes.

In simple terms, what are mesoscale and submesoscale processes?

Mesoscale processes pertain to oceanic features such as eddies and fronts, which
typically span a range of approximately 10 to 100 kilometers and can persist from
weeks to months. Submesoscale processes are of an even smaller scale, ranging
between approximately 100 meters and 10 kilometers, and evolve rapidly within a time frame of hours to days. These encompass sharp fronts, filaments, and small vortices.

Mesoscale processes account for more than 80% of the total kinetic energy. Submesoscale motions are of particular significance as they generate robust vertical movements that establish a connection between the surface ocean and deeper layers. As elaborated in our review, mesoscale and submesoscale processes function as a crucial link between large-scale ocean circulation and small-scale turbulence, facilitating the transfer of energy across different scales and regulating the distribution of heat, salt, and nutrients throughout the ocean.

Why is it important to understand how fine-scale processes operate in the Indian Ocean?

The Indian Ocean has a disproportionate influence on global climate.

The Indian Ocean has a disproportionate influence on global climate. It absorbs over a quarter of the ocean’s net heat gain and directly affects the environment and food security of nearly one-third of the world’s population. Unlike other ocean basins, the Indian Ocean is uniquely shaped by seasonally reversing monsoon winds and is strongly coupled with climate modes like the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Madden- Julian Oscillation. Mesoscale and submesoscale variability in this region modulates biogeochemical cycles, air-sea fluxes, and even large-scale energy balance. As our review highlights, understanding these fine-scale dynamics is essential for improving predictions of monsoon rainfall, tropical cyclone behavior, and long-term climate change.

How do scientists study mesoscale and submesoscale ocean processes?

Scientists employ a combination of field measurements, satellite observations, and numerical models, all of which were summarized in our review. In-situ observations serve as the foundation for mesoscale and submesoscale processes in the ocean. They encompass research cruises, moored arrays such as the RAMA network, Argo profiling floats, and autonomous platforms. The in-situ observations capture the three-dimensional structures and multiple variables during mesoscale and submesoscale processes.

Satellite altimetry has long been the principal tool for observing mesoscale eddies. However, the newly launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is revolutionary, as it offers sea surface height measurements at an unprecedented resolution, enabling the direct observation of submesoscale features for the first time.

High-resolution regional models with grid spacings of a few kilometers or less enable researchers to simulate these processes and test dynamical theories under controlled conditions.

What are some of the challenges in observing and modeling these processes?

In our review paper, we tackled the challenges in observations by adhering to four principles, namely high-resolution (more observations in a relatively small region), synchrony (observations conducted at the same time), persistence (observations for a long time), and interdisciplinary (observations of multiple ocean properties). These principles are anticipated to offer valuable guidance for future observational endeavors to surmount the corresponding challenges.

Modeling also poses difficulties. Even state-of-the-art climate models are unable to explicitly resolve submesoscale processes. Consequently, their effects have to be approximated via parameterizations. The development of accurate parameterizations continues to be an active area of research. Moreover, as the model resolution improves, the widely employed hydrostatic approximation may lose its validity, necessitating more intricate non-hydrostatic formulations. Data assimilation for such rapidly evolving features presents a particularly arduous challenge.

How do fine-scale processes interact with biogeochemical cycles in the Indian Ocean?

Mesoscale and submesoscale motions exert a strong regulatory influence on biogeochemical cycling.

Mesoscale and submesoscale motions exert a strong regulatory influence on biogeochemical cycling through the control of nutrient supply to the sunlit upper ocean. Cyclonic eddies elevate nutrient-rich deep waters into the euphotic zone, thereby promoting phytoplankton blooms. In contrast, anticyclonic eddies typically suppress surface productivity by deepening the mixed layer.

In the Arabian Sea, eddies and filaments can contribute up to 70% of the nutrients that support the monsoon-driven biological bloom. These fine-scale dynamics also have an impact on carbon dioxide exchange; mesoscale variability accounts for approximately 40% of the CO₂ flux variability in the western Arabian Sea. Moreover, eddies modulate oxygen minimum zones in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, where low oxygen levels have a profound effect on marine ecosystems.

How is climate change expected to influence these fine-scale processes in the Indian Ocean?

With the continuous progression of climate change, alterations in upper-ocean stratification, propelled by warming and modified freshwater inputs, are anticipated to transform the conditions giving rise to fine-scale instabilities. High-resolution climate model simulations suggest that in a warming global scenario, the eddy-active region associated with the Agulhas Current system may shift westward and poleward. This shift is correlated with the intensification of Agulhas leakage, which refers to the transport of warm Indian Ocean water into the Atlantic. These changes could exert far-reaching effects on global ocean circulation.

Warming is augmenting the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean.

Moreover, warming is augmenting the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean. These heatwaves disrupt vertical mixing and nutrient supply, thereby having cascading impacts on biological productivity. Nevertheless, substantial uncertainties persist in quantifying these long-term responses.

In general, there are two-way interactions between climate change and fine-scale processes. Alterations in one component will induce changes in the other, and the former will be subject to feedback from the latter.

What are the remaining questions or knowledge gaps where additional research is needed?

Our review reveals several key priorities. In the short term, specialized multi-scale observational campaigns are acutely required, especially in regions with insufficient sampling, to capture the three-dimensional structure and rapid evolution of submesoscale features. Additionally, a more in-depth understanding is needed regarding how eddies interact with barrier layers—regions characterized by strong salinity stratification that are unique to the northern Indian Ocean—and how these interactions regulate air-sea fluxes and marine heatwaves.

Longer-term challenges encompass integrating fine-scale dynamics into climate models and refining submesoscale parameterizations. Emerging tools from artificial intelligence and machine learning hold potential for representing unresolved processes and enhancing data assimilation. Finally, considering the logistical and financial requirements of fine-scale ocean research, sustained international collaboration will be indispensable.

—Lei Zhou (zhoulei1588@sjtu.edu.cn, 0000-0002-0433-3991) Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; Dongxiao Wang (dxwang@mail.sysu.edu.cn, 0000-0001-8778-2188) Sun Yat-Sen University School of Marine Sciences, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, China; Lin Wang (wanglin58@mail.sysu.edu.cn, 0009-0003-1062-5207) Sun Yat-Sen University, China; and Chunhua Qiu (qiuchh3@mail.sysu.edu.cn, 0000-0001-9684-6067)  Sun Yat-sen University School of Marine Sciences, China

Editor’s Note: It is the policy of AGU Publications to invite the authors of articles published in Reviews of Geophysics to write a summary for Eos Editors’ Vox.

