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Just a few minutes of freezing and thawing can have a decisive impact on how ferrihydrite, the most reactive iron mineral in cold soils, permafrost and glaciers, transforms, according to researchers at Umeå University. As climate warming intensifies freeze-thaw cycles and extends them into new regions, ice is becoming an increasingly important driver of Earth's ecosystems.

More than 150 people are dead and hundreds more are missing after an enormous wave of water, ice, mud and rock cascaded more than 170 kilometers (106 miles) down the Bhote Koshi River valley in Nepal. The valley is the main link between Kathmandu in Nepal and Lhasa in Tibet. At least 34 Australians are missing. There was little warning.

As an El Niño of historic proportions is taking shape in the tropical Pacific, a University of Michigan study has found that El Niño events have become nearly 40% stronger in the last 40 years than they were in the preindustrial era.

Want updates from a trusted source about how climate change is shaping public health? Preference Eos in your searches! Go to Google Climate & Personal Health

The transmission of malaria—a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes that affects about 250 million people globally each year—occurs between approximately 16°C (60.8°F) and 34°C (93.2°F) because of the life cycle of mosquitoes and the temperature sensitivity of the parasite they transmit.

That means a warming climate will affect where and how malaria spreads. However, scientists have been split on the question of how climate change has reshaped malaria prevalence in Africa: Some studies have suggested climate change is a substantial driver of shifting malaria prevalence, while others indicate climate change plays little or no role.

A new study published in Nature offers some clarity in that debate. After analyzing more than 50,000 malaria surveys spanning over a century and decades of climate data, researchers found that warming temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa have already made some places too hot for transmission, lowering malaria prevalence. Other regions have become better habitat for mosquitoes and their parasites over time. Researchers expect the trend to continue, amplifying changes in malaria prevalence across the continent as climate change persists.

“The story is really not [about] net aggregate effects across the large and diverse continent of Africa,” said Tamma Carleton, an environmental economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a coauthor of the new study. “This is a story about a shifting burden across space.”

The Role of Climate Change

To study how climate change has affected malaria prevalence, researchers borrowed methods from climate attribution research, which uses climate modeling and comparisons to a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change to determine the extent to which climate change played a role in a specific weather event. The confidence of such studies is improving for weather events, but the methods aren’t typically used to attribute public health phenomena such as malaria prevalence.

“We build on top of well-developed climate attribution science methods but face additional complexities because we’re trying to trace impacts on human outcomes,” Carleton said. In health fields, in particular, there are very few examples of studies that causally link historical anthropogenic emissions to observed health outcomes, she said. She hopes the methods presented in the new study can help other researchers further investigate the link between climate change and human health outcomes.

In their analysis, the researchers focused on childhood malaria prevalence because about 95% of global malaria cases are experienced by children between 2 and 10 years of age throughout parts of central, eastern, southern, and western Africa. Results showed that climate change has already reshaped malaria prevalence in the region since 1901.

The prevalence of childhood malaria attributable to human-caused climate change has increased in parts of Central, southern, and East Africa but decreased in West Africa from 1901 to 2014. Click image for larger version. Credit: Carlson et al., 2026, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10840-w

In particular, human-caused climate change has slightly increased malaria prevalence across Africa, adding about 1 excess case per 1,000 children since 1901. Rising temperatures have created better conditions for malaria transmission in East and southern Africa. But hotter weather in West and central Africa has made the region too hot for transmission to occur, lowering malaria prevalence.

The changes are “modest” compared to observed reductions in malaria prevalence that have occurred as a result of eradication campaigns alongside economic development, Carleton said. Erin Mordecai, an infectious disease ecologist at Stanford University who was not involved in the new research, wrote in an email that the claims in the paper about climate change driving increased malaria burden are nuanced.

“This may be subtly true, to a small extent, in some regions like southern and highland east Africa, where temperatures were previously sub-optimal. At the same time, even in these places the effects of climate change are small” compared to other drivers such as malaria control programs, she wrote.

Researchers compared real-world data on childhood malaria prevalence (blue lines) with predicted childhood malaria prevalence in a hypothetical world without climate change (gray lines). Their analysis showed climate change has played a role in increasing the disease’s prevalence in central, East, and southern Africa and has played a role in decreasing prevalence in West Africa. Click image for larger version. Credit: Carlson et al., 2026, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10840-w

To Mordecai, the most exciting aspect of the study was its confirmation of the “thermal biology of malaria transmission”—the study’s results show clear changes in transmission when temperatures go up or down. “The fact that this was predicted…and [is] now validated at such a large scale is very compelling,” she wrote.

