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Atomic-Scale Insights into Supercritical Silicate Fluids

Wed, 04/30/2025 - 12:00
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

Supercritical fluids—hydrous silicate liquids where water and melt become fully miscible—are believed to play a key role in chemical transport and element redistribution in subduction zones. However, the atomic-scale processes underlying their high mobility are poorly understood.

Chen et al. [2025] use first-principle molecular dynamics simulations to examine the diopside–H2O system over a wide range of water contents, pressures (up to 12 gigapascals), and temperature (3000 kelvin). Their results show that water promotes the breakdown of the silicate network by converting bridging oxygens (BOs) into non-bridging oxygens (NBOs), leading to the formation of smaller, less polymerized silicate clusters with greater diffusivity and structural stability. This depolymerization enhances atomic mobility and reduces viscosity, with strong linear correlations observed between polymerization degree and transport properties. The findings identify water-induced depolymerization as the primary mechanism behind the high mobility of supercritical fluids.

These insights have broad implications for understanding magma transport dynamics and the geochemical signatures—such as uranium-thorium disequilibria—in arc lavas. The study highlights the critical role of water in regulating the structure and dynamics of silicate fluids in subduction-related magmatic and mineralizing processes.

Citation: Chen, B., Song, J., Zhang, Y., Wang, W., Zhao, Y., Wu, Z., & Wu, X. (2025). Water dissolution driving high mobility of diopside-H2O supercritical fluid. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 130, e2024JB030956.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JB030956  

—Jun Tsuchiya, Editor, JGR: Solid Earth

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The 25 October 1954 landslide disaster on the Amalfi Coast of Italy

Wed, 04/30/2025 - 06:49

The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

I have frequently highlighted the growing impact of multiple landslide events triggered by extreme rainfall around the world. Whilst there is little doubt that such events are becoming more common, they have occurred through history too. I recently came across a paper (Fiorillo et al. 2019) that documented such an event in 1954. The account is fascinating.

The paper sought to use historic aerial images and topographic data to reconstruct an inventory of the landslide triggered during this event. The location is the area around the villages of Vietri sul Mare and Maiori, which are sited on the beautiful Amalfi Coast in the Campania region of southern Italy. This is the area in the vicinity of [40.67, 14.73] – the Google Earth image below shows the landscape as it is today:-

Google Earth image of the modern setting of the 1954 landslides on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

The analysis of Fiorillo et al. (2019) indicates that in parts of this area, 500 mm of rainfall fell in the storm that triggered these landslides. They have mapped over 1,500 landslides triggered by the storm – these are shown in the map below:-

Landslides triggered during the 1954 rainfall event on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Map by Fiorillo et al. (2019).

As the map shows, the density of landslides was extremely high in the hills above Vietri sul Mare and Maiori. The failures were mostly shallow landslides, with many transitioning into channelised debris flows.

In total, it is believed that 316 people lost their lives in this disaster. There is some archive footage of the aftermath in the Youtube video below:-

Reference

Fiorillo, F., Guerriero, L., Capobianco, L., Pagnozzi, M., Revellino, P., Russo, F., and Guadagno, F. M., 2019. Inventory of Vietri-Maiori landslides induced by the storm of October 1954 (southern Italy)Journal of Maps15 (2), 530–537. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2019.1626777

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EPA to Cancel Nearly 800 Environmental Justice Grants

Tue, 04/29/2025 - 19:43
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 EPA plans to cancel 781 grants, almost all focused on environmental justice, according to a court document filed last week.

In Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council v. Department of Agriculture, a coalition of nonprofits is challenging the Trump administration’s freezing of funding from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In the recent court document, Daniel Coogan, an administrator in the Office of Mission Support for the EPA, stated that the agency completed a grant-by-grant review of its awards to ensure that grants aligned with administration priorities. Those that were not aligned were targeted for termination.

All 781 grants targeted for termination fall under programs formed by the IRA, a 2022 law that helped to promote clean energy and bolster environmental projects. Most of the grants are part of EPA programs focused on environmental justice and include projects to help some of the United States’ most environmentally disadvantaged communities be resilient to the effects of climate change and protect residents from pollution. 

According to the court document, 377 grantees have been notified that their funding has been terminated, and the remaining 404 grantees will receive notices within the next two weeks. 

Hundreds of grantees’ projects will be affected by the terminations. In one such project, San Diego nonprofit Casa Familiar expected to receive $12.7 million to help a majority-Latino community obtain low-cost, zero-emission transportation and indoor air monitors and purifiers. The group has been unable to withdraw funds for months and now awaits notification that their grant has been terminated. In another example, the community of Chiloquin, Oregon, now expects that a planned community center and disaster shelter may never be built after the EPA suspended funding for the project.

 
Related

The news of the cancellations comes shortly after hundreds of EPA employees working on diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice issues were given notice that they would be fired or reassigned.

According to the Washington Post, experts are concerned that the EPA did not conduct the full grant-by-grant review process required to terminate ongoing grants. “They’re claiming to the court that each one of those was done on an individualized basis, even though they haven’t shown any evidence,” Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, told the Washington Post.

—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 © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Mexico Will Give U.S. More Water to Avert More Tariffs

Tue, 04/29/2025 - 17:47
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.

In a joint statement yesterday, Mexican and U.S. officials announced that Mexico will immediately transfer some of its water reserves to the United States and also allow a larger share of the Rio Grande River to flow into the United States. This concession from Mexico, which will last through at least October, seems to have averted the threat of additional tariffs and sanctions threatened by President Trump in early April.

Mexico and the United States share several major rivers, including the Rio Grande, the Colorado, and the Tijuana. Control over how much water each country receives from these rivers was set in a 1944 treaty. Under the treaty, Mexico must deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the United States from six tributaries every 5 years, or an average of 350,000 acre-feet every year (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover 1 acre of land to a depth of 1 foot.)

 
Related

The United States and Mexico renegotiated parts of the treaty last year under the Biden Administration, allowing Mexico to meet its treaty obligations with water from other rivers, tributaries, or reserves. Yesterday’s announcement marks a commitment from Mexico to adhere to the amended treaty, rather than striking a new deal.

As climate change has worsened drought conditions in Mexico the country has struggled to meet the obligations of the treaty while supporting its farmers. Mexico’s current water debt to the United States is roughly 1.3 million acre-feet (420 billion gallons). Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum acknowledged this water debt but said that Mexico has been complying with the treaty to “to the extent of water availability.”

In 2020, tensions over these water deliveries boiled over into violence: Mexican farmers rioted and seized control of a dam near the U.S.-Mexico border to halt deliveries. Mexican officials worry that increasing water deliveries during the hottest and driest months of the year will once again spark civil unrest among farmers.

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@astrokimcartier.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 © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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一些专家认为人类世应得到官方认可

Tue, 04/29/2025 - 12:54
Source: AGU Advances

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

人类对地球的改造如此深刻,以至于大气化学家保罗·克鲁岑(Paul Crutzen)和生物学家尤金·斯托默(Eugene Stoermer)在2000年提出,全新世已经结束,“人类世”(Anthropocene)或人类时代已经开始。然而,尽管人类活动引发了如此巨大的变化,国际地质科学联合会(IUGS)去年仍决定不将人类世正式认定为当前的地质时代。现在,参与这一过程的几位科学家发表了一篇评论文章,解释了为什么他们认为应该再给人类世一个被认定为地质时代的机会。

McCarthy等人反驳了针对该提议的两个相关批评:首先,拟议的人类世仅开始于72年前,而每个地质时代通常跨越数百万年;其次,未来不属于地质时间,因此,基于人类将在遥远的未来在地球上留下印记的预期来指定一个时代是不恰当的。

作者认为,人类世的长度无关紧要,因为从功能上讲,地球已经进入了一个前所未有的时期。自20世纪中叶以来,地球的能源消耗量是之前11700年的六倍。由此产生的结果是,全球气温急剧上升,对从海平面到生物多样性再到冰盖等方方面面都产生了广泛的影响。这些变化将是长期的,有些甚至是不可逆转的。作者说,事实上,在如此短的时间内发生如此剧烈的变化,表明地球已经进入了一个新纪元。

一些地层学家认为,划定一个以人类为中心的时代会使地质学变得政治化,但作者认为,忽视数据以维持现状同样具有政治性。同样,有报道称,这个问题在十年内不会被重新讨论,因此我们是否生活在人类世的问题在那之前是确定的,作者对此感到愤慨。“事实并非如此,”他们写道。

—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. 在微信上阅读本文。

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A Two-Step Approach to Training Earth Scientists in AI

Tue, 04/29/2025 - 12:53

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but can you teach the current generation of Earth scientists about emerging artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) methods relevant to their research? From our experience helping run a program intended to do just that at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the answer is yes.

Earth scientists, from those focused on the atmosphere or ocean to those studying the continents or deep subsurface, often work with extremely large—sometimes global—datasets, trying to find patterns among noisy real-world observations. AI/ML is well suited for such tasks.

Relatively few Earth scientists have been trained in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) methods, meaning unfulfilled opportunities exist to learn from the growing volumes of Earth science data available.

AI/ML approaches have recently been used, for example, to replace slow, numerical representations of rainfall in a global general circulation model [Gettelman et al., 2021]. Similarly, AI/ML image detection techniques have been used with weather radar datasets to better predict short-term rainfall [Ji and Xu, 2024]. Yet relatively few domain scientists in the field have been trained in these methods, meaning unfulfilled opportunities exist to learn from the growing volumes of Earth science data available.

Several hundred data scientists work at PNNL, and for more than a decade, the lab has developed AI/ML approaches to address critical challenges in scientific discovery, energy resilience, and national security. Recent advancements in computational techniques and methodologies have sparked renewed interest in applying AI/ML across various disciplines. However, connecting the expertise of PNNL’s data scientists to Earth science research at the lab—encompassing atmospheric, hydrological, and environmental sciences—has been a challenge.

Beginning in 2022, researchers at PNNL implemented a two-step approach—a boot camp followed by a hackathon—to prepare their colleagues to incorporate AI/ML into their research effectively. Eighty percent of those who participated in both events are now using ML techniques in their research, and the experience has boosted collaboration between the lab’s data scientists and Earth scientists. The program has also led to innovative new projects, and its initial success suggests it may be a useful model for other organizations.

Boot Camp

Prior to PNNL initiating the program, many of the lab’s Earth scientists expressed interest in learning more about AI/ML and exploring its applicability for addressing a wide variety of science questions.

