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Publication date: 1 January 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 1

Author(s): W.M. Farrell, M.I. Zimmerman

Publication date: 1 January 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 1

Author(s): Xu Tan, Cunhui Li, Jiajie Wang, Zhongcheng Mu, Zecheng Cui, Meng Chen, Xin Ren, Xiaodong Liu, Yan Su, Wei Wang, Renhao Tian, Jiawei Li

Publication date: 1 January 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 1

Author(s): K.S. Paul, H. Haralambous, M. Moses, S.K. Panda

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

Of course, allow me to start by wishing all my readers a Happy 2026. I suspect that we are in for quite a landslide journey again this year.

In late November, a very interesting open access paper (Darrow and Jacobs 2025) was published on the journal Landslides. This piece of work sought to understand the patterns of landslides in Alaska over a century through the creation of a database compiled from “a combination of 24 digital newspapers and online media sources, including historic digitised Alaskan newspapers”. Such a study is an epic amount of work, but yields fantastic data. This study is no exception.

What is of particular interest here is that Alaska suffers from a range of landslide hazards, and suffers significant losses from them, and it is an environment in which climate change is clearly occurring, with warming at a rate that is higher than the global average. Previous studies have shown that this is having a measurable impact on landslides in the mountains of Alaska.

In total, Darrow and Jacobs (2025) have identified 281 landslides since 1883 in Alaska, with the occurrence showing a strong seasonal pattern associated primarily with seasonal patterns of rainfall. The headline from the paper is summarised in this graphic from the paper:-

The recorded incidence of landslides in Alaska by decade, from Darrow and Jacobs (2025).

The data shows a dramatic increase in landslides in recent decades, and in particular in the last two decades or so. Of course, care is needed to ensure that this is not an artefact of the reporting of landslides, but Darrow and Jacobs (2025) explored this issue in detail, concluding that the signal is real. Fortunately, the number of fatalities caused by landslides in Alaska is small, and there is no significant trend in terms of fatal landslides.

So what lies behind this change? Darrow and Jacobs (2025) show that the increase in occurrence of landslides in Alaska is associated with a marked increase in in average annual air temperature that ranges between 1.2 C and 3.4 C, and an associated increase in precipitation that ranges from 3% to 27%, over the 50 years.

Of course, warming is not going to stop in Alaska in the next few decades, so the likely direction of travel in terms of landslides there is clear. There is recognition in Alaska that greater attention will be needed on landslides.

But more widely, this is further quantitative evidence that the climate is having a big impact on landslide hazard. It is remarkable how the evidence just keeps accumulating.

Reference

Darrow, M.M. and Jacobs, A. 2025. Read all about it! A review of more than a century of Alaskan landslides as recorded in periodicals. Landslides. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-025-02663-z.

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

You have probably seen the images of the surface of Mars, beamed back by NASA's rovers. What if there were a time machine capable of roaming Earth during its remote geological past, perhaps even going right back to its beginnings, beaming back pictures of similar quality?

Source: AGU Advances

In 2023, Earth experienced its warmest year since 1850, with heat waves stretching across oceans and land alike. East Asia, for example, experienced scorching temperatures and high humidity throughout the summer months. Humid-heat extremes like those seen that year can trigger heat-related illnesses and mortality at higher-than-average rates.

As on land, the ocean around East Asia also experienced unprecedented warming in 2023. Sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension region reached record highs, persisting through much of the year. Researchers know that marine heat waves can influence land heat waves, but the details of these connections remain unclear.

Okajima et al. modeled regional land-sea interactions to better understand the effects of the unprecedented 2023 marine heat wave on conditions on land in East Asia. The team focused on the peak hot and humid months of July, August, and September, using hourly data on atmospheric conditions, including temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and atmospheric pressure, as well as SST data from satellites and in situ sensors.

The modeling suggested that the 2023 marine heat wave greatly exacerbated the East Asian heat wave, particularly in Japan, by affecting atmospheric circulation and altering the usual radiative effects of clouds and water vapor. The team said the influence of the marine heat wave explains roughly 20% to 50% of the increase in the intensity and duration of hot and humid conditions observed on land in East Asia in summer 2023.