Citation: Zhou, L., D. Wang, L. Wang, and C. Qiu (2026), Small-scale Indian Ocean dynamics underpin marine ecology and climate, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265025. Published on 4 June 2026. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The Trump administration’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has begun dismantling the infrastructure of a $368 million deep-ocean observing program critical to monitoring marine ecosystems, global currents, marine heat waves, and more, according to a 21 May announcement. 

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), funded by the NSF, has been collecting long-term oceanographic data at multiple deep-ocean sites since 2016. The information about ocean temperature, chemistry, currents, biological conditions, and more is used by scientists to understand a multitude of marine research questions including the activity of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a critical ocean current.

“I worry that … we’ll be losing this enormously valuable site where we could really contextualize and detect these changes going forward.”

“There’s a real danger that we lose the ability to keep looking for long-term changes [in the ocean]” as climate change alters Earth systems, said Hilary Palevsky, a marine biogeochemist who has used OOI data for a decade to study how the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide. “I worry that … we’ll be losing this enormously valuable site where we could really contextualize and detect these changes going forward.”

The NSF plans to remove all in-water arrays and infrastructure—including hundreds of deep-sea instruments—from four of the five currently-operating sites within the project: the Global Station Papa Array (in the Gulf of Alaska), Coastal Endurance Array (off the coasts of Oregon and Washington), Global Irminger Sea Array (southeast of Greenland), and Coastal Pioneer Array (off the coast of North Carolina). The removal is expected to occur over the next 15 months, though the process has already begun at the Endurance Array. 

The National Science Foundation’s planned descoping of the Ocean Observatories Initiative will include dismantling four of the five currently operating arrays of equipment. Credit: NSF/OOI

The Trump administration attempted previously to downscale OOI operations, proposing to cut its funding in 2025 and 2026, though Congress never approved the cuts. 

The administration’s decision to dismantle the arrays “aligns with NSF’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure,” Michael England, an NSF spokesman, told the New York Times. 

A Dearth of Data

As each array is dismantled, data streams will end, though all previously collected data from OOI networks will remain accessible, Jim Edson, principal investigator for the OOI, wrote in a letter to the oceanographic community. 

Palevsky said there’s “a lot of real concern” among the oceanographic community that the Endurance Array is being dismantled just as an intense El Niño event—and associated marine heat wave—is expected this summer. “It would be especially important to be able to document the effect that [El Niño] is having on coastal physical circulation and ecosystems,” she said. 

 
Related

•  Announcement on NSF OOI Descoping
•  NSF OOI Descoping Update for the Community 
•  Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System
•  Democrats Pledge to Fight Trump’s Removal of Ocean Monitors
•  Get Involved: AGU’s Science Policy Action Center 

“We encourage the community to use the ten-plus years of OOI data by including it in proposals, publications, presentations, and conversations with colleagues. Continued engagement demonstrates the scientific impact and wide-ranging applications enabled by the OOI and its data, underscoring its importance as a resource for the oceanographic community,” the 21 May announcement stated. 

There are other sources of data that researchers like Palevsky can use. But oceanographic research often requires stitching together different data sets, including OOI observations, satellite observations and observations from the U.S. research fleet. Many of these other sources of data are also facing uncertain futures. 

Palevsky also worries about the loss of expertise that will occur as the program scales down. Installing these deep-sea observing networks was a huge achievement for U.S. science that will not be easy to replicate, she said. “If, in five years, we as a community decide we want to again be able to deploy this kind of complicated infrastructure in places that have really difficult oceanographic conditions … it’s going to be a lot of reinventing the wheel to figure out how to put things out again.”

“The complete cessation without community input or a community conversation about what’s going to happen to all this equipment and what’s going to happen with all of the expertise,” she said, “feels like a huge loss.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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“I’ve just always felt like art and science are flip sides of the same coin.”

Scientists use tools ranging from models to microscopes to make sense of the world around them. Some might say artists do the same thing using tools such as paintbrushes and musical instruments.

“I’ve just always felt like art and science are flip sides of the same coin, with maybe different outcomes or different processes, but they’re both just getting at the truth of the world,” said Sara Bouchard, a sound artist and composer and adjunct faculty member in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) School of Art.

A recent National Science Foundation–funded collaboration between scientists and artists brought this principle to life.

In fluxART, artists partnered with scientists from FLUXNET, an international network of researchers using eddy covariance techniques to measure how gases move between ecosystems and the atmosphere.

Researchers and artists collaborated on art projects based on data collected at FLUXNET towers. A view from the top of one such tower near Sisters, Ore., is seen here. Credit: Alexander Irving

The scientist-artist pairs worked together in yearlong residencies and produced art pieces—ranging from music compositions and video installations to ceramic works and paintings—that they presented at the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts in Corvalis, Ore., in early 2026.

“Part of the framing of the residency was around flux as this metaphor for connection and belonging and relationships.”

“The metaphor that people use to describe what this science network measures, or does, is that it’s monitoring the breath of the biosphere,” said Maoya Bassiouni, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who directed and developed the residency. “Those fluxes are sort of this giving and receiving between the land and the atmosphere, and it’s exactly what the scientists are doing in the community. So, part of the framing of the residency was around flux as this metaphor for connection and belonging and relationships.”

Bassiouni, who also created artworks in the residency, presented a lecture about the series alongside two other fluxART artists in late May at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Mesa Lab in Boulder, Colo.

An installation at NCAR’s Mesa Lab Library featuring all four fluxART projects also opened on 27 May and will be on display through the end of 2026.

En Masse

Bouchard, the sound artist, was paired with Chris Gough, a biogeochemist who serves as the executive director of the Rice Rivers Center at VCU.

Gough studies how factors such as climate and disturbances affect ecosystems, particularly forests and wetlands. Bouchard learned more about Gough’s work by spending a year in his lab.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Rice Rivers Center Marsh, an AmeriFlux site whose data were used in this project, is located along the James River, seen here. Credit: Megan May Photography

The result was a composition for choir and percussion called En Masse, which explores the connections between communities and ecosystems in a time of climate crisis. The piece’s five movements represent the movement of carbon through the environment: “Air,” “Wood,” “Soil,” “Fire,” and “Breath.”

In addition to vocals and instruments, the composition features birdsong, recordings from a compost pile, sonified data from Gough’s lab, and spoken words gathered from real people sharing their climate anxieties. An excerpt from the “Fire” movement reads,

Future! / Heavy weight on my ribcage / dusty, fragmented
Fire! / Clenched jaw, copper taste in my mouth / stark, shifted
Fire! / I worry about my kids / desperate, unbreathable
Fire! / and their future / squeezed, extreme
Future! Fire! Fire! Fire!