Amplified Patterns

As the climate continues to change, the trends the researchers noticed “amplify in ways that really do start to shape the policy conversation,” Carleton said.

“It’s important to show that the burden of malaria is shifting away from those very hot places, but that also means many other threats to public health are unfolding as the temperatures get extremely, extremely hot.”

Carleton and the team projected changes in childhood malaria prevalence up to 2100 using data on past climate and disease prevalence for multiple future climate change scenarios. They found that rising temperatures will continue to reduce disease prevalence in West Africa, particularly under the highest-emissions scenario.

For the rest of Africa, rising temperatures could cause a slight increase in malaria prevalence. Still, temperatures will likely become so hot by the end of the century that the majority of the continent could see more than a 2% decrease in malaria prevalence, a projected reduction that “begins to approach the magnitude of some historical eradication programmes,” according to the authors.

By 2100, childhood malaria prevalence will further shift, as shown by this map of the projected future changes in prevalence driven by human-caused climate change. Click image for larger version. Credit: Carlson et al., 2026, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10840-w

Carleton emphasized that decreases in malaria presence in warming regions are not exactly cause for celebration—if temperatures are hot enough to halt malaria transmission, they’re hot enough to cause a lot of human suffering, too. “It’s important to show that the burden of malaria is shifting away from those very hot places, but that also means many other threats to public health are unfolding as the temperatures get extremely, extremely hot,” she said.

“Just because malaria risk is going down doesn’t mean aggregate human health and well-being is improving under a future with aggressive emissions.”

Messages for Malaria Eradication

Noticing a shifting disease burden means that policymakers and nongovernmental organizations can begin to “prepare places that have not put this disease at the top of the health priority list,” such as places where, historically, the climate has suppressed transmission, Carleton said. That’s especially important as funding for global health has been dramatically cut in recent years, she added.

“We have to spend each dollar of funding in the way that can alleviate human suffering the most effectively.”

“We have really limited resources going towards prevention of this disease, and we have climate change hitting like a train…This means we have to spend each dollar of funding in the way that can alleviate human suffering the most effectively,” she said.

The projected changes in malaria prevalence could also work in tandem with malaria eradication efforts in some countries, the authors write: “The combined benefits of disease surveillance, healthcare, vector control and economic development can easily counter-balance climate change impacts in most places.”

To Mordecai, the results “highlight the critical importance of control programs for malaria, and these should be sustained even in areas where climate suitability isn’t necessarily increasing,” she wrote. Despite a warming climate, with malaria eradication methods, malaria could still be gone from most of Africa by 2050, according to the study’s authors.

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

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), Climate change will reshape malaria prevalence across Africa, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260273. Published on 27 August 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

As climate change has led to more frequent high-heat events around the world, moist heat metrics such as wet-bulb temperature, which combines temperature and humidity, have become increasingly relevant. Days with both high heat and high humidity are dangerous for human health; understanding how these extreme events will change in the future is important.

Jha and Byrne examined moist heat extremes over extratropical continents using ERA5 reanalysis data (the fifth generation of reanalysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) and the Community Earth System Model Version 2 (CESM2) global climate model. They paid special attention to the ways dry air mixes into plumes of warm, moist air traveling upward in convective environments.

The authors simulated varying rates at which dry air mixes into these plumes rising from near Earth’s surface to the upper troposphere and found that this process, known as entrainment, exerts a significant influence on moist heat extremes outside of the tropics. The authors say this process alters the relationship between the amounts of stored energy in the air near the ground and higher up in the troposphere. This mixing of dry air into rising plumes enables the near-surface air to become more energetic through higher humidity and temperature, leading to more severe moist heat events.

Using simulations, the authors found that as climate warms and the lower troposphere becomes drier, the entrainment mechanism will continue to drive up wet-bulb temperatures at the surface, potentially leading to moist heat extremes that are even more severe.

Future work examining in more detail how global warming is changing rates of dry-air entrainment into rising plumes will be useful to better understand how wet-bulb temperatures will increase in the future, the authors say. (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL122678, 2026)

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2026), How rising air plumes help spike moist heat, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260271. Published on 27 August 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.