The scientists note that this research provides valuable insights that could help improve long-range weather predictions. Such predictions may help communities prepare for health risks, particularly in Asia, which the World Meteorological Organization reported earlier this year is warming twice as fast as the global average. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001673, 2025)

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

Citation: Derouin, S. (2025), Marine heat waves can exacerbate heat and humidity over land, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260009. Published on 2 January 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

SummarySpatial autocorrelation (SPAC), the azimuthal average of the normalized cross-correlation between equidistant station pairs deployed in a 2-D array, is widely used to image the subsurface structure. However, the rigorous estimate of subsurface structure and its uncertainties as a function of depth using SPAC data is challenging due to the nonlinear relation between the SPAC data and Earth structure as well as the trade-off between depth and velocity. Additionally, data noise is strongly correlated due to data processing (e.g., filtering, stacking from multiple time segments and azimuthal averaging). Most studies do not account for the correlated noise and fix the ratio of compressional-wave velocity (${V}_P$) to shear-wave velocity (${V}_s$) (i.e., ${V}_P$/${V}_s$ ratio) and the number of layers, both of which are typically unknown. To address these challenges, we develop a hierarchical trans-dimensional Bayesian inversion of fundamental mode of SPAC data that properly accounts for the correlated data noise, samples the ${V}_P$/${V}_s$ ratio, and relaxes the number of layers (i.e., model parameterization) to be unknown in the inversion. We further examine the limitation of using only fundamental modes in the inversion. Our synthetic experiments show that the inversion recovers an incorrect model unless we sample the correlated noise and ${V}_P$/${V}_s$ ratio in the inversion. The inversion is then applied to SPAC data acquired at 19 sites across the Tacoma basin in Washington State to characterize the ${V}_s$ and the time-averaged ${V}_s$ over 30-m depth ($V{s}_{30}$). Our results show that the $V{s}_{30}\ $varies from ∼200 m/s to 800 m/s. The $V{s}_{30}$ within the basin is higher in the middle and lower on the east and west sides. We find that these $V{s}_{30}$ values vary with geologic unit. The uncertainties for $V{s}_{30}$ are within 20 m/s in average except for the most eastern site TB28. Additionally, the uncertainties are greater for deeper depths beneath most of the sites as the sensitivity decreases as a function of depth. The ${V}_s$ structure as a function of depth is also complex beneath some sites, possibly because the SPAC curves are affected by higher order Rayleigh modes that are not considered in the inversion. To better constrain the deeper ${V}_s\ $structure, $V{s}_{30}$, and/or other average measures of ${V}_s$ over depth, additional constraints from complementary data, such as ellipticity or geologic data are needed. Moreover, our synthetic experiments show that higher order modes can have significant effect in the inversion results, particularly when there is a low-velocity layer.

SummaryRegional geomagnetic field models are used to delineate intricate details of the Earth’s magnetic field and have significant application value in precision navigation and geomagnetic exploration. However, traditional modeling methods often encounter challenges when applied to sparse data, leading to issues like low model resolution and accuracy, as well as limited generalizability. The recently developed physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), a powerful modeling tool, presents a viable alternative for regional geomagnetic field modeling. This study employed the PINNs method to construct a geomagnetic field model for satellite altitudes over the Chinese region, based on the Swarm satellite dataset provided by the European Space Agency. An adaptive weight training method was used for the two-stage training process, involving an initial pre-training and subsequent fine-tuning of the model. Experimental verification shows that the proposed algorithm enhanced the model’s fidelity to physical laws, improved its resolution and prediction accuracy (reducing the root mean square errors for geomagnetic components to as low as 4 nT), and enhanced its generalizability, with the total field intensity F and the prediction accuracy of both the X- and Y-components demonstrating superiority over that of other traditional methods. Collectively, these advancements enable efficient regional geomagnetic field modeling while providing a foundation for more reliable and precise predictions.