Both Bouchard and Gough said they were moved by the piece as it was performed in Corvalis and by seeing the mix of artists and scientists who attended, many traveling from other states.

“I was struck by how engaged both the scientific and artistic communities were,” Gough said. “We walked out, and it was a full room of people. It was energizing, and I think it felt meaningful in a way that stepping up on a conference stage to deliver the traditional convention talk [isn’t].”

September: Orange

In another pairing, video artist Julia Oldham partnered with Christopher Still, a plant ecophysiologist at Oregon State University.

The partnership started with Oldham visiting a 175-foot-tall (53-meter-tall) FLUXNET tower near Sisters, Ore., that Still and his team monitor.

Video artist Julia Oldham visited a FLUXNET tower near Sisters, Ore., with scientist Christopher Still in preparation for creating an art piece based on data gathered at the tower. Credit: Alex Irving

At the top of the tower, a PhenoCam takes photos of the surrounding Deschutes National Forest every half hour. Still uses data from these images to examine how the greenness of the canopy changes over time because such changes can provide information about fluxes in carbon, water, and energy.

“I learned more about what Chris uses the PhenoCam for and got superexcited about the fact that Chris is using color data to understand forests,” Oldham said. “I thought that that was a really beautiful point of overlap for us as a scientist and an artist, to think about color and forests and what we can learn from color as a scientific tool.”

The pair created two pieces. 18//Flux shows how the colors and light from one PhenoCam site changed from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. throughout the year for 13 years. Each frame is divided into 13 strips, with each strip representing 1 hour of the monitoring period.

The two had conversations throughout the duration of the project about the growing role of wildfires in the area. In fact, one of the FLUXNET towers they were using in the project burned down.

Their conversations led to September: Orange, a three-channel video showing footage from 24 different PhenoCams in the northwestern United States and Canada. When all of the landscapes are the same shade, the video briefly pauses. In September, when wildfires sweep through Cascadia, orange becomes the dominant color. The piece is accompanied by field recordings from Oregon forests and sonified canopy greenness data.

“I think the installation was a wild success, and I had a lot of people tell me how much they enjoyed it and appreciated it,” Still said. “Most people don’t respond to a 2D graph of data…whereas I think almost everyone responds to images, and photographs are really meaningful to people. So I think that is a really brilliant way to draw people into the science.”

—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), Artists and scientists partner to bring atmospheric data to life, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260178. Published on 3 June 2026. Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. 本文是Eos文章的授权翻译。

大约 6 亿年前，各大洲在地球上漂移，尚未最终定格在现在的位置。在埃迪卡拉纪时期，各大洲的位置对于科学家来说一直难以确定。地球的磁场似乎表现得异常不稳定，而利用标准方法根据磁场记录来计算大陆位置的做法却得出了一些难以置信的结果。尤其是，科学家们对一块名为波罗的大陆的古老大陆的位置存在争议，这块大陆如今是欧洲的一部分。

为了探究这一问题，Xue等人前往挪威埃格尔松德，采集了波罗的大陆地壳被撕裂、岩浆从下方涌出时形成的岩石样本。随着这些岩浆冷却凝固，它们记录了地球磁场的瞬时变化，并在此过程中存储了有关波罗的大陆位置的信息。

对这些样本的研究结果揭示了远比科学家们最初设想的更为复杂的古代岩石图景。这些岩石中至少包含了六种不同的磁信号，构成了一幅复杂的混合图景。其中一些信号似乎是在更现代的地质过程改变原始岩石时形成的。埃迪卡拉纪时期可能保存了三种不同的信号，其中两种与将波罗的板块置于赤道附近的最合理的埃迪卡拉纪信号相悖。这些相互矛盾的信号进一步支持了地球磁场在当时异常活动的观点，使原本就扑朔迷离的图景更加复杂。

基于新的研究结果，研究人员将埃迪卡拉纪时期埃格尔松德古地磁极的位置确定在北纬20.8°、东经89.0°——这与之前的研究结果有所不同——并提出波罗的板块当时位于赤道附近，毗邻古老的劳伦古陆，但相对于之前的重建结果，其位置略有顺时针旋转。这项研究表明，保存在古代岩石中的磁信号极其复杂，并凸显了将这些记录分解成各个组成部分的重要性。研究人员认为，这样做可以为埃迪卡拉纪时期地球磁场的神秘行为提供新的线索。(Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GC012730, 2026)

—科学撰稿人Saima May Sidik (@saimamay.bsky.social)

This translation was made by Wiley. 本文翻译由Wiley提供。

Read this article on WeChat. 在微信上分享本文。

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Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

As the AGU Books Program celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2026, we reflect on the longevity of scientific work published in book format and the enduring nature of readership—sometimes for decades after publication. We spoke with Volume Editors and Authors of AGU books published in each of the past 3 decades about why they decided to pursue book projects and why readers are still discovering their work years later.

2000s: Filling Gaps in the Existing Research

Ernie R. Lewis and Stephen E. Schwartz decided to write a book after finding a gap in the literature when conducting their own research. Sea Salt Aerosol Production: Mechanisms, Methods, Measurements, and Models, published in 2004, explores the major influences that sea salt aerosol exerts over diverse areas of geophysics.

Why did you decide to write an AGU monograph? 

Sea salt aerosol is the dominant background aerosol in the atmosphere and the topic of Lewis and Schwartz’s 2004 book. Credit: Richard Dorrell, Wikimedia Commons

We were looking for a quality venue for publication that would lend respect to the book and could accommodate many large, complicated color figures, which were essential to the book. AGU’s Geophysical Monograph Series met these requirements.

We had been examining the literature pertinent to the production of sea salt aerosol, the dominant background aerosol in the atmosphere, to develop means of representing it in chemical transport models for aerosol influences on clouds and climate. We found major discrepancies in reported production flux (orders of magnitude) and in its dependence on controlling variables. Ultimately, we decided we needed to write a book dealing with the physical processes and comparing the numerous prior studies.

How has the study of sea salt aerosols evolved since the publication of your book?

This field has grown enormously since publication of the book in 2004, especially with new studies identifying the role of organics affecting production of aerosol particles, particle composition, hygroscopic properties, and rate of exchange of water between gas and condensed phase.

Why do you think your book continues to be of value to readers?

Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is its emphasis on processes and material properties. The chapter on fundamentals is nearly 100 pages; the chapter on measurements and models required to determine production fluxes is nearly 200 pages. The material in these chapters is essential to understanding the governing processes.

We are gratified by the continuing influence of the book, a measure of which is that the book has been cited over a thousand times, with an average annual citation rate of more than 70 over the past several years—some 20 years after publication.