Atmospheric science in particular offers ideal ground for teaching and applying ML methods because these methods are conducive to tackling many common tasks in the field. For example, they can help fill patchy datasets, such as in time series of satellite imagery [Appel, 2024]; correct biases in gridded data (e.g., overestimations of solar radiation reaching Earth in reanalysis products) [Chakraborty and Lee, 2021]; merge measurements of atmospheric properties into numerical models [Krasnopolsky, 2023]; and iteratively improve models [Irrgang et al., 2021]. Furthermore, the field is ripe with the sort of very large, high-quality datasets that are necessary for applying modern ML methods.

The staff’s interest and the clear relevance of AI/ML for their work motivated development of an initial 10-week boot camp, held in fall 2022, with weekly hybrid (online and in-person) sessions attended by 30–50 people. We enlisted 10 in-house data scientists to design lessons, hands-on tutorials, and activities covering a range of AI/ML methods and tools.

As a result of the boot camp approach, participants gained understanding and appreciation of data curation for AI/ML and the full gamut of AI/ML methods they could use in their research.

The first four sessions introduced participants to the basics of ML, with each session building upon the previous one and focusing on more state-of-the-art approaches. The remaining sessions covered popular deep learning techniques such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), generative adversarial networks, transformers, and recurrent neural networks. They also covered topics such as how to use the ML libraries Keras and PyTorch, which offer the tools to run these models and other useful resources.

To connect the lessons to the participants’ research interests, each one featured an Earth science–relevant activity, such as using maps of monthly sea surface temperature anomaly data from NOAA satellites with unsupervised learning algorithms to detect the phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (i.e., El Niño and La Niña). The instructors developed and guided participants through virtual notebook environments that included fundamental information (with references) about the topic of the activity and heavily commented model code that could be run interactively. Time was also allotted for participants to better familiarize themselves with the models by running them in parallel on their own research computing environments.

As a result of the boot camp approach, participants gained understanding and appreciation of data curation for AI/ML and the full gamut of AI/ML methods they could use in their research. One remarked that they were impressed by the diversity of applications for ML and said, “I can tell if I continue to work on this skill, it will open a lot of doors and funding opportunities in the future for me.” Another commented, “By the end, I felt my programming skills had improved as well.”

Together with colleagues, one scientist at the lab who took part in the training applied knowledge and code directly from the boot camp material in research exploring stochasticity in aerosol-cloud interactions using field campaign data [Li et al., 2024].

The instructors also reported that participating in the boot camp was worthwhile for several reasons. Each of their lessons and student demonstrations were reviewed by the other instructors, which fostered connections among peers knowledgeable in ML. According to one instructor, teaching their fellow staff also “helped provide context of how valuable my expertise is here at the lab.”

Additional hands-on opportunities were necessary to bridge the gap between learning ML and putting it into practice. So we organized a second learning opportunity—this time a hackathon.

In addition, creating and presenting the weekly lesson plans to an audience with limited knowledge about AI/ML offered opportunities for instructors to improve their teaching skills. Furthermore, the adaptability of the instructional materials to other domain sciences supports the materials’ value, longevity, and easy reuse in future trainings and research.

One year after the boot camp, participant responses to a questionnaire indicated that though many had gained literacy in ML, most had not taken the next step to start incorporating ML methods into their research. The results also showed that additional hands-on opportunities were necessary to bridge the gap between learning ML and putting it into practice. So we organized a second learning opportunity—this time a hackathon—focused on pairing ML experts and data scientists with domain scientists who share common research interests.

The Hackathon

Twenty-five domain and data scientists, many of whom had participated in the boot camp, took part in the 6-week hackathon, which began in January 2024. The domain scientists involved work in various areas of Earth science and as part of DOE projects such as the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility and the PNNL-led Addressing Challenges in Energy: Floating Wind in a Changing Climate (a DOE Energy Earthshot research center), as well as NASA’s Aerosol Cloud Meteorology Interactions over the western Atlantic Experiment project.

In preparing for the course, we discovered that these scientists often had trouble formulating research questions suited to ML methods and selecting which ML method to use. Prehackathon brainstorming sessions proved critical to success. During the first prehackathon meeting, the organizing committee gathered participants virtually to group the domain scientists by their topics of interest—vegetation-atmosphere interactions, clouds and precipitation, aerosols and aerosol-cloud interactions, hydrology, and wind energy—and to brainstorm potential research questions to address.

Each of the five groups then pitched project ideas to the participating ML experts and data scientists, who selected which team to join. With the teams assembled, each further workshopped a research question within their topic focus area—as well as which ML methods to use—that they could address within the duration of the hackathon. For example, one team chose to use a CNN model to identify open- versus closed-cell atmospheric convection in radar data, which helps explain distributions of clouds and rainfall.

During the hackathon, all the teams met weekly to discuss progress and exchange ideas for continuing work. This assessment method allowed the domain scientists to engage further with experts in the PNNL ML community, who provided feedback and answers to follow-up questions, such as how to prepare data for use in the ML models. Data preparation proved to be the most time-consuming step for the domain scientists because of the challenges of correctly formatting time series and gridded atmospheric datasets (e.g., temperature, relative humidity, and pressure) before they were fed into the models.

At the end of the 6 weeks, four of the five project groups had successfully processed their data and run them through their models to achieve results related to their initial questions. The fifth group, upon reflection, agreed that selecting an overly broad research question hindered progress on their project. Their experience underscored the importance of clearly defining a focused research question—and an appropriate ML approach—with cross-disciplinary consultation among scientists.

Soon after the hackathon concluded, a representative from each team presented their project during a seminar. A postseminar Q&A about the projects with staff who had not participated in the hackathon was positive and engaging, indicating a base level understanding of AI/ML methods within the division that was not present before the boot camp.

Fostering an AI-Literate Workforce

With growing datasets of Earth observations and ongoing computing advancements, AI/ML is an increasingly useful tool to aid in skillfully assessing conditions and processes in the Earth system.

Jingjing Tian presents results from the hackathon at the HydroML Symposium in May 2024. Her project involved training a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to detect open versus closed convection using weather radar data. Credit: Andrea Starr/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

At PNNL, more than 20% of the research workforce is advancing AI and its applications in science. The initial goal of the recent training activities was to further grow ML expertise and implementation specifically within the lab’s Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences (ACES) division. The lessons and successes of these activities suggest that other organizations similarly seeking to expand their use of AI/ML may benefit from the model of PNNL’s approach.

The different approaches of the boot camp and the hackathon allowed instructors to meet participants at their preferred comfort level and cater to different learning styles.

The boot camp created a long-term, structured environment for a large number of staff to better understand the increasingly complex ML landscape, whereas the follow-up hackathon allowed a smaller group of eager staff to be coached in a faster-paced environment to produce deliverables. The different approaches of the boot camp and the hackathon allowed instructors to meet participants at their preferred comfort level and cater to different learning styles.

The results demonstrate that although learning new skills in AI/ML takes time, the effort is worthwhile and a collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment accelerates such learning. Staff self-reported that work done during the boot camp and hackathon had resulted in three conference presentations, including at the HydroML 2024 Symposium, and two publications (another is still in preparation).

Furthermore, PNNL reported an uptick in proposals from its Earth scientists for various internal funding opportunities focused on leveraging AI/ML methods. More proposals means more competition for funding, which should drive innovation and ultimately lead to stronger projects moving forward.

Another lesson from our experience was that sourcing instructors from within PNNL (i.e., ML experts who are already colleagues of Earth scientists in the ACES division) facilitated future collaborations between data and domain scientists and new research opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible previously. One of the participating AI/ML experts noted to us that “after the hackathon, many lab scientists reached out to me for help in implementing ML/AI algorithms into their work,” leading to multiple collaborations.

Hackathon participant Sha Feng’s comments offer additional, anecdotal evidence of the success of PNNL’s program: “Participating in the hackathon has been a transformative experience,” Feng said. “By bridging the gap between atmospheric science and data science, we have created a foundation for future projects that leverage the strengths of both fields.”

We plan to continue to bridge such gaps at PNNL—and we support other organizations doing the same—to advance applications of AI/ML to address crucial questions about our planet, from the atmosphere to the ocean to the solid Earth.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the instructors who took part in the boot camp and hackathon: Peishi Jiang, Tirthankar “TC” Chakraborty, Andrew Geiss, Sing-Chun “Sally” Wang, Robert Hetland, Rachel Hu and Danielle Robinson from Amazon Web Services, Erol Cromwell, Maruti Mudunuru, Robin Cosbey, Samuel Dixon, and Melissa Swift. We also acknowledge the work of colleagues who contributed to this article and supported these efforts: Sing-Chun “Sally” Wang, Court Corley, Larry Berg, Timothy Scheibe, Ian Kraucunas, and Rita Steyn.

References

Appel, M. (2024), Efficient data-driven gap filling of satellite image time series using deep neural networks with partial convolutions, Artif. Intell. Earth Syst., 3, e220055, https://doi.org/10.1175/AIES-D-22-0055.1.

Chakraborty, T. C., and X. Lee (2021), Using supervised learning to develop BaRAD, a 40-year monthly bias-adjusted global gridded radiation dataset, Sci. Data, 8(1), 238, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01016-4.

Gettelman, A., et al. (2021), Machine learning the warm rain process, J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst., 13(2), e2020MS002268, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002268.

Irrgang, C., et al. (2021), Towards neural Earth system modelling by integrating artificial intelligence in Earth system science, Nat. Mach. Intell., 3, 667–674, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-021-00374-3.

Ji, C., and Y. Xu (2024), trajPredRNN+: A new approach for precipitation nowcasting with weather radar echo images based on deep learning, Heliyon, 10(18), e36134, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e36134.

Krasnopolsky, V. (2023), Review: Using machine learning for data assimilation, model physics, and post-processing model outputs, Off. Note 513, 32 pp., Natl. Cent. for Environ. Predict., College Park, Md., https://doi.org/10.25923/71tx-4809.

Li, X.-Y., et al. (2024), On the prediction of aerosol-cloud interactions within a data-driven framework, Geophys. Res. Lett., 51, e2024GL110757, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110757.

Author Information

Lexie Goldberger, Peishi Jiang, Tirthankar “TC” Chakraborty, Andrew Geiss, and Xingyuan Chen (xingyuan.chen@pnnl.gov), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash.