SummaryDetermining the gravity potential is a fundamental task in geodesy and plays a critical role in various fields, including seismology, geodynamics and aerospace engineering. Grounded in the principles of general relativity, the high-precision determination of gravity potential using time and frequency signals has become a prominent research frontier in modern geodesy. This study employs multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) carrier phase time and frequency comparison to determine the gravity potential. It develops a model for multi-GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) time and frequency comparison, incorporating gravity potential estimation, and further investigates simulation methods for high-precision clock offsets and GNSS observations. Ten time and frequency links formed by eleven stations from the IGS (International GNSS Service) were analyzed using a simulation framework. The experiment incorporated simulated GNSS observations and eight types of clocks with varying performance levels to assess the capability of the multi-GNSS PPP time and frequency comparison model in determining gravity potential. The results demonstrate that the accuracy of gravity potential determination with multi-GNSS time frequency signal after coverage is approximately 0.1 m²/s². These findings affirm the feasibility and reliability of using GNSS time and frequency signals to determine gravity potential. Moreover, the convergence speed and accuracy of PPP solutions with ambiguity resolution show notable improvements over ambiguity float solutions, with accuracy enhanced by roughly 10 per cent. As atomic clock performance and GNSS satellite products continue to advance, GNSS-based time and frequency comparison holds great promise for achieving even higher precision in gravity potential measurements and contributing to the unification of the global vertical height datum.

SummaryCoulomb failure stress change (ΔCFS) quantifies the earthquake-induced difference of shear stress and frictional resistance on a receiver fault, with the latter being proportional to the effective normal stress change. ΔCFS has become a widely used measure for studying earthquake triggering, dynamic rupture processes and earthquake-induced secondary disasters. In simple layered or half-space elastic media, methods for computing static ΔCFS have been well established, with programs such as Coulomb3, PSGRN-PSCMP, and AutoCoulomb being widely used. In contrast, dynamic ΔCFS evaluation generally relies on numerical discretization schemes, such as finite-difference, finite-element, boundary-element and discontinuous Galerkin methods, which, while suitable for complex structures, are computationally expensive. To overcome these limitations, we develop DynCFS, a user-friendly, Green’s function based and therefore computationally efficient program for calculating both static and dynamic ΔCFS in layered elastic media. The tool enables rapid assessment of dynamic triggering effects, both between successive earthquakes and among multiple sub-events or faults during an earthquake.

What Corals Can Tell Us about Climate

Coral reefs are proxies for past climates, as well as archives for the future. Beneath their dazzling colors and displays are “rocklike skeletal structures containing annual bands, similar to tree rings.” And like tree rings, coral cores offer valuable insights “into past environmental conditions because coral growth can respond sensitively to climate variability.”

That accessible explanation comes from scientist-authors Avi Strange, Oliwia Jasnos, Lauren T. Toth, Nancy G. Prouty, and Thomas M. DeCarlo, as they introduce readers to CoralCT, an innovative repository of coral images taken with X-ray and computed tomography technology. The result is “A Coral Core Archive Designed for Transparency and Accessibility”—and a resource documenting years, centuries, and sometimes millennia of climate change and ecosystem adaptation.

The CoralCT archive contains images from around the world—the Great Barrier Reef, the Caribbean, the Red Sea. The scientists studying how “Coral Cores Pinpoint the Onset of Industrial Deforestation” have a more narrow focus: just three reefs in the South China Sea off Malaysian Borneo. The changing ocean chemistry preserved by these coral cores serves as a record of excess erosion, a known consequence of deforestation.

Rapidly rising sea levels, increasing ocean temperatures, and acidifying waters are threatening coral reefs and their contribution to the climate record. As the ocean becomes increasingly inhospitable, researchers are turning to both geoengineering and cryopreservation to save hundreds of coral species. Some researchers are exploring the prospects for stratospheric aerosol injection to help save corals from bleaching, while others have established a cooperative cryobank network for the Coral Triangle.

This month’s thematic collection shares how coral reefs are more than just pretty polyps. They are vital resources for scientists studying the history of Earth’s climate and documenting its present state.

—Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Editor in Chief

Citation: Micalizio, C.-S. (2026), Preserving corals to study the past and document the present, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260008. Published on 1 January 2026. Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

It’s been a trying year for science and scientists, and I’m proud of the way Eos is meeting the moment with a new blog, Research & Developments (R&D), dedicated to quickly relaying content and context for science news. Anchoring R&D coverage is our Science Policy Tracker, updated multiple times a day with late-breaking stories from around the world. Bookmark it!
—Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Editor in Chief

Crowds Stand Up for Science Across the United States. In March, Eos reporters and editors documented huge Stand Up for Science rallies across the country. The resulting story conveys the inspiring passion, anger, hope, and resilience of scientists who faced monumental challenges this year.
—Grace van Deelen, Staff Writer