Climate change was once something scientists warned us about, and now it's a reality we are living in. In California's Central Valley, about one-third of climate-related groundwater loss between 2003 and 2024 can be attributed to emissions from the same actors. Scientists call them the "Carbon Majors," a group of 122 corporations that are the world's largest producers of oil, gas, coal and cement.

Author(s): Audrey Farrell, Mitchell Sinclair, Yipeng Wu, Kenneth A. Marsh, Apurva Gaikwad, Navid Vafaei-Najafabadi, Marcus Babzien, William Li, Mikhail Polyanskiy, Igor Pogorelsky, Chaojie Zhang, and Chandrashekhar Joshi

We report a seeding mechanism for the current filamentation instability that was identified using an experimental platform where a relativistically intense 2-ps (full width at half maximum) long-wavelength infrared pump laser both produces and interacts with a plasma that is overdense to the pump ye…

[Phys. Rev. E 114, 025208] Published Thu Aug 27, 2026

Author(s): E. G. Gelfer, A. M. Fedotov, M. P. Malakhov, Th. Benahmed, J. Custodio, O. Klimo, and S. Weber

We develop an analytical theory of coherent (scaled quadratically with the number of particles) radiation and coherent radiation friction in a head-on collision of a dense charged particle bunch with an intense laser pulse. We demonstrate that the low-frequency coherent radiation in the forward and …

[Phys. Rev. E 114, 025209] Published Thu Aug 27, 2026

Spreading finely crushed basalt across farmland has been promoted as a relatively simple way to remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study led by Cornell researchers suggests the real-world potential of this method, known as enhanced weathering, may be far smaller than widely cited estimates.

Florida gets a lot of attention for its sinkholes, especially when they swallow cars and entire houses. But its sinkhole risk has nothing on Alaska's.

An international study led by researchers at the George Washington University indicates clear global evidence that permafrost is thawing across much of the planet. Using more than two decades of field observations from 156 monitoring sites across the Arctic, Antarctic and high-mountain regions, the study found increases in the thickness of the active layer, the uppermost layer above permafrost that thaws and refreezes each year. The findings confirm that permafrost degradation accelerated globally between 2000 and 2024.

The use of fossil fuels alters both the concentration and the carbon isotope composition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since surface water exchanges carbon dioxide with the atmosphere, this also alters the isotopic composition of the carbon dissolved in the ocean. In a new study, a team from MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen has now determined how deep this so-called Suess effect has already penetrated into the North Atlantic.

The Colorado River and its reservoirs, which supply water for about 40 million people and 30 tribes across seven states and two countries, is drying up.

Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border, which has the largest storage capacity of any reservoir in the United States, hit its lowest recorded levels on 7 August. Water levels in Lake Powell, located on the Utah-Arizona border, reached their own record low about a week later.

The maximum capacity of Lake Mead is 28.5 million acre-feet. Right now, it is holding about 6.95 million acre-feet—about 27% of its capacity. Its level has dropped by more than 20 feet since the start of 2026. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Though overallocation is one reason the river is shrinking, reduced snowpack and increased evaporation caused by climate change are also contributing factors.

“The Colorado River crisis is one of the clearest examples of climate change in the U.S.”

“The Colorado River crisis is one of the clearest examples of climate change in the U.S.,” Douglas Kenney, the director of the Western Water Policy Program and a hydroscientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in an email to Eos. “The basin has warmed dramatically, especially over the last 30 years, changing virtually every aspect of the water cycle in ways that result in lower streamflows. Flows so far in the 21st century are 20 percent lower than the 20th century. In an already arid region with very few water sources, that is a huge issue.”

Last week, the Department of the Interior (DOI) issued a final decision for what to do about all of this, at least for the next 2 years. Among the primary takeaways are 1.25 million acre-feet of water cuts across what are known as the Lower Basin states: 760,000 acre-feet for Arizona, 440,000 acre-feet for California, and 50,000 acre-feet for Nevada. (One acre-foot is equivalent to 325,851 gallons (1,233 cubic meters), or enough water for a year for two to four single-family homes.) This number represents a cut of about 21% across the Lower Basin states, but the cuts could increase in coming years.

The Upper Basin states—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—are not facing cuts. The “record of decision,” as it is called, also established criteria for how to maintain enough water in Lake Powell to continue operating Glen Canyon Dam.