Citation: Goldberger, L., P. Jiang, T. Chakraborty, A. Geiss, and X. Chen (2025), A two-step approach to training Earth scientists in AI, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250160. Published on 29 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Calibrating Climate Models with Machine Learning

Tue, 04/29/2025 - 12:00
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

Climate models are essential tools for understanding and predicting our planet, but accurately setting their many internal parameters is complex and has been a labor-intensive manual task in the past.

Elsaesser et al. [2025] showcase a method using machine learning to automatically tune, or “calibrate,” the NASA GISS climate model against real-world observations. The authors develop a neural network surrogate of GISS ModelE to efficiently explore different parameter settings, creating a collection of well-performing model versions known as a calibrated physics ensemble. A key success was significantly improving the model’s simulation of challenging features such as shallow cumulus clouds and Amazon rainfall—longstanding modeling challenges—without negatively impacting, for example, radiation fields.

This work represents an important advance, moving automated calibration techniques from theoretical research into practical application for large-scale climate modeling. It brings us an essential step closer to more trustworthy climate predictions. 

Citation: Elsaesser, G. S., van Lier-Walqui, M., Yang, Q., Kelley, M., Ackerman, A. S., Fridlind, A. M., et al. (2025). Using machine learning to generate a GISS ModelE calibrated physics ensemble (CPE). Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17, e2024MS004713. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024MS004713

—Tapio Schneider, Editor, JAMES 

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A Geologic Map of the Asteroid Belt

Mon, 04/28/2025 - 12:59

Where do meteorites come from? A new analysis of 75 fall events suggests that meteorites with different geologies travel from different places in the asteroid belt, which separates Mars and Jupiter. Researchers traced some types of meteorites to particular asteroid families, creating a geologic map of meteorite origins. Most meteorites were generated by just a few recent collisions between asteroids.

“Understanding the asteroid belt is really looking into the past, into the formation of the solar system, and into all the dynamics that happened at that time,” said Peter Jenniskens, coauthor on the new analysis and a meteorite astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. Those early interactions and collisions matter because much of the water on Earth and a lot of the organics likely came from primitive asteroids, he added.

Tracking Falls

Spacecraft have returned small volumes of material from the Moon, comets, and asteroids, but meteorites remain the primary way that scientists get their hands on space rocks.

“By reconstructing where specific meteorite types formed, we gain a clearer picture of the compositional and thermal gradients that existed when the solar system was young,” said Michaël Marsset, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile. “This has major implications for understanding how habitable environments emerge, not just here but potentially in other planetary systems as well.” Marsset studies small solar system objects and Earth impactors and was not involved in the new study.

But matching a meteorite to the asteroid it came from is a tall task.

“Asteroids in space look quite a bit different than the meteorites that we have in our laboratories.”

“Asteroids in space look quite a bit different than the meteorites that we have in our laboratories, because the asteroids in space are covered by regolith and debris and they are exposed to solar radiation and solar wind,” Jenniskens said. A meteorite might come from an asteroid’s interior, which could look entirely different from its surface. That makes it challenging to use astronomical observations alone to match meteorites to their asteroid parents.

When someone witnesses a meteorite falling to Earth, scientists can try to backtrack its orbit to a point of origin. Combining this information with the meteorite’s geochemistry, mineralogical structure, and age, they can then figure out which asteroid or asteroid family—a group of asteroids that originate from the same collision event—sent it hurtling toward Earth.

The trouble is that meteorites fall more or less at random, Jenniskens explained. It has taken a while to document enough falls to spot patterns, he said. Just 6 years ago, there were fewer than 40 meteorite falls with well-measured trajectories.

“The number of falls has doubled since that time,” Jenniskens said.

Meteorite researchers have set up more than 2 dozen global camera networks that have detected many of these recent falls—roughly 14 falls per year. Also, the rising popularity of dash cameras and doorbell cameras has contributed to the surge of recent detections.

In the new analysis, about 36 of the 75 falls were recorded by residential security cameras, Jenniskens said. People report fireball sightings and submit videos for analysis. “We really depend on the citizen science.”

Meteorite Ancestry

Jenniskens and his colleague Hadrien Devillepoix of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, reviewed the trajectories, geochemistry, mineralogy, and size of 75 meteorites. They also looked at the meteorites’ ages, calculated on the basis of how long a rock’s surface has been exposed to cosmic rays.

Though a few asteroids are suspected sources of certain meteorite types, a meteorite’s age was often the key factor in figuring out which asteroid family produced the meteorite. The positions and movements of asteroids within a family evolve in a predictable way over time, and if this so-called dynamical age matched a meteorite’s cosmic ray age, that family was more likely to be the meteorite’s source.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbited asteroid 4 Vesta and mapped its surface geology and chemistry. Debris from impacts that made some of these craters makes it way to Earth as HED meteorites. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA, Public Domain

Most of the meteorites originated from a handful of asteroid families, and different classes of meteorites could be traced to different parts of the asteroid belt.

Jenniskens and Devillepoix confirmed that very low iron LL-type meteorites, such as the Chelyabinsk meteorite, originated from the extensive Flora family in the inner asteroid belt. They tracked H-type chondrites to debris clusters in the Koronis, Massalia, and Nele families. They also traced low-iron L chondrites to the Hertha asteroid family, rather than to the previously determined Massalia family.

“Hertha is covered by dark rocks that were shock blackened, indicative of an unusually violent collision,” Jenniskens said. “The L chondrites experienced a very violent origin 468 million years ago when these meteorites showered Earth in such numbers that they can be found in the geologic record.”

“It turns out that, yes, our HED meteorites seem to come from Vesta, not from its family.”

Marsset has also worked to trace meteorites to their asteroid origins, though his team used astronomical observations of asteroids and numeral modeling, rather than meteorite data. “Even with these different approaches, we’re mostly converging on similar conclusions,” Marsset said. “Where we disagree, well, that’s part of the fun! For example, I’d gladly bet a pint with Dr. Jenniskens and Dr. Devillepoix that L chondrites come from the Massalia family, not Hertha,” he joked.

The team also looked at howardite, eucrite, and diogenite (HED) meteorites, achondrites that have long been tied to the Vesta asteroid family. According to the new analysis, the volume of HED material that made its way to Earth must have come from a collision so large that it only could have happened on Vesta itself. (Vesta is the second-largest object in the asteroid belt.) What’s more, the cosmic ray exposure ages of HED meteorites closely match the ages of particular impact craters on Vesta’s surface that were mapped by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

“It turns out that, yes, our HED meteorites seem to come from Vesta, not from its family,” Jenniskens said.

Decoding Solar System History

“What’s remarkable about this work is the broader picture it starts to paint,” Marsset said. “We are finally able to map specific classes of meteorites that fall on Earth to distinct regions in the asteroid belt and to specific asteroid families.… That’s a major step toward understanding the compositional structure of the asteroid belt and, ultimately, how our solar system formed and evolved.”

But it’s just as important to understand where meteorites aren’t coming from, he pointed out.

“While one might expect the meteorite flux to represent a broad sampling of material from across the entire asteroid belt, we now know that it is actually dominated by a few recent fragmentation events,” Marsset said. “This insight helps us better understand the natural sampling bias in the meteorites we collect on Earth, and it also highlights which asteroid populations are underrepresented. That, in turn, can guide the targets of future space missions aimed at filling in those missing pieces.”

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@astrokimcartier.bsky.social), Staff Writer

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2025), A geologic map of the asteroid belt, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250165. Published on 28 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Glaciers Offer Clues into the Path of Fossil Fuel Pollution

Mon, 04/28/2025 - 12:58
Source: Global Biogeochemical Cycles

Glaciers provide a unique opportunity for researchers to measure levels of atmospheric carbon deposition. Unlike other terrestrial ecosystems, these slow-moving rivers of ice do not have other large reservoirs of soil or vegetation that might obscure how much carbon they receive from the atmosphere.

In most terrestrial ecosystems, dissolved organic matter comes from plants and soil and can contain both organic carbon and black carbon (the sooty black product from wildfires and burning fossil fuels). In glaciers, organic matter is predominately derived from in situ microbial production and atmospheric deposition. Both can contribute to downstream food webs and broader biogeochemical cycling.

Understanding how glaciers get their carbon, including how much comes from atmospheric deposition, can help scientists understand how human activity affects the glacier carbon cycle and ecosystems.

Holt et al. investigated dissolved organic matter in the meltwater from 10 glaciers across Alaska, Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan, and Ecuador. By examining dissolved organic carbon and black carbon isotopes, as well as molecular-level composition, researchers found that anthropogenic pollutants significantly influenced the composition of dissolved organic matter in glaciers and that this influence varied by region.

The researchers collected samples from each glacier outflow stream and determined the age of the dissolved organic carbon in the samples. These ages offered an isotopic signature of their sources. For instance, younger samples might originate from wildfire material and microbial activity on the glacier surface, whereas older material more likely originated from ancient carbon sources, namely, fossil fuels.

Each region displayed different amounts of dissolved organic carbon linked to anthropogenic atmospheric pollution, ranging from 12% to 91%, with a median of 50%. Carbon from fossil fuels was more prevalent in the dissolved organic matter of the Alaskan glacier. In Ecuador, there was a higher relative contribution of carbon from biomass burning, such as wildfires, and in situ microbial activity. The exact source, age, and makeup of dissolved organic carbon and dissolved black carbon varied between different glaciers outflows. But overall, the researchers say, fossil fuels are affecting the carbon content in glacier outflow globally, with implications for the ecosystems that depend on them. (Global Biogeochemical Cycles, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GB008359, 2025)

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

Citation: Owen, R. (2025), Glaciers offer clues into the path of fossil fuel pollution, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250161. Published on 28 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Coastal Models Quantify How Natural Islands Respond to Sea Level Rise

Mon, 04/28/2025 - 12:00
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Earth’s Future 

Coral atoll islands are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and climate change. In rural islands where active coastal sediments processes are occurring, wave-driven sediment deposition can raise islands’ crest on their oceanward side.

Roelvink et al. [2025] show that coastal morphodynamic models are now able to provide quantitative insight into these phenomena. Specifically, they show that in the natural islands of Fiyoaree (Maldives), the sediment accumulation on the island crests can mitigate the projected increase of overwash during extreme wave events by a factor of three. Their modeling framework also confirms the benefits of adaptation measures aiming at protecting corals, particularly in reducing incoming wave energy. As climate is warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, increasing sea surface temperatures are causing widespread bleaching and mortality of corals, raising the urgent question of limits to coral adaptation, even at 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.

Hence, the study opens the way for future research exploring these limits in a quantitative manner, while also reminding us about the urgency of mitigating climate change to avoid irreversible losses and damages.