2010s: Finding the Cutting Edge from AGU Events

A successful 2012 AGU Chapman Conference convinced Venkataraman Lakshmi that a book was needed to document key outcomes from the conference. He went on to co-edit Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle, published in 2014, which examines the use of satellite data for quantifying the spatial and temporal variations in the hydrological cycle.

Why did you decide to edit a book? 

The reason to edit any book is a lack of content on the subject and that the topic is cutting-edge in the research sphere. All the books I have edited with AGU, including Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle, have been outcomes of either sessions organized at the AGU Annual Meeting or a Chapman Conference. The book then serves as a state-of-science for the community and is still widely read.

AGU Annual Meetings and Chapman Conferences have been integral to Lakshmi’s path as a book editor. Credit: Beth Bagley

How has the field of remote sensing as it relates to the terrestrial water cycle evolved since the publication of your book?

The field of remote sensing of the terrestrial water cycle doubles in knowledge every few years. New Earth observing missions have been launched or will be launched soon, and these missions hold promise for unraveling the mysteries of the hydrological cycle.

Why do you think your book continues to be of value to readers? 

The book captures what we can expect from Earth observing missions and sets the stage for how the science questions regarding the water cycle have evolved over the past few decades.

2020s: Building on the Success of Earlier Work

Yongliang Zhang and Larry J. Paxton, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, edited not one but five books, published in 2021. This five-volume collection, Space Physics and Aeronomy, presents the latest scientific observations, models, and theories about the Sun and the solar wind, magnetospheres in the solar system, Earth’s ionosphere, Earth’s upper atmosphere, and space weather.

Why did you decide to edit a set of books?

Following a successful AGU 2014 session on auroral dynamics to which about 60 abstracts were submitted, we were invited by editors of three publishers in the United States and Europe to edit a book on auroras. We accepted the invitation from AGU–Wiley as there was a lot of interest in auroral study in the AGU community. We submitted a proposal for a book titled Auroral Dynamics and Space Weather. The book,published in 2015, was successful and a few years later, we were invited to edit multiple books as a major reference work in the field of heliophysics. We took the opportunity and finished the five-book set in 2021.

How have space physics and aeronomy evolved since the publication of your books?

First, new satellite missions and more ground observations are available that fill some of the measurement gaps that existed when we published the books. Second, recent advances in AI capability together with increasing data volume in space physics enable a better specification of the space physics phenomena as well as space weather forecasting.

Why do you think your books continue to be of value to readers? 

These five volumes (six, counting Auroral Dynamics and Space Weather) provide, in one set, a detailed overview of the science of the space environment from the Sun to the Earth and its variability, or “space weather.” A series of books like this is invaluable as a survey of real knowledge that provides readers the opportunity to discover new insights in heliophysics.

As of early 2026, two major imperatives that drive NASA research are facilitating the space economy and supporting the Moon to Mars initiative with an emphasis now on supporting the return to the Moon. Heliophysics, the focus of our books, enables the outward journey to near-Earth space, the Moon, and beyond. Scientists at all stages in their careers are sure to find in these six volumes useful insights that they can use to address new NASA funding opportunities.

Heliophysics, the focus of Paxton and Zhang’s set of books, is essential to new NASA missions. A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman from the Orion spacecraft in April 2026. Credit: NASA

These three experiences are just a snapshot of the more than 750 volumes published by AGU Books since the 1950s. While the methods and technologies used in scientific research have evolved dramatically, as has the process and formats for publishing books, the need for volumes covering the breadth of Earth and space sciences remains strong. The AGU Books Program has proven that books—whether the outcome of a gap discovered in the literature, a popular conference session, or the success of previous works—have a lasting place in the ecosystem of scientific publishing.

—Dara Liling (dliling@agu.org, 0009-0005-6828-2811), American Geophysical Union, USA; Venkataraman Lakshmi (0000-0001-7431-9004), University of Virginia, USA; Ernie R. Lewis (0000-0002-2023-7406), Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA; Larry J. Paxton (0000-0002-2597-347X), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA; Stephen E. Schwartz (0000-0001-6288-310X), Stony Brook University, USA; and Yongliang Zhang (0000-0003-4851-1662), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA

Citation: Liling, D., V. Lakshmi, E. R. Lewis, L. J. Paxton, S. E. Schwartz, and Y. Zhang (2026), 7 decades of books leave a lasting legacy, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265024. Published on 3 June 2026. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

The volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania is unique on Earth: Its lava is rich in carbon compounds that melt at significantly lower temperatures than typical silicon-rich lavas from other terrestrial volcanoes.

It is possible, however, that carbon volcanoes could exist elsewhere, including on exoplanets, or—as suggested in a recently published article in Icarus—perhaps even on planet Mercury.

Despite being known from antiquity, Mercury is very hard to study because of its closeness to the Sun. As a result, the best data so far were gathered within the past 20 years by NASA’s MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) probe. In particular, scientists identified mysterious pits they dubbed “hollows” scattered across Mercury’s surface. The hollows’ relatively bright appearance indicates they were formed in recent geological times, and could even be still forming today. The origins and geochemical makeup of these hollows are unknown.

“Mercury looks like the Moon a little bit, so we don’t expect large volcanoes,” said Maximilian Paul Reitze, a planetologist at Universität Münster’s Institut für Planetologie who is first author of the Icarus study. Without volcanic conditions like those on Earth or even on Jupiter’s moon Io, researchers expect Mercury to be largely geologically dormant. In other words, to explain hollows, “we need some volcanism under the conditions we expect on Mercury,” Reitze said.

Hence the interest in Ol Doinyo Lengai, known as the Mountain of God to the Maasai and Sonjo peoples. This volcano produces lava made up of carbonatites, igneous rocks composed of more than half carbon (and which are known to host critical minerals). These lavas flow at temperatures roughly 100°C lower than Mercury’s blazingly hot daytime temperature of 424°C. If the planet has a carbon-rich subsurface, as Reitze and his collaborators proposed, then the hollows could be Mercury’s version of Ol Doinyo Lengai.

This theory, however, has its skeptics.

“We know that there is carbon in [Mercury’s] crust, but the amount is very low,” said Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the Icarus study. He also pointed out that the surface regions where carbon is most concentrated don’t correspond to higher concentrations of hollows. “For this to be some kind of carbon-based lava, it would imply a lot more carbon than we might think, given how widespread the hollows are.”

The Making of a Weird Planet

Mercury’s proximity to the Sun means that NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft provided humanity’s first-ever views when it flew by in 1974 and 1975. Three decades later, the MESSENGER mission was the first probe to orbit Mercury, mapping the planet’s full surface and turning up unexpected features like the hollows. The BepiColombo mission, a joint project of the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is only the third mission ever to visit the planet, so when its two spacecraft settle into orbit in November 2026, it will almost inevitably reveal something unexpected, because it’s a weird planet.