By the Numbers

20%:  amount by which the Colorado River’s flow has reduced since 2000

40 million:  number of people who rely on the river’s water

30:  Native American tribes in the Colorado River Basin

27%:  Lake Mead’s current level, relative to full capacity

21%:  Lake Powell’s current level, relative to full capacity

John Berggren, a regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, said the record of decision puts the future of the Colorado River Basin “on the right path” but that the new guidelines don’t make management of the river sustainable or resilient in the long term.

“In the short term, we got a little bit of certainty in how they’re going to operate, but fingers crossed for a big snowpack. Otherwise, we’re not going to be in a good spot come next year,” he said. “Best case is in 2 years, we’re kind of where we are now, which is just barely hanging on by a thread, and very vulnerable to one more bad year that could completely tank the system.”

The DOI announcement followed the release of a final environmental impact statement (FEIS) in late July 2026 and a draft EIS in January 2026. The draft itself followed about 2.5 years of negotiations between the Bureau of Reclamation and the seven basin states.

The public had 45 days to comment on the proposal before the FEIS was released. The Bureau of Reclamation received more than 18,000 submissions, most of which were form letters, and responded to the comments in a 54-page document. Read some of the public comments from different parts of the Colorado River Basin in the map below.

“We are grateful for the Seven Basin States, the thirty Basin Tribes, Mexico, and many other basin stakeholders who have provided the feedback and voluntary arrangements necessary for the development of the 2027–2028 Operating Guidelines,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement accompanying the release of the record of decision.

The Haves and Have-Nots

The FEIS released in August included the idea that the Lower Basin states be asked to cut their water by as much as 3 million acre-feet—more than twice the amount decided for 2027 and 2028. And greater cuts are still on the table for future years.

Arizona, which faced the most severe cuts, was particularly unhappy with the FEIS. The Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) called parts of the proposal “unacceptable” and said that “such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.” In a letter to DOI’s Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek, ADWR director Thomas Buschatzke effectively threatened to sue, noting that “Arizona reserves the right to seek the resolution of its Compact rights in an appropriate judicial forum.”

In response to the record of decision, Buschatzke struck a more positive note, thanking the Department of the Interior “for clarifying the decision-making process” and stating that the “actions in the Lower Basin in recent decades to protect the system have demonstrated how much we can accomplish when we all join together as part of the solution.”

On X, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs said, “We’ve protected Arizona from disastrous and unacceptable forced federal water cuts…But the work is not over.”

Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community released a statement saying that the document “fails to adequately address the federal government’s trust responsibility to tribes in the Basin who are seriously affected by cuts to critical water supplies.”

Lake Powell’s water level hit a record low of 3,520 feet this month. The minimum level for the lake to generate power at Glen Canyon Dam is 3,490 feet. The minimum level for water to be able to flow past the dam is 3,370 feet. Credit: Jiří David, World Meteorological Organization/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

JB Hamby, Colorado River commissioner for California, called the record of decision “a bridge, not a permanent solution,” and added that “three states cannot carry the responsibility of all seven.”

Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo released a statement the day the record of decision came out, saying that “the federal government is positioning to short Nevada—the state with the smallest river allocation at only 1.8%—sacrificing the health and safety of Nevadans before requiring equal water responsibility for our shared water resources from the Upper Basin.”

On Monday, 24 August, the state of Nevada, the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority filed a lawsuit against the DOI and Bureau of Reclamation. The lawsuit claims the record of decision gives the federal government the authority to impose an annual reduction of 213,556 acre-feet on the state—about 71% of Nevada’s allocation.

“The magnitude of such shortages will cause acute environmental, socioeconomic, and health and human safety impacts to southern Nevada,” the lawsuit reads.

Upper Basin states are happier: The governors of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico released a joint statement following the release of the FEIS, noting that they were “encouraged” by the suggested new operating guidelines. (They did not release a new statement in response to the record of decision, but neither document proposed water cuts to the Upper Basin states.)

What About the Science?

In 2023, Shemin Ge, a hydrogeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, was lead author of an article for Eos about how it was important that, unlike the drafting of the original 1922 agreement for managing the river, all involved parties use the best available science to inform their decisions.

Nearly 200 people from the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other agencies helped prepare the FEIS. The report summarizes how the proposed plans could affect everything from river flow to groundwater levels to sand transport to harmful algal blooms. It also analyzes the impact on vegetation, terrestrial and riverine wildlife, paleontological resource preservation, socioeconomics, agriculture, Native American tribes, and recreation.