Citation: Roelvink, F. E., Masselink, G., Stokes, C., & McCall, R. T. (2025). Climate adaptation for a natural atoll island in the Maldives – predicting the long-term morphological response of coral islands to sea level rise and the effect of hazard mitigation strategies. Earth’s Future, 13, e2024EF005576. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EF005576

—Gonéri Le Cozannet, Associate Editor, Earth’s Future

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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An Air Parcel’s Journey Through the Stratosphere

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 17:57
Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

The stratosphere, one of the Earth’s atmospheric layers, is essential to understand due to its significant influence on the global climate system. Given that the composition of the stratosphere is highly influenced by air transport and circulation, scientists have developed a measure called “age of air” to quantify how long air has been in transport.

A new article in Reviews of Geophysics explores the development and use of this stratospheric age of air metric. Here, we asked the lead author to give an overview of the stratosphere, how scientists use the age of air metric, and what questions remain.

In simple terms, what is the stratosphere and what makes it a particularly interesting layer of the atmosphere to study?

The stratosphere is the second layer of the atmosphere from the ground, at about 20 to 50 kilometers high. Below, in the troposphere, temperatures decrease with height, but in the stratosphere, it gets warmer when moving higher up. This is mostly because of the stratospheric ozone layer, which absorbs high-energy sunlight that warms the stratosphere, and, at the same time, protects us from harmful UV radiation.

The dynamics of the stratosphere are very interesting: the stable stratification (i.e., temperature increase with height) inhibits the formation of “weather”, as we know, it in the troposphere. Nevertheless, the stratosphere is not boring. Certain atmospheric waves formed in the troposphere can propagate upward, and drive a gigantic heat pump in the stratosphere, transporting air upward in the tropics, poleward, and downward over the poles. The existence of such a circulation was first postulated in the 1940s and 1950s and has been named after its proposers the “Brewer-Dobson circulation”.

How does the “Brewer-Dobson circulation” help us to understand the composition of the stratosphere?

Hemisphere-wide transport circulation is important to understand how trace gases are distributed in the stratosphere.

The hemisphere-wide transport circulation is important to understand how trace gases are distributed in the stratosphere. For example, ozone is formed by photochemistry, thus primarily in the tropics, where most sunlight is available. However, ozone concentrations maximize at mid- to high latitudes, and this is thanks to transport by the Brewer-Dobson circulation. Indeed, when Brewer and Dobson took observations of ozone and water vapor in the stratosphere, the only way they could explain them was by a large-scale poleward circulation. However, at this time it was not clear how this circulation could be driven physically, and it took the science community another few decades to understand the dynamical driving of the circulation.

What is the “age of air” and how can it be observed and measured?

One of the problems with the Brewer-Dobson circulation is that it is difficult to observe it directly, since the mean velocities associated with the slow upward motion in the tropics are on the order of millimeters/second. Furthermore, processes other than the slow overturning circulation are important for understanding total transport of air masses, like fast mixing of air between tropics and extra tropics.

One way to quantify this total transport circulation is by average transport times, i.e., measuring how long it takes air to move from its entry into the stratosphere in the tropics to another point in the stratosphere. This transport time is commonly known as “age of stratospheric air”.

One advantage of age of air is that it can be deduced from certain observable trace gases. Specifically, if the concentration of a trace gas rises steadily in the troposphere, one can measure the delay of concentrations in the troposphere versus in the stratosphere. This delay equals the age of air, but strictly only if the trace gas has ideal properties of a linear increase in concentration and no chemical sinks or sources. In the real world, we have some tracers that almost fulfill those conditions, but not exactly, one example being carbon dioxide. Correcting for the non-ideal properties of tracers when deriving age of air from observations is possible, but it is a bit of an art, as we summarize in our new review paper.

How has data on the age of air advanced understanding of processes in the stratosphere?

Many trace gas measurements have been collected via aircraft, balloon, or satellite observations, and we can use them to deduce age of stratospheric air.

Over the last few decades, many trace gas measurements have been collected via aircraft, balloon or satellite observations, and we can use them to deduce age of stratospheric air. This puts us in a situation that we now have a good observational data base on how “old” the air is in the stratosphere on average. As described above, age of air is a measure of the total transport strength in the stratosphere, including many different processes. This is both good and bad: on the one hand, age of air is very well suited to test if global climate models do a good job in simulating transport. On the other hand, solely based on age of air, it is difficult to say which process is how important for the total transport time. Coming up with additional diagnostics of how we can better disentangle the role of different processes for total transport, i.e., for age of air, has been a focus of research in recent years, with good progress.

How is age theory being applied beyond the stratosphere?

The concept of age of air as a measure of transport times from a defined surface to a certain point in a fluid can be used for many geophysical circulations systems. For example, it is commonly used by oceanographers to measure when a water parcel was last in contact with the surface – in this case, the age is considerably longer, on the order of centuries or even millennia, compared to a few years for air in the stratosphere.

Why is understanding stratospheric circulation important for projecting the impacts of climate change?

Changes in the concentration of trace gases in the troposphere under climate change, such as carbon dioxide, methane or nitrous oxides, will be communicated to the stratosphere via the transport circulation. There, those trace gases can have effects on stratospheric temperature via radiation, but also on chemistry, leading to changes in the stratospheric ozone layer or stratospheric water vapor.

Stratospheric circulation and its changes are important in order to understand how the stratospheric ozone layer will be influenced by climate change.

Moreover, there is a long-standing consensus between climate models that the stratospheric Brewer-Dobson circulation will speed up in response to climate change, with consequences for how fast trace gases are transported into and through the stratosphere. Thus, stratospheric circulation and its changes are important in order to understand how the stratospheric ozone layer will be influenced by climate change, directly impacting our UV shield. Moreover, changes in the concentrations of ozone and water vapor, particularly in the lower stratosphere, lead to changes in the overall radiation, directly impacting climate change on the surface.

What are some of the remaining questions where additional modeling, data or research efforts are needed?

A topic of much debate over the last decades is whether the acceleration of the Brewer-Dobson circulation simulated by climate models can be detected in observations. The problem here is that the trends are on the order of a few percent per decade, so we need very high precision data for many decades to detect a trend. Given many uncertainties in deducing age of air from trace gas measurements, at the moment we must conclude that our database is not good enough to derive long-term trends in age of air, at least in the middle stratosphere. Thus, continuous collection of high-quality data of stratospheric trace gases will be necessary to make progress on detecting long-term changes in the stratospheric circulation.

—Hella Garny (hella.garny@dlr.de; 0000-0003-4960-2304), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

Citation: Garny, H. (2025), An air parcel’s journey through the stratosphere, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO255014. Published on 25 April 2025. 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 © 2025. 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.

El conocimiento fluye de ida y vuelta en el TierraFest 2025

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 16:30

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta es una traducción al español autorizada de un artículo de Eos.

Después de 5 años de organizar el TierraFest, un evento anual que celebra las ciencias de la Tierra en México, una de las cosas que Raiza Piltowsky Gruner ha aprendido es que cuando se trata de comunicar el conocimiento sobre nuestro ambiente, “nosotros los científicos no somos las personas con la mayor autoridad. Todos vivimos en este planeta”.

“Hay muchas otras formas de generar conocimiento, para validarlo y vivirlo”.

Ella explicó esto durante la conferencia de prensa del evento, donde además anunció el tema del festival para este año: “Juntxs contra la tormenta”. Los organizadores del TierraFest no querían transmitir la idea de que los científicos eran la única fuente de soluciones a problemas como el cambio climático, dijo Pilatowsky Gruner. Este ha sido uno de los valores bases de Planeteando, la asociación sin fines de lucro detrás del TierraFest.

Aunque el método científico es válido e importante, “hay muchas otras formas de generar conocimiento, para validarlo y vivirlo”, añadió Pilatowsky Guner. Ella cree que esta filosofía ha hecho del TierraFest un espacio seguro para la diversidad en un escenario político incierto.

Esta semana, Ciudad de México será sede de una feria de ciencia, performances en vivo y películas para gente de todas las edades para reflexionar sobre la relación que tenemos con el planeta.

Aprendizaje horizontal

Un ejemplo de diversidad en el festival de este año es el evento de apertura, dijo Carla Chávez, quien empezó en Planeteando como una estudiante de servicio social y es ahora una colaboradora regular. El 22 de abril (Día de la Tierra), el TierraFest empieza con una caminata al Parque Nacional de Los Dinamos, un bosque por donde pasa el Río Magdalena, el último río que corre libre en la capital de México.

“Creemos en el aprendizaje horizontal. Aprendemos de ellos y ellos aprenden de nosotros”.

Chávez, una bióloga de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), explicó que en Planeteando no quieren ser intrusos en la comunidad histórica de la Magdalena Atlitic, donde se llevará a cabo la caminata. “Creemos en el aprendizaje horizontal”, dijo. “Aprendemos de ellos y ellos aprenden de nosotros”.

Durante la caminata, Marisol Tovar Valentínez y su equipo de monitores comunitarios, miembros de la comunidad que hacen voluntariado para proteger sus bosques, guiarán a los participantes en su bosque, acompañados por los organizadores del TierraFest y la National Geographic Explorer Daniela Cafaggi.

Como parte del aprendizaje horizontal, los monitores comunitarios en entrenamiento se unirán a la caminata para aprender del equipo del TierraFest y practicar sus habilidades para guiar grupos. Además también compartirán su conocimiento sobre el bosque con los asistentes.

A diferencia de Pilatowsky Gruner, Tovar Valentínez dijo que piensa que, de hecho, los científicos podrían tener una voz de autoridad sobre el conocimiento del planeta. “Pero no sobre la sabiduría”, apuntó, describiendo la sabiduría como el conocimiento creado y protegido como comunidades como la suya. La sabiduría es un proceso continuo y vivo, dijo, aunque está en peligro de perderse a medida que mueren los ancianos de la comunidad.

Tovar Valentínez dijo que valora trabajar con científicos, incluyendo Cafaggi, una bióloga de la UNAM que trabaja con la comunidad Atlitic para estudiar los murciélagos en sus bosques.

Uniendo perspectivas distintas

El 24 de abril, el TierraFest continuará con el ConCervezatorio, evento en el que científicos y activistas comparten sus opiniones y perspectivas con unos tragos.

Pilatowsky Gruner explicó en la conferencia de prensa que los organizadores quieren usar el TierraFest 2025 para resaltar la importancia de unir gente de diferentes contextos, “Juntxs contra la tormenta”. Esa unidad puede ayudar a los individuos y comunidades a enfrentar el cambio climático y las tendencias globales como el extractivismo, ambas “tormentas” afectando el mundo entero.