“Basically, Mercury is a molten ball bearing wrapped in a thin blanket of rock.”

Unlike Earth, Mars, or the Moon, Mercury has a freakishly large core and a thin mantle.

“Basically, Mercury is a molten ball bearing wrapped in a thin blanket of rock,” Byrne said. “One explanation is that early in the planet’s life, either one large or several smaller impacts stripped the outer portion away.”

The question then becomes what got vaporized, and what was left behind, particularly when trying to understand hollows. Many planetary researchers proposed that sulfides in the mantle could drive volcanism, but Reitze had doubts.

“The problem with sulfides I see is that they’re stable up to 1,000°C or so, which cannot explain the explosive volcanism that’s needed to form those hollows,” he said.

Instead, he and his coauthors contacted a colleague working on Ol Doinyo Lengai, who obtained a sample of the lava for laboratory study while it was still molten. Because carbonatite lava reacts chemically with Earth’s air very quickly, the researchers needed to isolate it to understand how the unaltered materials might behave under conditions on Mercury, particularly infrared spectra that could be confirmed by the BepiColombo mission.

Ol Doinyo Lengai, a volcano in Tanzania, is unique because of its carbonatite lava. Credit: Ben Shoshana/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

In the hypothesis proposed by Reitze and colleagues, impacts from meteorites heat the carbon-rich magma below Mercury’s surface, melting it and driving eruptions. The hollows, which are found frequently on the slopes of Mercury’s craters or their central peaks, are the remains of those eruptions. Over time, further meteorite bombardments and intense solar radiation destroyed older hollows, which is why the ones in MESSENGER data were all formed within the past 270 million years—a short time ago, geologically speaking.

“Anytime people have been confident about anything in planetary science, [planets have] shown you wrong.”

“The carbonatite angle is an interesting one, and I certainly wouldn’t rule it out,” Byrne said. “Anytime people have been confident about anything in planetary science, [planets have] shown you wrong. I’m certainly open to it, but is it the only explanation for all of the hollows? I am skeptical of that.”

Byrne and Reitze both dream of a future Mercury lander, a very challenging and expensive proposition nobody expects will happen soon. In the meantime, they agreed that BepiColombo data will help settle the question of whether the most Mercury-like place on Earth is a volcano in Tanzania.

—Matthew R. Francis (@BowlerHatScience.org), Science Writer

Citation: Francis, M. R. (2026), A unique African volcano could solve a mystery on Mercury, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260176. Published on 2 June 2026. Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

Atmospheric rivers act like “rivers in the sky,” shuttling intense bands of warm, heavy moisture from lower to higher latitudes. When an atmospheric river encounters cold air or mountainous terrain, the moisture it carries condenses and falls as heavy rain or snow. In Antarctica, the arrival of an atmospheric river can help build surface ice mass. Much of Antarctica is very dry; an atmospheric river can bring the moisture needed to potentially offset some ice loss.

Antarctica’s varied topography and dry conditions have made detecting atmospheric rivers over the continent challenging. Previous efforts to do so have suggested that atmospheric rivers contribute up to 30% of Antarctica’s total annual precipitation, but these methods may not be capturing the full picture of atmospheric river activity.

Takahashi et al. developed a new 3D atmospheric river detection algorithm to better capture how atmospheric rivers affect Antarctica’s complex terrain. Previous methods have mostly been 2D, meaning they do not accurately account for the vertical variations within an atmospheric river.

To evaluate the algorithm, the researchers applied it to two datasets: (1) daily snowfall totals measured during the 44th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE44) at Dome Fuji from February 2003 to January 2004 and (2) the ERA5 (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts atmospheric reanalysis) dataset of daily weather patterns and conditions in Antarctica from 1979 to 2023.

The results of the study’s new algorithm showed 16 significant snowfall events during the JARE44 expedition, all of which were not detected by the older 2D method. The new 3D method identified 17 days of atmospheric river activity, which corresponded with 10 heavy snowfall events and accounted for approximately 40% of the total precipitation. Between 1979 and 2023, atmospheric rivers occurred about 10% of the time yet contributed 30%–60% of total precipitation in the Antarctic interior.

The 3D method in the new study suggests that atmospheric river events contribute a greater proportion of total snowfall than previously thought—between 30% and 90%, depending on the Antarctic region. The researchers also suggest that long-term changes in Antarctic snowfall are closely linked with the changes in atmospheric river activity. This connection is especially apparent in East Antarctica, where the link between snowfall increases and atmospheric rivers had not yet been clearly identified in previous studies. (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL120986, 2026)

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2026), Rivers in the Antarctic sky, captured in 3D, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260179. Published on 2 June 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) can expand low-carbon energy production, but fluid injection may trigger earthquakes whose locations and mechanisms are difficult to predict. Feng et al. [2026] investigate induced seismicity at China’s first EGS site in the Gonghe Basin using a comprehensive observational dataset. Machine learning processing of data from 20 surface seismic stations produced a high-resolution earthquake catalog with well-constrained locations and focal mechanisms. Stress inversion and modeling, constrained by borehole stress measurements, reveal mechanically weak faults with low friction coefficients, indicating that low-to-moderate fluid overpressure can trigger seismic slip. Site-scale analysis shows that seismicity reflects shear reactivation of pre-existing natural faults, rather than the creation of new tensile fractures. Further integration with borehole image logs reveals a fine-scale relationship between the main seismogenic zones and stress heterogeneity, expressed as rotations of the principal stress axes that likely reflect localized lithological contrasts and fault-damage zones.

Together, these integrated analyses show that geothermal-induced seismicity is controlled by inherited fault architecture at the site scale and localized stress heterogeneity at the borehole scale. By linking seismic observations to borehole stress and image-log evidence, the study provides a more physically constrained framework for seismic-hazard assessment and stimulation design in enhanced geothermal reservoirs.

Citation: Feng, P., Wang, R., Zhang, H., Zhang, C., Schultz, R., & Yang, L. (2026). Pre-existing structures and stress variations jointly control the induced seismicity in enhanced geothermal system of Gonghe Basin, China. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 131, e2025JB033158. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JB033158  

—Xiaowei Chen, Associate Editor, JGR: Solid Earth

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body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

A Colorado judge has granted a preliminary injunction to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The move temporarily blocks the federal government from moving forward with one part of its effort to dismantle UCAR’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) by transferring stewardship of a state-of-the-art supercomputing facility.

Together, UCAR—a nonprofit consortium of universities and colleges—and the National Science Foundation (NSF) operate and maintain the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) in Cheyenne, Wyo. The facility provides scientists with enormous computational power necessary to run sophisticated analyses of weather, climate, and other Earth systems.