But is this plan any better than the 1922 compact? Ge said she’s not sure.

“My impression about these government documents, whether it’s a decision, a record, or guideline, [is that] it’s more a short-term operational document.”

“My impression about these government documents, whether it’s a decision, a record, or guideline, [is that] it’s more a short-term operational document,” she said. “Many experts have called for more holistic, science-based, long-term strategies to manage the river, and I don’t feel that it’s heard at the upper level.” By long-term future, Ge added, she’s “talking about maybe 20 years, not 2 years.”

Kenney said that the FEIS raised the questions of whether the cuts are equitably distributed (the Lower Basin states certainly don’t think so), whether the cuts will be enough to solve the problem (“The best we can probably hope for is to avoid further reservoir declines,” he said), and whether the Bureau of Reclamation will actually be able to enforce the suggested framework.

“Given all that, I’m not sure the framework will be effective in practice, but it is well reasoned,” he said. “It’s likely the best they can do with the tools they have. A true solution likely requires permanently removing a lot of agriculture in the basin, and that’s not really a job for a water agency.”

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

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), The Colorado River Basin is running out of water. Not everyone is happy with the government’s suggested solution., Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260276. Published on 26 August 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.

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

Scientists come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, that shape is a blubbery 1,000-kilogram whale with a 2-meter tusk.

In research published today in Science Advances, a team of (human) scientists describe their collaboration with six narwhals to track warming water sea temperatures off the coast of East Greenland.

The warming of these waters is part of a process called atlantification, or the influx of warm, salty water from lower latitudes into the Arctic. This research focused on Scorseby Sound, an area that spans about 10,000 square kilometers, where waters can reach depths exceeding 1,000 meters.

“Narwhals visit areas that are logistically difficult and expensive to reach with traditional methods, and they sample localities in winter that are usually only sampled in the ice-free summer months.”

“There are very few oceanographic measurements from Scoresby Sound despite the fact that it is the world’s largest fjord system,” Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, a biologist at Pinngortitaleriffik/Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and lead author of the paper, told Eos via email. “Narwhals visit areas that are logistically difficult and expensive to reach with traditional methods, and they sample localities in winter that are usually only sampled in the ice-free summer months.”

 Related

•  Read the Paper: “Narwhals document atlantification of East Greenland”
• Narwhal Facts
•  Atlantification of the Arctic
 

The researchers outfitted the animals with satellite transmitters, which tracked temperature, salinity, and the depth of the whales’ dives. Data collection occurred each time a whale dove at least 50 meters below the water, with at least 15 minutes between dives. From August 2017 to July 2020, the six narwhals recorded data from a total of 2,060 dives.

“Narwhals have been used as ocean sampling platforms several times in the past because they are excellent samplers of remote ice-covered areas and deep depths. They make repeated dives in one area, sometimes to a mile below the surface, often over many months,” Kristin Laidre, a polar scientist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center, who was not involved in the study, explained in an email to Eos.

Though this isn’t the first time narwhals have participated in data collection, this experiment marks the first time that devices attached to narwhals were used to measure salinity.

Scoresby Sound is the world’s largest fjord system, but understanding of its oceanography has been limited. Credit: Delphinidaesy, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

The researchers also used ships to gather data about the area. Using data from both sources, they found that, compared to glaciers terminating in shallow basins, glaciers terminating in deep basins tended to be surrounded by warmer waters, especially at depths of 200 to 500 meters. Most of the influx of Atlantic waters occurred at depths exceeding 150 meters.

The warm water is likely contributing to the melting of glaciers in the Nordvestfjord in Scoresby Sound, as well as those in the Nansen Fjord and the Kangerlussuaq Fjord farther south, the researchers report. Glaciers in shallow coastal areas are less affected by atlantification.

Heide-Jørgensen said that, though scientists were already aware from other studies that atlantification is occurring in East Greenland, it was surprising to see how much Atlantic water is influxing to areas that are 300 kilometers or farther from Greenland’s outer coast (ice-free headlands that face the open ocean as opposed to inner fjords).

Researchers attached the satellite devices to six narwhals, which, over the course of about three years, recorded data from a total of 2,060 dives. Credit: Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen

In the paper, the researchers describe how the work demonstrated not just new findings, but a methodological breakthrough, saying it illustrated how work with “unconventional collaborators can revolutionize oceanographic research.” The project was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Copenhagen.