Después de los tragos, la celebración de distintas perspectivas sobre los retos de la Tierra continúa. Chávez se meterá en la piel de Carmilla Desmondus, una drag queen inspirada en la icónica vampira lesbiana del libro Carmilla, de autor irlandes Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu y Desmondus, el género de los “murciélagos vampiros” chupa sangre.

“Dragas por la Tierra” surgió como un evento anual en el TierraFest tres años atrás, cuando se invitó a participar a la drag queen Bia Hollis. Pedro Adad Tristán Flores, biólogo detrás de Bia Hollis, fue también un estudiante de servicio social de Planeteando antes de ser un colaborador recurrente. Desde entonces, cada año su colectivo de drag queens toma inspiración de los temas del TierraFest para diseñar sus vestuarios y su maquillaje, los que ellas explican durante el show.

Este año, las actividades LGBTQ+ del TierraFest se expandirán para incluir el performance de teatro playback del colectivo Xuir, en el cual la audiencia contará sus historias personales mientras que los actores las interpretan en vivo. Los organizadores propondrán historias sobre la intersección entre el trabajo científico y las identidades LGBTQ+.

Mostrándole el mundo a los asistentes

El 26 de abril, el TierraFilme presentará otra de sus ediciones de películas sobre el planeta Tierra. Por primera vez, este evento se realizará en el Papalote Museo del Niño, un espacio dedicado a la comunicación de la ciencia para niños, y empezará con la proyección de uno de los episodios de la serie documental de National Geographic A Real Bug’s Life. Los asistentes verán cortometrajes de México y de Latinoamérica sobre temas como el efecto de la basura, la pérdida de lenguas indígenas y los impactos de la expansión urbana.

Los eventos del TierraFest terminarán el 27 de abril, cuando El Centro Cultural El Rule, la casa del festival ya por un tiempo, recibirá una vez más la Feria de Ciencia TierraFest. Activistas y científicos mostrarán su trabajo a adultos y niños en más de 20 talleres sobre el agua, el aire, la Tierra y la vida. Desde la vida en los mares paleozoicos hasta problemas contemporáneos como el impacto que las tuberías de gas subacuáticas podría tener en las ballenas, estos científicos están enfocados en entender mejor el planeta y compartir el conocimiento con todos.

Roberto González (@ggonzalitos), Escritor de ciencia

This translation by Anthony Ramírez-Salazar (@Anthnyy) was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando y GeoLatinas. Esta traducción fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando and GeoLatinas.

Text © 2025. 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.

Trump Moves to Allow Seabed Mining in International Waters

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 14:11
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 new executive order, issued on 24 April, aims to help private companies to mine the deep sea.

Some areas of the ocean floor host swaths of potato-sized nodules that contain coveted minerals such as cobalt and nickel. For the past decade, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has been developing a mining code, which would govern the laws of how nations explore and exploit these resources.

But in the new executive order citing the 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, President Trump declared that the United States—the only major global economy that is not part of the ISA—would create a process for granting companies permits to mine these minerals.

Under the Law of 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (which the United States did not ratify), a nation has economic rights to the resources within 200 nautical miles of its coast, but international waters fall under ISA jurisdiction.

The new order aims to establish the United States “as a global leader in seabed mineral exploration and development both within and beyond national jurisdiction,” according to text released by the White House.

 
Related

Dozens of nations have called for a moratorium, pause, or ban on deep-sea mining, and companies including BMW, Google, and Samsung have vowed to not use deep-sea minerals in their products until the risks of doing so are better understood. When The Metals Company, a Canadian seabed mining company, announced in March that it planned to apply for exploration and extraction permits through the U.S. government, even nations that generally support mining in international waters, such as China and Russia, condemned the company’s actions.

At the ISA Council’s session last month, Leticia Carvalho, secretary general of the ISA, expressed “deep concern” over The Metals Company’s announcement, saying that any unilateral action not taken under the ISA’s authority “would constitute a violation of international law.”

As Eos has reported, much of the concern surrounding deep sea mining comes from how little is known about ecosystems on the ocean floor, meaning mining these modules could have significant unforeseen impacts.

“There are still major gaps in understanding biodiversity and ecosystem functions at polymetallic nodule ecosystems,” Sabine Gollner, a deep-sea marine biologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research told Eos last year. “Once nodules are removed by mining, all biodiversity and functions directly dependent on the minerals will be lost for millions of years at the mined location.”

—Emily Dieckman (@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 © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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A New View of Gamma Rays from Thunderclouds

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 12:21

Neutron stars, supernova explosions, and other extremely energetic phenomena across the universe produce gamma rays, the highest-energy radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum. Closer to home, the Sun also emits gamma rays, and here on Earth, gamma ray sources include nuclear explosions, radioactive decay of certain materials (sometimes applied for medical uses), and—as we’ve known for about 30 years—lightning.

Many details of lightning-generated gamma rays, however, including how common they are, have remained uncertain over the past few decades since they were discovered. Every day, more than 3 million lightning strikes occur in thunderstorms around the planet. How many of these lightning bolts emit gamma radiation?

Such information is important for improving our understanding of the chemistry and dynamics of thunderclouds and other features, which feeds into our ability to forecast weather, including potentially hazardous conditions, more accurately.

With recent observations and research, scientists are revealing new insights into the mysteries of Earth’s atmospheric gamma rays, including that thunderclouds act as huge particle accelerators, emitting gamma rays far more often than previously thought.

Early Observations of Terrestrial Gamma Rays

The scientists involved were clearly amazed to find that such a gamma ray source existed in their own backyard.

In the early 1990s, the first observations of gamma rays in thunderstorms revealed a phenomenon known as terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGFs). The discovery, made by the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO), a space observatory built to study gamma rays originating in space, came as a big surprise for the scientific community. The scientists involved were clearly amazed to find that such a gamma ray source existed in their own backyard, writing that “detectors aboard the CGRO have observed an unexplained terrestrial phenomenon: brief, intense flashes of gamma rays” [Fishman et al., 1994].

The find immediately set the stage for the next 3 decades of research in the field of atmospheric electricity, with researchers intensely scrutinizing terrestrial gamma rays. However, in retrospect, it is evident that for much of this time, exploration and measurements of gamma rays were hampered by the available instrumentation. The only workable detectors for gamma ray detection at the time had been developed to study processes other than TGFs. These detectors included the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on CGRO and the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) and, more recently, the Astro Rivelatore Gamma a Immagini Leggero and the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor.

BATSE, for example, was designed to study gamma ray bursts from the universe, but because it had difficulty capturing very short (~1 millisecond) TGFs, the BATSE measurements were heavily biased toward the most intense events. Meanwhile, RHESSI measurements sometimes combined detections of TGF photons from two events into one [Grefenstette et al., 2008].

A Purpose-Built Mission

A few years before the discovery of TGFs, in 1989, the first documented cases of unexpected lightning above thunderclouds were observed. Several phenomena, collectively referred to as transient luminous events (TLEs), were characterized and given mythical names like blue jets, elves, and red sprites.

Early this century, researchers began developing a plan to study these newly identified atmospheric events from the International Space Station (ISS). With scientists at the University of Valencia in Spain and the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway, Torsten Neubert from the Technical University of Denmark initiated the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) project. While Neubert and his team took the lead on TLE studies, Nikolai Østgaard and his group at UiB developed an instrument specifically designed for TGF studies called the Modular X- and Gamma-ray Sensor (MXGS) as part of ASIM.

The finding that terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGFs) happen before the visible flashes of lightning was crucial for establishing a theoretical framework for the sequence of events in thunderstorms.

In 2018, the ASIM payload was finally launched into space and mounted on the ISS’s Columbus module. From this vantage, more than 400 kilometers above the ground, ASIM would have a view from above of the drama unfolding during thunderstorms. Over the next few years, the scientists reported several groundbreaking observations.

For example, Østgaard et al. [2019] found that TGFs observed from space actually occur before or simultaneously with the optical (visible light) pulses of lightning. Østgaard et al. [2021] then found that the delay of the optical pulse in those cases was explained well by the scattering of light through clouds. This finding, that TGFs happen before the visible flashes of lightning, was crucial for establishing a theoretical framework for the sequence of events in thunderstorms. It means that electrons are accelerated to relativistic energies in electric fields associated with long conductive leaders and that the optical pulse we see from space is a signature of the leader discharge that follows.

In another study, Neubert et al. [2019] reported the first simultaneous observation of TGFs and TLEs known as elves (emissions of light and very low frequency perturbations), confirming previous theoretical predictions of their co-occurrence.

ALOFT Changes the Game

ASIM observations provided great insights into TGFs, but the question remained whether a significant population of TGFs that are too weak to observe from space existed. That question, addressed and discussed by Østgaard et al. [2012], motivated the Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS and TGFs (ALOFT) flight campaign, a collaboration between UiB and NASA, in summer 2023.

The ER-2 aircraft is seen from below during an ALOFT campaign flight on 12 July 2023. Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas

Building on their experience developing MXGS, the UiB scientists came up with a new instrument, called UiB-BGO, to measure gamma rays from NASA’s ER-2 aircraft. Although the detector and front-end electronics were similar to those in MXGS, the system used on ASIM to trigger gamma ray measurements was replaced with a data acquisition and storage system that enabled continuous data recording during flights.

The results from the Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS and TGFs flight campaign have turned out to be game-changing.

Ten ALOFT flights were conducted, with NASA operating the ER-2 out of MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. The aircraft visited tropical thunderstorms around the Gulf of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, flying just above the thunderclouds at heights of about 20 kilometers and bringing the UiB-BGO as close as possible to the spectacular events unfolding.

Real-time telemetry of gamma ray count rates allowed scientists to recognize immediately whether the plane was flying over a gamma ray–producing storm. They could then instruct the pilot to turn and scan an area again to maximize gamma ray detections. The ER-2’s instrument payload also included lightning sensors and microwave sensors, which provided data on thundercloud characteristics.

The results from ALOFT have turned out to be game-changing. Prior to the flight campaign, terrestrial gamma rays were considered rare, and only two types—microsecond bursts of TGFs and gamma ray glows that lasted minutes at a time—had been observed. That prior understanding has now been updated significantly.