 
Related

•  UCAR Sues Federal Agencies
•  NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center
• What Americans Lose If Their National Center for Atmospheric Research Is Dismantled
•  Get Involved: AGU’s Science Policy Action Center
 

In February, as another step in a chain of actions taken to dismantle NCAR, the NSF informed UCAR and NCAR that it would transfer management and operations of NWSC to a third-party operator.

In turn, UCAR filed a lawsuit alleging that the action violated federal law under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). To halt NSF’s action under the act, the agency’s attempt to remove UCAR’s stewardship of the facility must be shown to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

Judge Richard Brooke Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado wrote in a 1 June court order that the action was both arbitrary and capricious “for at least two reasons.” First, NSF didn’t offer an explanation for its decision, and second, it didn’t follow an outlined process to consider public feedback.

The decision means that UCAR will temporarily retain its stewardship of NWSC. 

“NSF’s failure to provide any explanation for its decision—let alone a reasonable one—thwarts meaningful judicial review and renders the challenged action arbitrary and capricious,” Jackson wrote.

He went on to note that efforts to transfer stewardship of UCAR assets, including the supercomputing center, to other institutions, pose the risk of “irreparable harm” to UCAR. One of the chief harms would be brain drain, the judge noted multiple times, writing that “UCAR cannot easily replace employees with the level of education, specialized training, and institutional knowledge necessary to operate and maintain the NWSC’s ‘highly integrated, high-performance supercomputing system.'”

In addition to brain drain, Jackson cited financial injuries to UCAR that would be “difficult, if not impossible” to quantify, as well as an overall threat to the consortium’s mission.

“Any degradation in forecasting, modeling, or related scientific capabilities carries real-world consequences, including potential harm to property and human life. Given those stakes, the public interest strongly favors maintaining the status quo unless and until NSF demonstrates that its transfer decision complies with the APA,” he concluded.

In a statement posted to the UCAR website, the consortium’s interim president, Eric Barron, said UCAR was pleased that Judge Jackson recognized how harmful the proposed transfer would be for the the nation’s scientific enterprise.

“UCAR’s top priority is to advance Earth system science in service to society,” he wrote. “Today’s decision ensures that the NWSC will be able to continue its vital work on behalf of the United States and its stakeholders without interruption.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer, and Emily Gardner, (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed a new rule on 28 May that, if finalized, would give political appointees approval power over scientific grants, reduce support for international collaboration, limit funding for publication fees, and make other extensive alterations to the federal government’s funding review process. 

The proposed “Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance” would require senior political appointees to conduct reviews of each grant, and would not allow those appointees to defer to peer reviewers for grantmaking decisions. Scientific peer review “remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion,” according to the proposal.

“It replaces expertise with political appointees, globally decouples the U.S. and completely guts our scientific ecosystem.”

The proposed rule would further codify an executive order from last August, titled “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking,” in which the White House ordered federal agency heads to award grants that “advance the President’s policy priorities” and align with its criteria for “Gold Standard Science.”

The proposal states that the OMB made the suggested revisions in response to a lack of “transparency, accountability, and proper oversight” between 2021 and 2024. “Federal awards were often used during those years to promote a ‘woke’ policy agenda that did not reflect the values of the vast majority of the American public,” the proposal claims, referencing “unlawful DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] practices, various anti-American ideologies in American education,” and “non-replicable and highly misleading studies” as examples. 

“We warned of this exact form of government overreach in science a year ago,” Colette Delawalla, founder of Stand Up for Science, told Scientific American in reference to the administration’s proposed rule. “It replaces expertise with political appointees, globally decouples the U.S. and completely guts our scientific ecosystem.”

In addition to elevating government oversight of the grantmaking process, the proposed rule would, among other changes:

• Allow federal agencies to terminate active grants at any time if they are deemed “inconsistent with program goals or agency priorities.”
• Prohibit the use of federal funds for research collaborations with foreign entities affiliated with countries under sanction by the United States, unless exceptions are authorized by federal law or the head of a federal agency.
• Disallow federal grants from being used for most publication costs and open access fees. 
• Require that grant recipients obtain pre-approval from federal agencies to use their funding to attend conferences or obtain professional memberships related to the scientific work covered by their grant.
• Allow federal agencies to receive exemptions from the requirement to publicly advertise grant competitions when “publicly announcing an opportunity would pose a risk to national security or is in the national interest of the United States.”
• Ban federal funds from being used to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” any activities related to DEI or “gender ideology,” defined as “theories or ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.”

 
Related

•  Read the Proposed Rule
•  White House Proposes New Rules Giving Political Appointees Final Approval on Research Grants
•  Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule
•  The State of the Science 1 Year On: Academia and Research
•From the Prow: A Rule That Would Rewrite the Terms of U.S. Science
•  Get Involved: AGU’s Science Policy Action Center
 

“Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for science agencies with the expectation that those funds would be administered through merit-based, expert-driven processes insulated from political interference,” Elizabeth Ginexi, a former official at the National Institutes of Health, wrote in a blog post. “This rule attempts to override that expectation.”

Stand Up for Science will host an online meeting with scientist speakers on Tuesday, 2 June at 4 p.m. ET to review the proposed rule. The Office of Management and Budget is accepting public comments on it until 13 July. 

AGU President Brandon Jones released a statement about the rule on 3 June, urging the AGU community to submit public comment via AGU’s Action Center.

“This is not a routine regulatory update,” he wrote. “What it actually does is restructure the foundational rules of U.S. science funding—with cascading impact for global collaborators—to serve political priorities rather than the public good. We have seen executive orders, budget cuts, and terminations take aim at the scientific enterprise one by one. This proposed rule would codify that agenda into federal regulation, making it far harder to reverse.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Water Resources Research

Recent studies have shown the climatic envelope for blanket bog peatlands to be contracting, yet questions remain about what will happen to existing peatlands as they pass outside of this shrinking bioclimatic envelope.

DigiBog, a process-based model, accurately predicts peat depth in an area of very complex topography. This presents a significant advancement in modeling peat depth in areas with complex terrain. The implications of peat expanding at a faster rate on the relatively dry and steeper slopes, compared to the wetter basins, is contrary to the current thinking.

Despite being at the edge of the future climatic envelope for blanket bog, under all climate scenarios, the site continues accumulating peat until 2100, with the greatest accumulation occurring under the moderate Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 scenario. 

While peat thickness generally depends on wetness, wetness does not fully explain accumulation patterns in blanket bogs, with some very wet areas having only shallow peat accumulation.