I struggled to narrow down my favorite science stories of 2025, but there were two standouts. The first is an Eos article written by Katherine Bourzac about air pollution, environmental racism, and the difficulties that come with measuring and regulating odors. The second is a short documentary from The New York Times featuring unbelievably crisp audio of a melting glacier. I also enjoyed these two articles about health risks associated with access to air-conditioning and climate doulas.
—Anaise Aristide, Senior Production and Analytics Specialist

This year started out with two devastating fires that swept through the L.A. area, displacing thousands of people and causing millions of dollars in damage. The area is home to scientists of all disciplines, many of whom sprang into action to understand the impacts of the fires even as themselves and their families were affected. Eos spoke with these scientists about the fires’ impact on air, land, sea, and the people in a four-part series, highlighting the strength and resilience of the science community in the face of disaster.
—Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Senior Science Reporter

When Disaster Science Strikes Close to Home. Amid Eos’s team coverage of science done in the aftermath of the January 2025 Los Angeles fire, I was inspired by Kimberley Cartier’s coverage of the local scientists who jumped in to lend a hand with data collection. The work these researchers did must’ve had physical and emotional tolls—and understandably, it wasn’t always appreciated in the moment by residents who’d just lost their homes—but it was an important supplement to agency efforts to document the fires’ myriad effects on public and environmental health and to communicate those effects to local communities.
—Timothy Oleson, Senior Science Editor

Video Shows Pulsing and Curving Fault Behavior. This article wins 2025 for its sheer coolness. By pure chance, a security camera captured video of the Myanmar earthquake (which I may have replayed more than a dozen times). This visually confirmed the curvature of fault slip and that earthquakes propagate in pulses. The story includes a word that was new to me—always a plus: slickenline. The scientists’ analysis of the video showed that these scratch marks relate to the direction an earthquake traveled, with implications for future hazards if an earthquake tends to rupture in one direction.
—Faith Ishii, Assistant Director, Operations

33.8 Million People in the United States Live on Sinking Land. This article by our colleague Grace van Deelen was both fascinating and dismaying. I mean, most of us knew that New Orleans and Venice were sinking. But New York is sinking! Denver is sinking! Houston is sinking! Because much of this subsidence is linked to human activities like infrastructure building and groundwater pumping, Grace’s coverage is an important way to raise awareness of this issue and of what can be done about it.
—Emily Gardner, Associate Editor

A Major Miner Problem. A difficult conundrum faces part of the geophysics workforce. As the realities of climate change have led to scientists withdrawing from the mining industry, it turns out we need experts in this field more than ever if we are to find the critical minerals for renewable energy in a way that can meaningfully supplant our reliance on oil and gas.
—Heather Goss, Publisher and Senior Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing

Sunspot Drawings Illuminate 400 Years of Solar Activity. I found the project to combine centuries-old data with modern technology for the benefit of present-day researchers fascinating, and I loved that historians were given credit as “detectives” and “real heroes” who “went from archives to basements and traveled all over the world and talked with people, convinced them to let them in, allowed them to take pictures.”
—Tshawna Byerly, Copy Editor

Scientists Discover an Ancient Landscape – in Our Own Backyard. I loved learning about the identification of ancient grasslands and meadow in Virginia.
—Lexi Shultz, Vice President of Science Policy & Government Relations

An Upgraded Alvin Puts New Ocean Depths Within Reach. The mysteries and oddities of the deep ocean are a never-ending source of amazement to me. So I loved learning about how the upgraded capabilities of the long-serving and extraordinarily productive Alvin submersible now put roughly 99% of the seafloor within scientists’ reach.
—Timothy Oleson, Senior Science Editor

The Doomsday Glacier Is Getting Closer and Closer to Irreversible Collapse. Our collective attention continues to zero in on the Thwaites Glacier. A new feature story in Wired covers research in JGR Earth Surface on the 20-year evolution of fractures near the glacier’s “pinning point” keeping it anchored to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Eos has long covered research on this important climate signal, nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier,” including the National Science Foundation’s decision earlier this year to decommission the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the United States’ only Antarctic research vessel–icebreaker.
—Heather Goss, Publisher and Senior Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing

What If Our Ancestors Didn’t Feel Anything Like We Do? This is a feature in The Atlantic about a field that blends history, psychology, and neuroscience to try to determine whether emotions—like anger or disgust or love—actually felt the same to our ancestors. It’s a fascinating idea that’s well worth the read.
—Grace van Deelen, Staff Writer