Flickering Flashes and Boiling Glows

Observations of ample gamma ray events from the ALOFT campaign suggest that TGFs occur up to 100 times more frequently than previously believed [Østgaard et al., 2024; Marisaldi et al., 2024; Bjørge-Engeland et al., 2024]. It turns out that a substantial population of TGFs is, indeed, too weak to observe from space, showing that earlier detection efforts from space had just scratched the tip of the iceberg. Further, unlike previous flight campaigns that circulated around the outskirts of thunderclouds, the ALOFT ER-2 flew directly above thunderclouds, enabling it to detect the weak TGF population.

Data from ALOFT also allowed identification of a third, previously undetected terrestrial gamma ray phenomenon named flickering gamma ray flashes (FGFs), which seem to combine characteristics of both TGFs and gamma ray glows [Østgaard et al., 2024]. FGFs begin as glows before intensifying into pulsed sequences of gamma ray emissions resembling TGFs, except that the pulses last longer (~2 milliseconds) and the sequences overall last tens to hundreds of milliseconds. As with gamma glows, but unlike TGFs, initiation of FGFs is not associated with detectable optical or radio signals, including lightning discharges.

The old picture of minutes-long gamma ray glows must be revisited too. The recent observations show that thunderclouds can actually emit gamma rays for hours and that these emissions can take place over many thousands of square kilometers. They also seem to be highly dynamic in space and time, with gamma glows popping up for 1–10 seconds at a time in different locations within the most highly convective cores of a cloud system, resembling bubbles in a boiling pot [Marisaldi et al., 2024].

Reconsidering the Role of Atmospheric Gamma Rays

Thunderclouds are, indeed, huge particle accelerators, and gamma ray emissions, hardly a rarity, are an intrinsic part of highly convective systems.

The groundbreaking results from the ALOFT campaign suggest a revised view of the role of gamma rays in the atmosphere and that we need to reconsider existing frameworks describing gamma ray phenomena. Thunderclouds are, indeed, huge particle accelerators, and gamma ray emissions, hardly a rarity, are an intrinsic part of highly convective systems.

Assessing the implications of this new knowledge will motivate additional questions and continued study of atmospheric electricity. It’s possible, for example, that gamma ray generation contributes importantly to lightning initiation, at least for a large fraction of lightning.

Considering that about 2,000 thunderstorms are active on the planet at any given moment and about 3 million lightning strikes occur each day globally, further discerning the effects of gamma ray production and propagation on thundercloud dynamics is a fundamental need for improving our understanding of and ability to forecast the planet’s weather and atmospheric environment.

References

Bjørge-Engeland, I., et al. (2024), Evidence of a new population of weak terrestrial gamma-ray flashes observed from aircraft altitude, Geophys. Res. Lett., 51(17), e2024GL110395, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110395.

Fishman, G. J., et al. (1994), Discovery of intense gamma-ray flashes of atmospheric origin, Science, 264, 1,313–1,316, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.264.5163.1313.

Grefenstette, B. W., et al. (2008), Time evolution of terrestrial gamma ray flashes, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35(6), L06802, https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL032922.

Marisaldi, M., et al. (2024), Highly dynamic gamma-ray emissions are common in tropical thunderclouds, Nature, 634, 57–60, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07936-6.

Neubert, T., et al. (2019), A terrestrial gamma-ray flash and ionospheric ultraviolet emissions powered by lightning, Science, 367, 183–186, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax3872.

Østgaard, N., et al. (2012), The true fluence distribution of terrestrial gamma flashes at satellite altitude, J. Geophys. Res. Space Phys., 117, A03327, https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JA017365.

Østgaard, N., et al. (2019), First 10 months of TGF observations by ASIM, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 124(24), 14,024–14,036, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031214.

Østgaard, N., et al. (2021), Simultaneous observations of EIP, TGF, Elve, and optical lightning, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 126(11), e2020JD033921, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033921.

Østgaard, N., et al. (2024), Flickering gamma-ray flashes, the missing link between gamma glows and TGFs, Nature, 634, 53–56, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07893-0.

Author Information

Arve Aksnes (Arve.Aksnes@vlfk.no), Nikolai Østgaard, Martino Marisaldi, and Ingrid Bjørge-Engeland, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Citation: Aksnes, A., N. Østgaard, M. Marisaldi, and I. Bjørge-Engeland (2025), A new view of gamma rays from thunderclouds, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250156. Published on 25 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Young Rivers on a Martian Volcano Reveal Insights into the Amazonian Climate

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 12:00
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Earth and Space Science

The preservation of ancient Martian Valley Networks has been extensively examined to decipher the past climatic conditions and provide critical constraints for understanding the habitability of ancient Mars. However, the valleys on Alba Mons are frequently ignored in global studies due to their young Amazonian age (younger than 3 billion years).

Scheidt et al. [2025] provide a detailed mapping of the rivers that have formed on this volcano, belonging to the Tharsis volcanic province. The detailed morphological analysis of these reveals mature drainage systems, with characteristics comparable to precipitation-dominated drainage systems on Earth. The valley networks on Alba Mons are attributed to surface runoff from a combination of rainfall, snow, and ice melt. This study offers therefore intriguing insights into the Amazonian climate and the possible relationships between volcanic activity and fluvial processes.

Citation: Scheidt, S. P., Crown, D. A., & Berman, D. C. (2025). Mapping fluvial valleys on the flanks of Alba Mons: Implications for Amazonian watershed development in Northern Tharsis, Mars. Earth and Space Science, 12, e2024EA003967.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003967

—David Baratoux, Editor, Earth and Space Science

Text © 2024. 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.

二氧化碳恢复后的北极海冰:对北大西洋天气的影响

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 14:37
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Geophysical Research Letters

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

北大西洋冬季急流的位置反映了盆地和周围大陆上空大尺度大气环流的组织方式,这直接影响着天气,包括极端事件。因此,了解气候变化背景下决定急流偏移的相互竞争的物理机制是很重要的。其中的关键驱动因素包括:北极地区相对于其他地区的变暖程度(北极放大效应),北大西洋亚极地海面温度相对于其他地区的下降(或变暖程度较低)程度(与海洋环流密切相关),以及北大西洋亚极地至中纬度地区天气噪声对底层海洋的影响(大气对海洋的反馈)。

Yu 等人 [2025] 通过多模型实验分析了达到工业化前二氧化碳水平后的 60 年时间,探究北极海冰在二氧化碳去除后是否能恢复到工业化前的状态。他们发现,大多数模型都存在年平均海冰面积约 100 万平方公里的缺口,并且急流向赤道移动。借鉴另一项多模型实验的结果,该实验的重点是区分北极海冰损失与全球海洋变暖在诱发气候响应方面的影响,他们将冬季急流向赤道移动(与工业化前条件相比)归因于海冰面积的减少。北大西洋急流的偏移较弱,但与不同的驱动因素之间存在惊人的关联。这凸显了在专门的模型实验中研究该地区不同物理过程的重要性,尤其是研究气候变化下各种过程之间的相互作用。

Citation: Yu, H., Screen, J. A., Xu, M., Hay, S., Qiu, W., & Catto, J. L. (2025). Incomplete Arctic sea‐ice recovery under CO2 removal and its effects on the winter atmospheric circulation.  Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2024GL113541. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL113541

—Gudrun Magnusdottir, Editor, Geophysical Research Letters

Text © 2024. 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.

One Water, Many Solutions

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 12:40
One Water, Many Solutions

To ensure the availability and sustainability of water resources and sanitation for all (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6), water managers and the communities they serve are investing in approaches that are both broad and deep.

The delegations that help drive the One Water approach to water management are wide-ranging and often serendipitous, as Grace van Deelen explains in “Delegations Drive One Water Dialogues.”  “One Water,” van Deelen writes, “treats drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater as a single, interconnected entity…bringing together water utilities, community members, business and industry leaders, researchers, politicians, engineers, and advocacy groups.

A comprehensive framework like One Water may also help address a long-standing injustice: why communities of color are more likely to have higher levels of contaminants in their drinking water.

In addition to applying integrated water management approaches involving at-risk communities, some scientists suggest that unconventional water resources should be explored for their potential to mitigate water insecurity. That’s the thrust of this month’s opinion, “Deep Groundwater Might Be a Sustainable Solution to the Water Crisis.” Contamination and overuse of shallow groundwater supplies are creating a need for in-depth analysis on the health, safety, and financial concerns associated with accessing deep aquifers, argue scientist-authors Claudia Bertoni, Fridtjov Ruden, Elizabeth Quiroga Jordan, and Helene Ruden.

Meeting water challenges requires the twin scientific skills of intersectional collaboration and data-driven research. This month’s stories show how Earth scientists are already pursuing such approaches and how they are looking to further develop the knowledge and networks to create more.

—Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Editor in Chief

Citation: Micalizio, C.-S. (2025), One Water, many solutions, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250154. Published on 24 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Delegations Drive One Water Dialogues

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 12:40
One Water, Many Solutions

On a summer morning, a storm dropped buckets of rain on the desert outside Tucson, Ariz. Water ran over the dry soil. Most of the water subsequently evaporated, but some parched plants drank their fill. What was left over sank into the ground, percolating into the aquifer below.

A few kilometers down the road, Tucson Water pumped groundwater from the same aquifer to a nearby reservoir, then through its treatment system. A Tucson ratepayer turned on her tap and used a few liters of water to give her dog a bath. The soiled water flowed into Tucson’s wastewater system and once again was treated. A portion of that recycled wastewater was released into the Santa Cruz River, where parkgoers enjoyed watching it flow through the city.

In Tucson, as in the rest of the world, every human interaction with water is connected to a broader water system.

But water practitioners haven’t always treated their work with the same interconnected approach. Instead, many cities and regions divide their water into three silos: drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater, each managed separately.

That approach is not meeting the needs of many communities. And a different approach, called One Water, is beginning to take its place.

One Water treats drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater as a single, interconnected entity and attempts to manage it holistically, bringing together water utilities, community members, business and industry leaders, researchers, politicians, engineers, and advocacy groups.

Recycled water flows into the Santa Cruz River in Arizona as part of the Santa Cruz River Heritage Project. Credit: Tucson Water

In a One Water approach, the Tucson ratepayer, water utility, and parkgoer are equal stakeholders, and water practitioners attempt to create a water system that works well for each of them.

“Partnerships and collaboration are at its core,” said Scott Berry, director of policy and government affairs at the US Water Alliance, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to advancing a “One Water future for all.”

A holistic, inclusive approach is not without obstacles, though. Different stakeholders bring different priorities and practices and may have cultural, historical regulatory, and organizational barriers that keep them from collaborating effectively.