“Narwhals and other marine mammals routinely navigate the most remote corners of the polar seas, reaching sites like glacial fjords where human researchers struggle to collect data due to the presence of sea-ice and icebergs,” Ian Fenty, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was not involved in the work, wrote in an email to Eos. “Provided these animals are treated ethically, the information gathered from the instruments they carry will continue to be invaluable for improving our understanding of climate change.”

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

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about science or scientists? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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The catastrophic debris flow that struck Nepal and Tibet today was triggered by the collapse of a glacier high in the mountains.

Loyal readers will have seen the footage of the catastrophic debris flow that struck parts of Tibet and Nepal today, 26 August 2026. There is a variety of sources, of which the CCTV footage from Gyirong on the border is probably the most dramatic and horrifying – indeed at this scale the event is close to be apocalyptic:-

Current reports indicate around 400 fatalities, but I think it is reasonable to assume that the cost is going to be higher.

The root cause of this disaster is already known, although there is a lot of misinformation and some uncertainty. On Bluesky, Dan Shugar has posted a video compiled from Planet imagery that shows the initiating event:-

A Bluesky post by Dan Shugar showing the origin of the 26 August 2026 debris flow in Tibet and Nepal.

The image above was from 25 August 2926, whist the one below is from 26 August 2026:-

A Bluesky post by Dan Shugar showing the origin of the 26 August 2026 debris flow in Tibet and Nepal.

The location is is in the area of [28.2765, 85.5194]. The exact sequence is not clear as yet, but the imagery definitely pins down the location.

There has been some speculation, and indeed official comments, that the trigger was an earthquake. This is likely to be a misinterpretation of the data – the seismic signal is almost certainly the rock ice avalanche and debris flow, not a tectonic event.

A fascinating element of this is the source of the huge volume of water. This may be a combination of ice that converted to water as a result of the release of energy from the initial collapse, water embedded in the sediments that were entrained en route and river water. But I am speculating. There is no evidence that this was a GLOF.

Understanding this event is going to need an international team, as has been the case for similar events in recent years. That team has now got together and has started work.

Finally, this event is going to have profound implications on Nepal. The loss of many people, including a large number of tourists as well as local people, will be extremely painful. The Gyirong border crossing has clearly been destroyed, along with its infrastructure. Houses have been lost and at least two hydroelectric schemes destroyed along the Bhote Khosi river. The true scale of the loss is not yet clear.

I have made the point many times before, but we systematically under-estimate the risk associated with these events in the Himalaya mountains. Investments in large-scale hydropower projects are repeatedly being destroyed by these catastrophic debris flows. Unfortunately, under the conditions that result from climate change, many more of these events will occur in the future.

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Whenever there's a series of destructive or notable earthquakes, scientists get asked the same question: Are earthquakes becoming more frequent?

Source: AGU Advances

Saturn’s moon Enceladus sports a thick shell of ice surrounding a liquid water ocean. As though scraped by an enormous claw, four parallel cracks slash across its south pole. Each about 500 meters deep, 2 kilometers across, and 130 kilometers long, the fissures spew water vapor and other materials from the subsurface ocean directly into space. But the origin of these “tiger stripes” is mysterious.

Most prior research has explored the possibility that Enceladus’s tiger stripes were created by processes primarily involving the ice shell itself, such as tectonic fracturing and cooling. Now, Abdulah et al. show that waves in the ocean beneath the ice could play a deciding role in their formation.

The researchers took inspiration from ocean waves on Earth, which can propagate from the seafloor to the surface, focus to a point, break, and dissipate. Using mathematical analysis and computational simulations, the research team investigated how waves in Enceladus’s subsurface ocean might interact with the inner surface of the ice shell. They incorporated a key feature of the moon: Because of its irregular orbit around Saturn, the moon’s entire ice shell wobbles relative to its ocean.

In the new picture of tiger stripe formation, one initial fissure already existed in the ice shell. As the shell wobbled, the motion of the fissure’s uneven underside topography against the liquid ocean below excited waves, which traveled tens of kilometers through the ocean down to the seafloor. The waves then ricocheted back up and broke against an adjacent part of the ice shell, imparting energy as heat that began to melt the ice from beneath.

The analysis suggests that this melting could kick-start a process that would eventually carve out additional parallel fissures about 35 kilometers apart from each other—matching the observed spacing of Enceladus’s existing tiger stripes.