Tom Winter’s conceptual model proposed that wetland vulnerability to climate change depends on wetness and the position within the hydrological landscape. Baird et al. [2026] does indeed show peat depth to have moderate to strong correlations with wetness. However, greater recent peat accumulation, and predicted future accumulation, is away from basins which contradicts Winter’s “wetter is better” and may be partially explained by the ability of peatlands themselves to engineer and alter landscape wetness.

Overall, ecohydrological models that are process-based are better than simple bioclimatic models for assessing future peatland carbon, when accounting for accumulation rates and spatial patterns.

Citation: Baird, A. J., Young, D. M., Ramirez, J. A., Gill, P. J., Morris, P. J., Peleg, N., et al.(2026). Assessing the response of blanket peatlands to climate change using the DigiBog model and winter’s concept of the “hydrologic landscape”. Water Resources Research, 62, e2025WR042050. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025WR042050

 —Paul Whitfield, Associate Editor, Water Resources Research, with input from Joshua Ratcliffe

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Off Track, On Purpose

Iceland, Chile, Kenya, Antarctica, Papua New Guinea, and the Great Salt Lake. That ambitious lineup covers (most of) the destinations where scientists featured in our annual fieldwork collection have ventured to test innovative instruments and answer pressing questions about natural processes on—and off—Earth.

Read along to learn about some fascinating field science and to hit all these hot spots and cool destinations for yourself.

In “Discovering Venus on Iceland,” scientists describe a multiweek effort traversing three rugged and rocky sites to collect samples and validate airborne radar measurements. Iceland’s basaltic lava fields are about the closest analogue to the surface of Venus that Earth has to offer, and the team’s data collection is helping to test the performance of instruments that will be a part of NASA’s VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) mission in several years’ time.

From Iceland, travel west and south to Chile, Guatemala, and Idaho to learn how researchers have been building and using their own inexpensive, lightweight sensors to detect infrasound emanating from volcanoes, earthquakes, and wildfires in “Sensing the Sounds from Earth’s Hazardous Environments.” At Villarica volcano in the Chilean Andes, for example, they have deployed sensor clusters on, around, and even hanging from a cable above the volcano’s summit crater to better understand how infrasound may be useful for eruption monitoring.

Meanwhile, at Lake Turkana in Kenya, scientists have been partnering with local industries to map the subsurface and better understand how the continent is unzipping along the East African Rift System, as Kimberly Cartier describes in “Eastern Africa Is Splitting Apart, but Not Where We Expected.”

Stick with Cartier for another leg of our fieldwork trip as she relates how researchers have instrumented an underwater volcanic vent off Papua New Guinea to track effects of ocean acidification on corals in “Coral Diversity Drops as Ocean Acidifies.”

From there, head to the decidedly less tropical climes of the South Pole, where a team recently installed a pair of seismometers deep in the Antarctic ice, completing a challenging and years-long feat of engineering, reports Grace Van Deelen in “These South Pole Seismometers Will Detect Vibrations 1.5 Miles Under the Ice.”

Finally, journey to the North American interior to learn what scientists found when they installed electrodes on the now-desiccated surface of Utah’s Great Salt Lake in Carolyn Wilke’s—spoiler alert—“What’s Below the Great Salt Lake? More Water.”

We’ll understand if you need a break after all that globe-trotting. But you’re always welcome to join us for more adventures in the field.

—Timothy Oleson, Eos Senior Science Editor

Citation: Oleson, T. (2026), An off-road itinerary, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260181. Published on 1 June 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: AGU Advances

The Indian monsoon has shifted over the past quarter century. Northwest India now receives substantially more rain than it once did, while a lack of rain sends the Indo-Gangetic Plain toward drought.

More than a billion people rely on the monsoon to confer economic stability across southern Asia; further changes to this weather system could lead to widespread hardship. Scientists have struggled to predict how this weather pattern will change moving forward because commonly used climate models fail to capture changes to the monsoon that have already occurred.

Mahendra et al. suggest that models do not adequately represent either changes in the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean or how those temperature changes are linked to weather patterns around the rest of the globe. As a result, the coupled models tend to fail to predict this monsoon shift.

Specifically, current climate models lack the ability to incorporate information about the cold blob, a patch of cold water off the south of Greenland. When the researchers added the cold blob to climate model results, they found that it can alter the jet stream in a way that makes it pull moisture toward northwest India while also preventing storm systems from forming elsewhere. This is exactly the type of shift that has been observed in monsoon patterns. When a large-scale wind pattern prevents the formation of smaller-scale weather patterns in this way, it is called a barotropic governor mechanism.

This barotropic governor mechanism also explains why midlatitudes around the globe have observed more storm activity in recent years. The results highlight the importance of connecting processes from disparate parts of the globe when formulating climate models, the authors write. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002173, 2026)

—Saima May Sidik (@saimamay.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2026), The surprising link between a cold blob and the Indian monsoon, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260177. Published on 1 June 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news that impacts science and scientists today.

This week, a parade of scientists will spend 50 hours straight speaking about the importance of weather and climate research in the United States.

Now in its second year, the Weather & Climate Livestream will feature hundreds of scientists describing their work and why it matters. Last year’s event, which lasted 100 hours, saw more than 180,000 views and led to 30,000 phone calls to Congress to #SaveAmericasForecasts.

“The first aspect of it is just communicating science,” said Haley Crim, a climate literacy researcher at MIT and the founder of Climateliteracy.earth. “The second half of it is to inspire people to call their representatives in support of funding for climate and weather science, and science more broadly.”  

 
Related

•  The Weather & Climate Livestream
•  Get Involved: AGU’s Science Policy Action Center
 

Last year, Crim was an “avid watcher” of the livestream, so she was happy to help when a friend asked her to pitch in for the second iteration. But it’s also more personal this year, as she has since lost her position as a contractor with NOAA.

“It has a whole new meaning now, this year,” she said.

The livestream begins at 4 p.m. ET on Monday, 1 June, ending at 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 3 June. Speakers include meteorologist Jeff Masters and climate scientists Adam Sobel of Columbia University and Kim Cobb of Brown University. AGU President Brandon Jones and president-elect Benjamin Zaitchik will also speak from 2 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 3 June.

Science Under Attack

Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term in 2025, federal science funding has faced extensive cuts, with more proposed. In June 2025, for instance, a budget document proposed eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. In December 2025, the administration announced plans to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“This is really a full-frontal attack on climate science.”

“This is really a full-frontal attack on climate science,” said Andrew Williams, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who is helping to organize the livestream and will speak during it.