To navigate such challenges, water stakeholders from varied sectors across the United States come together at an annual conference (soon to be held every 18 months), the One Water Summit, hosted by the US Water Alliance. About 70% of attendees come as part of a delegation, a peer group, typically organized by region, whose members want to work together on U.S. water issues.

These delegations are the lifeblood of the summit and uniquely mirror the One Water approach: They’re meant to be highly collaborative, allowing stakeholders with very different priorities to come together and work toward a common cause. Though the framework is hindered by funding constraints and a lack of engagement from some sectors, delegations have provided a valuable opportunity for sharing knowledge and bringing One Water projects to fruition.

Siloed Systems

In the water sector, siloed systems are the norm. The inertia they engender can be hard to break when trying to build collaborative networks.

In some cases, siloed approaches contribute to unaligned regulations, which can limit a collaboration’s success, explained Caity Peterson, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center.

For example, someone working on a wastewater problem must navigate both environmental and health regulations. A One Water program might involve potable reuse, or recycling wastewater into drinking water by purifying it, filtering it, and diverting it to groundwater or reservoir supplies. Such a project needs to ensure that the recycled water complies with environmental regulations that govern water quality for irrigation and other nonpotable uses. But once that water is destined for a drinking water supply, it must also comply with health regulations. “A little bit of streamlining” of those regulations can bolster collaboration, Peterson said.

Siloed jurisdictions can present another challenge for water practitioners. Though the flow of water respects no political or system boundary, water managers do work within such jurisdictions, said Sarin Pokhrel, a water resource engineer for the Environment and Protected Areas Ministry of Alberta, Canada. (Some local governments within Alberta, such as Edmonton, where Pokhrel is based, use a One Water approach.)

British Columbia, where Pokhrel previously worked, is home to an array of jurisdictions: Municipalities govern water via local bylaws, Indigenous communities manage their own water, and districts follow broader regional plans. Unifying plans under a single framework that all levels of water management can follow is very challenging, he said.

The US Water Alliance added the delegation structure to its annual conference in 2016 as a way for water practitioners to overcome these barriers and move toward One Water ideals. Berry, who leads delegation work at the US Water Alliance, said he thinks of the delegation system as an opportunity for stakeholders to “road test” collaborations.

“It’s a way to test the waters of collaboration away from the normal sphere of influence.”

“It’s this idea of getting a bunch of folks together who may not work together often, or who may even be at odds with one another,” he said. “It’s a way to test the waters of collaboration away from the normal sphere of influence.”

Organizers of the One Water Summit encourage delegations, which can be assembled by anyone with the interest, ability, and time to recruit fellow delegates, to attend. Delegation members can register at a discounted rate, and the summit provides opt-in programming specifically for delegates. Around one thousand people and 20–40 delegations attend each year. Membership in any one delegation has ranged from fewer than 10 to almost 50 people, Berry said.

The first half day of each summit is dedicated to “peer exchanges,” where delegations present their work to each other. These presentations range from showcasing a particular success to workshopping a problem that the delegation is facing, Berry said.

At the 2023 Tucson summit, for example, the Tap into Resilience delegation hosted a peer exchange to brainstorm how to scale up distributed water infrastructure, a type of ultralocal water system meant to be more affordable than conventional water systems. The Climate Action delegation shared strategies for utilities to use capital investments to make progress on their climate plans. And the New Jersey delegates hosted a discussion about how delegations can build relationships with state governments to advance One Water.

At an end-of-summit plenary, delegations are invited to announce “commitments to action” for the coming year.

“The entire plenary, you’re surrounded by all this amazing work that’s going to be happening in all these different places,” Berry said. “You get a sense that you’re not alone and that there are opportunities for collaboration.”

Commitments to action range from informal directives to full proposals. Delegations at the 2023 summit committed to developing new One Water plans for their cities, improving community engagement around water issues, sharing what they’d learned with local leaders and policymakers, and constructing new green stormwater and water treatment facilities. Delegations that return to the subsequent summit are encouraged to share how they’ve progressed on their commitments.

One Water, Many Networks

Water practitioners report a strengthening of the depth and breadth of their collaborations as a result of participating in a delegation.

“I felt like I really got to know people in a different way, not just as colleagues but as friends,” said Rebekah Jones, communications director for the Iowa Soybean Association’s Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance, who attended the 2023 One Water Summit as part of the delegation from Iowa. Jones deepened her relationships with colleagues at the city of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines Water Works and especially enjoyed meeting members of a delegation from Hawaii, who shared how critical water is to Hawaiian culture and livelihoods.

Jennifer Walker of the Texas delegation, director of the Texas Coast and Water Program at the National Wildlife Federation, said she feels the same after attending multiple summits. When a delegation convenes away from their home community, “everybody has a little bit more time to focus on the content, spend some time together, and build relationships,” she said.

“We can come together in ways that would be almost impossible at home.”

Because Texas is such a large state, the delegation venue is crucial for getting Texas stakeholders, including nonprofits, utilities, engineers, consultants, elected officials, and community members in the same room.

The delegations are building relationships among people who don’t work together day-to-day, said Michelle Stockness, executive director of the Freshwater Society, a nonprofit based in Saint Paul, Minn. Stockness attended the 2023 summit as a member of the Minnesota delegation. “We’re building those relationships so that we can talk about hard things a little more easily.”

“We can come together in ways that would be almost impossible at home,” said Candice Rupprecht, a water conservation program manager for the city of Tucson and a member of the Tucson delegation, in a 2019 presentation.

Strengthened relationships have sparked meaningful progress on One Water projects across the country.

At the Tucson, Ariz., One Water Summit in 2023, the Minnesota delegation shared concerns about water quality and distribution. Credit: Michelle Stockness

At the 2023 conference, the Iowa delegation held an educational session for other summit attendees about urban and rural collaboration via an exercise about a fictional town called Farmersville and its picturesque Crystal River. Attendees attempted to fix a water quality problem in Farmersville—a suddenly odorous and murky Crystal River—while playing a role that was different from their real-life job. For example, a water researcher could act as mayor, and a utility staff member could role-play a farmer.

In the scenario, the urban community blamed rural farmers for soil erosion and nutrient pollution, whereas farmers accused the city of industrial pollution and ineffective waste management. Workshop attendees had to navigate these concerns as they developed a plan to improve water quality.

“It got people thinking out of the box about what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes,” Jones said.

In New Jersey, water practitioners had already formed a coalition of community members, nonprofit organizations, government entities, and utilities when the delegation from the state began attending the summit in 2016. Participating as a delegation supplemented the group’s holistic effort, said Paula Figueroa, director of the Jersey Water Works Collaborative and a former New Jersey delegate. For the New Jersey delegation, the summit is an important source of energy to balance the sometimes draining, difficult work of advancing a One Water approach, she said.

After the 2022 summit, Figueroa noticed that two leaders, one a New Jersey utility staff member and the other an employee of the Jersey Water Works Collaborative, began to collaborate, inviting each other to more events and sharing the other’s work. The new relationship increased the visibility of a shared, primary project: replacing lead service lines across the state.

The summit offers delegations opportunities for interstate cooperation as well. Following conversations between the Pittsburgh and Milwaukee delegations at the 2022 and 2023 summits, delegates from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin held a dedicated learning exchange in Milwaukee the following year.

Some water issues in Pittsburgh would have taken 2 or 3 years each to solve, but as a result of knowledge gained in the Wisconsin exchange, “we were able to complete five or six problems in 2 or 3 years,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the UrbanKind Institute and a longtime member of the Pittsburgh delegation. “That learning exchange model is really powerful.”

The event in Milwaukee helped inform a new approach to addressing stormwater reclamation in Pittsburgh, for instance, said Kelly Henderson, who was part of the Pittsburgh cohort that attended the learning exchange.

One of the locations the group visited was Green Tech Station, a former brownfield site that the Northwest Side Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit in Milwaukee, had transformed into a stormwater reclamation facility. Green Tech Station can capture more than 380,000 liters of stormwater each time it rains—water that is then used to irrigate trees on the site. The facility also includes a prairie ecosystem with native plants, a pavilion to host educational programming, and a collection of artwork.

Shown here is Green Tech Station in Milwaukee, a former brownfield site that was restored as a water reclamation system. In April 2024, members of the Pittsburgh delegation visited Green Tech Station as part of a learning exchange. Credit: Northwest Side Community Development Corporation

Henderson, executive director of Grounded Strategies, a nonprofit focused on community-driven vacant lot reclamation, found Green Tech Station so inspiring that she decided to create something similar in Pittsburgh. Grounded Strategies, along with partners from the Department of City Planning in Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and elsewhere, recently received a $55,000 grant to start the project. As they plan the site, they’ll be in close contact with the group that constructed Green Tech Station, Henderson said.

Delegations can also facilitate cooperation between stakeholders with different immediate interests.

In 2017, for instance, the Tucson delegation committed to a lofty goal: returning perennial water flow to the Santa Cruz River. At the time, the stretch of the river in downtown Tucson flowed only during rainstorms.

Rupprecht, the Tucson Water conservation manager and four-time Tucson delegation member, said delegation members were key to advocating for Arizona’s Drought Contingency Plan, a change in state law that increased recycled water recharge credits. Under the Drought Contingency Plan, Tucson Water can receive credits for 95% of the water released into the Santa Cruz River, then use those credits in the future to secure additional water supply.

Within a year, Tucson Water’s Santa Cruz River Heritage Project had released enough recycled water to the river that it flowed anew for the first time in almost 80 years. The new stretch of perennial river restored plants, revitalized a ciénaga (wetland) ecosystem, and provided new habitat for wildlife such as herons, native toads, coyotes, and dragonflies.

Inclusivity Obstacles

Though many delegations have made tangible progress toward One Water goals, barriers still exist to achieving full cross-sector engagement.

“With something like One Water…if you don’t do a good job of building those relationships and building those ties between sectors, then there’s a risk it could be just some pleasant marketing but not really delivering the outcomes that it’s supposed to deliver,” Peterson said.

One major barrier is money. Attending the summit comes at a financial cost that can be too high for underfunded organizations.“It’s all about money,” said Pokhrel, the Alberta engineer. “Do we have enough budget? Do we have enough resources to fulfill this?”

“Most of the most vulnerable people who are having water issues, they don’t have the resources to participate.”

“Most of the most vulnerable people who are having water issues, they don’t have the resources to participate,” Bey said. “There’s a minimum threshold for organizational capacity that you have to have to connect you to these types of conversations.”