If this proposed mechanism is correct, it would set constraints that reveal additional characteristics of the subsurface ocean, including how its density changes with depth. Additional modeling and a possible future mission to Enceladus could help refine and test the mechanism and its implications. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026AV002539, 2026)

—Sarah Stanley, Science Writer

Citation: Stanley, S. (2026), Did ocean motion carve Enceladus’s tiger stripes?, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260272. Published on 26 August 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

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

Coastal dunes provide a vital natural buffer against flooding for low-lying infrastructure, yet their capacity to do so varies alongshore due to differences in dune and beach morphology. Heminway et al. [2026] quantify the drivers of alongshore variability across spatial (~40 kilometers) and temporal (multidecadal) scales using data from long-term beach and dune monitoring surveys on the Long Beach Peninsula, Washington, USA. The authors then present sensitivity tests using a reduced-complexity model to isolate the controls on dune change.

Their results identify shoreline change rate as the dominant variable governing alongshore variability in foredune evolution. In addition, beach slope and sediment grain size emerge as important secondary controls. Together, these findings provide a quantitative framework linking shoreline behavior to dune development over decadal timescales.

This study combines a rare multi-decadal field dataset with a reduced-complexity modeling approach to robustly quantify the dominant controls on alongshore variability in dune evolution. By demonstrating the primary role of shoreline change rate in shaping foredune volume over decadal timescales, it provides valuable insight into large-scale sediment-dune coupling in progradational coastal systems.

Beyond its scientific contributions, this work has clear applied implications. Improved understanding of the controls on dune variability can inform coastal hazard assessments, guide dune management strategies, and help constrain risks to coastal communities. In particular, identifying shoreline change rate as a leading indicator provides a practical metric for anticipating future dune behavior.

The study underscores the critical value of long-term monitoring. Multi-decadal datasets of this kind remain rare globally, yet they are essential for detecting trends, validating models, and advancing process understanding. Continued investment in sustained coastal observations, including topography, hydrodynamics, and sediment characteristics, is essential to support both fundamental science and its translation into effective coastal management.

Citation: Heminway, S. S., Cohn, N., van IJzendoorn, C., Ruggiero, P., Wengrove, M., Weiner, H., & Kaminsky, G. M. (2026). Assessing drivers of alongshore variation in historical coastal dune evolution: A field and model-based approach. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 131, e2025JF008717. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JF008717

—Ana Vila-Concejo, Associate Editor, JGR: Earth Surface

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: Geophysical Research Letters

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

研究人员早已知道,厄尔尼诺-南方涛动（ENSO）存在不对称性，即风与洋流相互作用所引发的厄尔尼诺事件和拉尼娜事件的温差现象。然而，大规模气候模型往往未能充分反映这种不对称性，其原因尚不完全清楚。更准确地模拟导致厄尔尼诺事件变暖的机制，不仅有助于理解地球气候系统，还能提升未来ENSO事件的预测能力。

以往对厄尔尼诺-南方涛动（ENSO）不对称性的研究主要关注风应力响应和热力平流等大尺度过程，但并未完全解答这一问题。杨等人采用了一种新的方法，从更小的尺度入手，研究了昼夜海表温度变化如何影响ENSO不对称性。

研究人员比较了35个耦合模式比较计划第六阶段（CMIP6）模式，发现温度日变化幅度（DA）较大的模式能更好地捕捉ENSO不对称性。通过针对性的模式实验，他们进一步发现，这一机制的主要驱动因素是太平洋中部和东部地区日均海表温度异常响应的反向差异。这种东西向的温度差异导致海洋在数月甚至更长时间内出现不均匀升温。因此，厄尔尼诺现象对海洋的升温作用大于拉尼娜现象的降温作用。

作者指出，对于气候模型而言，采用更大的温度日变化幅度日温差幅度可将ENSO模拟中的不对称性改善高达38.5%，这凸显了海表温度日变化对厄尔尼诺等大尺度气候事件的重要性。此外，他们还强调，引入较大的DA可能从多个方面影响ENSO模拟，包括相位锁定、不对称性和振幅变化，这为其他气候模型的开发提供了有价值的指导。(Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL122494, 2026)

—科学撰稿人Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp)

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

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Unlike conventional glaciers, rock glaciers appear as piles of rock that obscure large masses of unaccounted-for ice. Rock glaciers are common in the Wasatch and Uinta ranges, even appearing on the Colorado Plateau in the La Sal Mountains near Moab.