The Truth About Testosterone. The Science Writers Association of the Rocky Mountains launched its inaugural science writing awards this year. I enjoyed this piece by Stephanie Pappas for Scientific American, which received an honorable mention. Deep, scientific dives into the health trends hawked by TikTokers and podcasters are almost always important, and I found this account particularly engrossing.
—Emily Gardner, Associate Editor

Small Satellites, Big Futures. This feature by Eos senior science reporter Kim Cartier spotlights several programs in which high school and college students can gain hands-on experience designing, building, and launching cubesats. Full of great quotations and photos, this article about encouraging and building up the next generation was a bright spot in a year full of bad news about science funding and programs.
— Faith Ishii, Assistant Director, Operations

Awesome turnout in support of @ncar-ucar.bsky.social at #AGU25. Take a look at how many people use our products!

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— Sam Rabin (@samsrabin.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 2:35 PM

It was gratifying to see virtually the entire scientific community rally behind the National Center for Atmospheric Research, much of it documented in the #SaveNCAR tag. Sometimes it’s easy to forget we’re all in this together, but we are.
—Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Editor in Chief

Because it is fun, I am going to include The Batman Effect: “In the control condition, a female experimenter, appearing pregnant, boarded the train with an observer. In the experimental condition, an additional experimenter dressed as Batman entered from another door. Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%, OR = 3.393, p < 0.001). Notably, 44% of those who offered their seat in the experimental condition reported not seeing Batman. These findings suggest that unexpected events can promote prosociality, even without conscious awareness, with implications for encouraging kindness in public settings.” Science!
—Liz Crocker, Director, Thriving Earth Exchange

Penguin poop!
—Joshua Weinberg, Vice President, Strategic Communications and Marketing

—AGU

Citation: AGU (2025), Our favorite science stories of 2025, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250487. Published on 31 December 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.

The intermittent nature of solar energy poses challenges to grid stability, making accurate ultra-short-term solar irradiance forecasting crucial for balancing supply and demand. However, traditional numerical weather prediction models often struggle with cloud initialization, leading to forecast inaccuracies.

SummaryIn February-March 2025 a seismic sequence occurred in the western sector of the Aeolian Archipelago (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy), a seismotectonic complex region located along the Africa-Eurasia plate boundary and mainly controlled by their NW-trending convergence. The seismicity, located ∼20 km south of Alicudi Island and ∼40 km north of the coast of Sicily, started on February 7 with an earthquake of magnitude Mw 4.7 that was followed in the next month by 42 events with local magnitudes between 1.2 and 3.4. Notwithstanding its moderate energy, this recent seismicity offers a unique opportunity to investigate seismogenic processes in a region for which a seismic potential of ∼M7 or even more has been suggested and a relevant data paucity mainly related to its offshore location was widely recognized. We tackle the limitations of not-optimal network configuration, by designing an ad-hoc approach, which integrates different advanced techniques. Specifically, we combine Bayesian methodology for accurate absolute hypocenter locations, machine learning techniques for detection of weaker events, Distance Geometry Solvers for relative locations, and a probabilistic inversion tool for source mechanism estimation. Our analysis led us to strongly enrich the dataset of detected earthquakes, and to define the causative source of the 2025 sequence as a NE-SW trending N-dipping thrust faulting structure. The proposed source agrees with the regional seismogenic stress field and with the structural architecture of the southern Tyrrhenian portion of the Africa-Eurasia plate margin by also adding new constraints in a sector where no known fault segments were previously reported. This study provides new insights on seismogenic processes in the investigated area, while proving the effectiveness of the employed combined approach for characterizing seismogenic sources in poor network configurations.

In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world's most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater.

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 675

Author(s):

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 675

Author(s): Qasid Ahmad, Martin Wille, Carolina Rosca, Thomas Pettke, Jörg Hermann, Stephan König

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 675

Author(s): Fumiya Sakai, Kei Hirose

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 675

Author(s): Kathrine Udell-Lopez, Mong-Han Huang, Vedran Lekić

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 675

Author(s): Wenshuo Mao, Xiaohui Fu, Zhongchen Wu, Jiang Zhang, Zongcheng Ling, Yang Liu, Yu-Yan Sara Zhao, Jiacheng Liu, He Cui, Hitesh G. Changela, Yuheng Ni, Lifang Li, Joseph R. Michalski