The US Water Alliance tries to help delegates from underfunded organizations attend the summit with a tiered registration fee system. “If you’re a small nonprofit, you’re going to pay less than a private company or a large urban utility,” Berry said. “The people who are more resourced, who can afford to pay more, do pay more, and that helps us subsidize the cost for the folks who are less well resourced.”

A little funding can go a long way to help include historically marginalized voices. With help from a grant from the US Water Alliance, for instance, in 2023 the Minnesota delegation was able to invite representatives from the Indigenous-led nonprofit Honor the Earth, as well as community members from the Environmental Justice Coordinating Council (EJCC). Members of EJCC had previously attended the 2022 One Water Summit in Milwaukee, where they had committed to working on issues of environmental health in Minnesota, particularly the impact of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on drinking water.

“Providing funding for community and tribal members was really important to get the people we wanted to be there and have that diverse representation.”

“Providing funding for community and tribal members was really important to get the people we wanted to be there and have that diverse representation of multiple perspectives,” Stockness said.

Delegates from Honor the Earth and EJCC could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

Berry and some past delegates said they feel that the agriculture industry is underrepresented at the summits, too. Agriculture is a huge element of the water system, responsible for about 70% of freshwater use worldwide. The proportion of agriculture practitioners at the summit is “still not as big as it could be, or should be,” said Sean McMahon, a sustainable agriculture consultant who has been involved in coordinating the Iowa delegation for five summits.

City utilities make up the majority of membership in the US Water Alliance, and urban organizations dominate the summit—a dynamic that may make the rural agriculture community feel ostracized, Peterson said. If members of the agriculture community are not engaging in a collaboration, that might mean the benefit of participating is not clear to them.

As in the fictional Farmersville, agriculture communities and urban water suppliers may not always see eye to eye. Farmers may be frustrated with what they see as overly restrictive regulations in an already difficult economic environment, whereas urban utilities prioritize delivering clean drinking water to their ratepayers.

The agriculture sector often gets cast as a villain and may feel that it must defend itself against other water practitioners who aren’t familiar with the hardships of farm operations, Peterson said. Making clear to farmers the mutual benefits of a One Water approach could improve collaboration. For instance, many sustainable agriculture practices both benefit farm finances and improve downstream water quality.

McMahon recommended that delegation leaders reach out to agriculture associations to find champions of improving water quality and water use efficiency. “If you’re framing your proposal like, ‘Come help us talk about these complicated issues from your perspective,’ it’s like a wide-open door to have really powerful conversations,” said Jones.

“The water is the bridge.”

Clare Lindahl, chief executive officer of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, a member of the Soil and Water Conservation delegation, and a board member of the US Water Alliance, said her delegation has had success building relationships across the urban and rural divide by emphasizing the value of water to all stakeholders. “The water is the bridge,” she said.

When a highly diverse group of stakeholders makes it to the summit, collaboration can lead to what Figueroa called a “healthy push and pull”: Everyone sitting around the table may have different expectations, goals, and work practices. Delegations have found that defining common goals and outlining clear responsibilities are the best way around that.

For example, the New Jersey group has centered its conversations around four shared goals: having effective and financially sustainable water systems; empowering stakeholders and ensuring that they are well-informed; building successful, beneficial green infrastructure; and creating smart combined sewer overflow control systems.

“That’s our North Star, and that has helped us,” Figueroa said.

“It’s hard to break down silos if your objectives aren’t clear,” Peterson said. Being “really candid and clear about who’s involved, what the roles are, and what the responsibilities are for the beginning, middle, and end of the project” can help, she said.

Berry said he has high hopes for the future of delegations. He imagines an eventual Colorado River delegation that would include stakeholders from throughout the Colorado River Basin. Other dreams include a Great Lakes delegation and a Mississippi River delegation. “There’s so much ground to cover,” he said.

“It’s both a resources and money question, and it’s a relationship question,” Berry said.

—Grace van Deelen (@GVD__), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Delegations drive One Water dialogues, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250155. Published on 24 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Tonga’s Volcanic Fury Ripples to the Netherworld

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 12:00
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: AGU Advances

The massive 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano was one of the most powerful explosions ever recorded. It blasted ash and gas high into the sky, reaching heights over 50 kilometers (above most clouds and weather), and sent waves rippling through Earth’s atmosphere. These waves traveled all the way to the upper atmosphere—the netherworld where satellites orbit—causing unexpected disruptions in this region.

Using data from satellites and computer models, Li et al. [2025] investigate why these waves spread so far. They focus on two possible causes: Lamb waves (pressure waves that “hug” Earth’s surface) and secondary gravity waves (new waves created when initial eruption waves break apart higher up). The authors find that secondary gravity waves, with their faster speeds and larger magnitudes, matched the satellite observations best. This means they were the key driver of the upper atmosphere’s dramatic changes.

These findings matter because they reveal how geological events on Earth’s surface, like volcanoes, can “talk” to the edge of space. Understanding this link helps improve satellite safety and weather predictions in space, which is critical as humans rely more on satellites for communication, navigation, and climate monitoring.

The numerical simulations reveal that secondary gravity waves could be responsible for the large scale thermospheric disturbances captured by GRACE-FO satellite associated with the extraordinary eruption of the Tonga volcano on 15 January 2022. Credit: Li et al. [2025], Supporting Information Movie S1

Citation: Li, R., Lei, J., Zhang, S.-R., Liu, F., Chen, X., Luan, X., & Meng, X. (2025). Were gravity waves or lamb waves responsible for the large-scale thermospheric response to the Tonga eruption? AGU Advances, 6, e2024AV001470. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024AV001470

— Binzheng Zhang, Editor, AGU Advances

Text © 2024. 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.

Avalanches of Microplastics Carry Pollution into the Deep Sea

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 13:19

Earth’s oceans are full of plastic. Though the state-sized garbage patches formed by ocean currents are the most visible, just an estimated 1% of ocean plastic lurks on the surface. The other 99% hides elsewhere in the ocean and may be found in the deep sea, mixed in with seafloor sediment. These particles are often in the form of microplastics: fragments of plastic goods degraded to less than 1 millimeter in length.

Scientists know these deep-sea plastics don’t get there by simply sinking from the surface since their distribution doesn’t match the locations of surface garbage patches. Results of laboratory experiments and seafloor sampling campaigns led scientists to suspect these plastic particles instead reach the deep ocean via turbidity currents, gravity-driven cascades of sediment-rich water that flows from rivers over the continental shelf and down to the seafloor. But no one had observed the process until now.

A new study published in Environmental Science and Technology presents the first direct evidence of an underwater microplastics “avalanche,” a turbidity current that transported plastic pollution to the bottom of a deep ocean canyon. The findings raise concerns about how microplastics may be affecting marine organisms because the same turbidity currents foster biodiversity hot spots in the same locations.

“The fact that we captured this in action proves the theory, but it also highlights the threats that microplastics pose.”

“Turbidity currents are an important process that transports sediments and nutrients to the deep sea. The question was: Do they also transport plastics?” said Florian Pohl, a sedimentologist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany who was not involved in the research. Pohl was the lead author on a 2020 study that predicted the existence of these microplastics “avalanches” using laboratory experiments.

“The fact that we captured this in action proves the theory, but it also highlights the threats that microplastics pose,” said Ian Kane, a coauthor of the new study and a sedimentologist at the University of Manchester. “This study is further evidence of the impact that we’re having on the oceans.”

Measuring Microplastics

To observe turbidity currents in action, the research team headed to Whittard Canyon, an undersea canyon in the Celtic Sea nearly 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) deep. They installed sensors in the canyon that could measure turbidity current velocity and detect sediment concentration.

The team also installed a sediment trap just above the seafloor to collect material transported by the turbidity current and drilled cores of seafloor and subseafloor sediment at seven sites at varying depths in the canyon.

Between June 2019 and August 2020, the sensors detected six turbidity currents, the first of which filled the sediment trap. An analysis of flow velocity and sediment grain size showed that the turbidity flow even carried large plastic litter, including segments of plastic fishing line. All sediment trap samples and seafloor sediment cores contained microplastic particles.

The sediment trap, which collected sediment from the first observed turbidity flow, yielded 82 microplastic items per 50 grams of dried sediment. Credit: Peng Chen

Samples of sediment from the cores revealed that the relative proportion of microplastic fragments (tiny plastic “chunks”) to microplastic fibers (from synthetic textiles) increased deeper into the canyon, indicating that fragments and fibers travel differently in turbidity currents. Pohl said he’d like to take a closer look at the fragment and fiber properties (such as the type of plastic they’re made of) to determine why.

Kane was struck by the high concentrations of microplastics found in the sediment, especially because Whittard Canyon is so far from shore—300 kilometers (186 miles). “It’s quite alarming that this material is making its way so far out into ocean basins,” he said.

The microplastics “avalanches” observed in Whittard Canyon likely also happen elsewhere in Earth’s oceans. More than 5,000 similar canyons worldwide could be important conveyors of pollution to the deep sea, the authors wrote. Some of these canyons are fed directly by rivers on land. Seasonal flash floods in Sicily, for instance, have carried large amounts of plastic litter to submarine canyons.

If Whittard Canyon is receiving a lot of plastic, it’s likely that other canyons, especially those more closely linked to rivers on land, are receiving even more, Kane said.

Plastic in the Ecosystem

The new study is a “great first step” in understanding how microplastics reach the deep ocean, Pohl said. “It’s a big piece of the puzzle to understand that these flows do indeed transport microplastics. But now there are follow-up questions, like how much [plastic] do they actually transport? And how does this relate to the overall budget of ocean floor plastics?”

The same turbidity currents that flush microplastics also bring oxygen and nutrients to the deep sea, forming biodiversity hot spots in the same locations where plastic pollution accumulates. That plastic pollution often contains toxic ingredients that are hazardous to marine organisms.

“Magnification through the trophic web is a real danger.”

Filter feeders ingest toxic plastic particles, which accumulate up the marine food chain. “Magnification through the [food] web is a real danger,” Kane said.

Much of the plastic in the ocean enters via waste management systems. Better filtration at wastewater treatment plants could be one important way to reduce the flow of microplastic fibers into the ocean, Kane said, adding that fishing and shipping are also major sources of microplastics to target for mitigation. But microplastic pollution is ubiquitous in the environment, and reducing its presence in the ocean is “a big challenge,” Pohl said.

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

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Avalanches of microplastics carry pollution into the deep sea, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250153. Published on 23 April 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

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