He added that even though Congress pushed back against the most drastic cuts proposed last year, leaving key science program budgets mostly intact, many agencies haven’t yet seen the money they’ve been granted in the budget. For instance, according to the organization Grant Witness, 112 grants have been awarded in the NSF Directorate for Geosciences so far this year, compared with 948 in total in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. The average total number of grants awarded between FY21 and FY24 was 1,418.

Both Crim and Williams said they hope the livestream provides the public with a better understanding of how climate and weather research affects us all, from allowing for timely evacuation warnings to affecting insurance rates. Williams offered the example of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, a federally funded NOAA research lab that would be eliminated under the president’s proposed FY2027 budget.

“It builds the engine of the U.S. weather forecasting model, which is what tells you day to day what the weather is going to be,” he said. “We’ve all been able to take for granted that these things are happening because the U.S. has for decades, for 60 or 70 years, had strong and stable federal funding for weather and climate science.”

—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about science or scientists? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

The AGU Books Editorial Board comprises researchers spanning the breath of the Earth and space sciences. From diverse perspectives comes an interdisciplinary catalog of monographs and textbooks—and collaborations between scientists whose paths might not cross otherwise.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the AGU Books Program, we interviewed three members who have served on the Books Board since its founding in 2020: Estella Atekwana is a near-surface geophysicist and serves as a dean and professor at the University of California Davis; Xianzhe Jia is a space physicist and professor at the University of Michigan; Jim O’Connor is a research geologist with the United States Geological Survey. We asked these Editorial Board members about their favorite projects and why books remain important within the scientific literature  which is dominated by journals.

What is a memory or project that stands out from your AGU Books Editorial Board experience?

Supporting Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry pushed Board member Jim O’Connor to engage with new topics and geographic areas of study.

JOC: Two items stand out for me. One is one of the first books that I handled, Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry: A Foundation for the Future. This book was so far outside my zone (topically and spatially) yet so gratifying to be a small part of. It was really a very different book, discussing much classic hydrology but also touching on resource management and politics in an area where those topics are complicated. It was so interesting. And it was published in both English and French.

The other memory sticking with me is our early discussions on what AGU books could and should be about. The discussions were so wide-ranging (including children’s books!), and they really forced me out of what was probably a pretty narrow lane. I suppose such discussions might be expected when you put together a diverse group of scientists and give them a chance to explore what AGU books could be.

Board member Estella Atekwana saw Salt in the Earth Sciences progress from a proposal through multiple iterations and finally to a published book.

EA: One project that stands out is serving as the Subject Editor for the two-volume set Salt in the Earth Sciences: Evaporite Rocks and Salt Deposition and Salt in the Earth Sciences: Basin Analysis and Salt Tectonics by Webster Mohriak. It was a pleasure to work with Dr. Mohriak, who was thoughtful, responsive, and deeply engaged with the review process. I also developed a tremendous appreciation for the reviewers, who took the time to read the full volume carefully, sometimes through multiple iterations, and provide detailed and constructive feedback. Seeing the book move from proposal to publication was deeply rewarding. It reminded me how much care, expertise, and collaboration go into producing a high-quality scholarly book.

XJ: One project that stands out for me is a book that’s still in production. It is about exoplanets, focused on how stellar-driven space environments interact with (exo)planetary magnetic fields and atmospheres and, ultimately, shape habitability. What’s made it memorable is that the book sits right at the boundary between communities that don’t always share the same language—space physics, planetary science, and exoplanets. I’m excited for it to become a resource that helps readers move back and forth between exoplanets and our solar system with a shared comparative framework.

What is your favorite thing about serving on the AGU Books Editorial Board?

EA: When I was first asked to serve as on the AGU Books Editorial Board, I approached the role with some skepticism. I wondered why early- and mid-career faculty or scientists would choose to write books when the academic reward system often emphasizes journal articles, citation counts, and publications in high-impact journals. However, serving on the Board has changed my perspective. I have enjoyed reviewing book proposals, encouraging leaders in the field to consider writing books, and working with an editorial team that provides thoughtful support every step of the way.

My favorite thing about serving on the AGU Books Editorial Board is getting to help shape syntheses—not just what’s new, but what the community collectively understands.

Xianzhe Jia

XJ: My favorite thing about serving on the AGU Books Editorial Board is getting to help shape syntheses—not just what’s new, but what the community collectively understands. This role gives me the opportunity to work with Volume Editors and authors to turn a set of strong contributions into a coherent, usable resource, and to do that in a way that brings different subfields into the same conversation.

JOC: I suppose my favorite thing has been similar to that of being a journal editor. One is forced to confront a much wider scientific arena than that framed by one’s particular scientific discipline. Every AGU book I’ve worked with has had some element of “new and cool” that came with it.

Why are books important for Earth and space science communities? 

XJ: Scientific fields advance by connecting pieces that are often studied separately—stars and their activity, planets and their atmospheres and magnetospheres—and those connections are hard to establish from individual papers alone. A good book synthesizes what we know across those interfaces, makes assumptions and terminology explicit, and highlights where knowledge gaps exist. That’s valuable both for training new scientists and for enabling collaboration; books help researchers from different disciplines meet on common ground, especially when we’re trying to interpret sparse data and compare very different environments.

JOC: I believe that in many instances books enable better stories. The length and format freedom, particularly in relation to journal articles, allows for longer and more fully developed narratives. And I believe good storytelling is essential for communicating science. My personal experience is that books I have been a part of have much wider and long-lasting reach to a wider public than most journal articles. Though this may be changing (or already changed) in the social media age.

In many fields, a well-written book becomes the go-to reference for generations of students, researchers, and practitioners.

Estella Atekwana

EA: Books are important because they provide a trusted, comprehensive place to access knowledge on a particular topic. In many fields, a well-written book becomes the go-to reference for generations of students, researchers, and practitioners. I am reminded of the book Geodynamics by Donald Turcotte and Gerald Schubert, which was foundational to my own studies as a Ph.D. student and has remained an essential text in the field through subsequent editions. It was a special delight when I came to UC Davis to meet Professor Donald Turcotte, then Professor Emeritus in Earth and Planetary Sciences, the author of a book that had been so fundamental to my intellectual development. That experience reinforced for me the lasting impact books can have. They synthesize knowledge, broaden access, and help sustain a global scientific community.

—Dara Liling (dliling@agu.org; 0009-0005-6828-2811), American Geophysical Union, USA; Estella Atekwana (0000-0003-1424-4068), University of California Davis, USA; Xianzhe Jia (0000-0002-8685-1484), University of Michigan, USA; and Jim O’Connor (0000-0002-7928-5883), United States Geological Survey, USA

Citation: Liling, D., E. Atekwana, X. Jia, and J. O’Connor (2026), The Editorial Board marks the latest chapter in AGU Books, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265023. Published on 1 June 2026. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.