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Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Community Science

What are the benefits of sustainable agriculture practice, who reaps those benefits, and how do we measure them? Komarek et al. [2026] tackle those questions by integrating national-scale frameworks for assessing sustainable practices in agriculture with on-the-ground knowledge of farmers in the midwestern United States.

Through a combination of surveys and workshops, farmers and scientists worked together to a develop of usable and localized set of indicators for assessing the use of cover crops. “Indicators” are things you can measure to see how something is working; you can measure carbon in the soil to see if cover crops are making soil healthier. The paper describes the resulting indicators, but more importantly it shows that iterative engagement with farmers produces indicators that are easier to measure, give a more complete picture, and are more useful in decision-making that the indicators that come from national-level frameworks alone. It also reveals things that might have been missed otherwise: in this case, farmers recognized that some of the long-term benefits of cover crops accrued to landowners, while much of the short-term cost of cover cropping was born by the farmers who rented that land, illuminating a key challenge for increasing sustainable practices.

In the workshop, farmers used colored dots to qualitatively show whether each indicator revealed an increase (green) or decrease (red) in sustainability. Yellow indicates uncertainty or both positive and negative impacts on sustainability. Credit: Komarek et al. [2026], Figure 4

Citation: Komarek, A. M., Castellano, M. J., Jackson, K., Lee, A., Zhang, W., & Zhang, X. (2026). A participatory framework to assess agricultural sustainability: Cover cropping as an illustrative example. Community Science, 5, e2025CSJ000138. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025CSJ000138

—Rajul Pandya, Editor, Community Science Exchange

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.

SummaryAcoustic wave propagation under pressure is inherently nonlinear and often exhibits hysteresis in elastic properties. Understanding this behaviour is important in rock physics and exploration seismology because pressure-dependent elastic responses contain information on evolving rock microstructure. We present a petrophysical model that describes the relationship between acoustic P- and S-wave velocities and effective rock pressure during both loading and unloading phases. Instead of prescribing a single microscopic mechanism, the model introduces an effective extensive state variable that represents the cumulative effect of pressure-induced microstructural evolution. Depending on the dominant physical process, this variable may be associated with compliant pore and microcrack volume, grain-contact evolution, or other pressure-sensitive structural descriptors. The model distinguishes between open and closed microstructural states and describes their stress-dependent evolution through different sensitivities during loading and unloading, thereby reproducing irreversible velocity-pressure behaviour within a unified framework. Model parameters are estimated from laboratory-measured acoustic velocities using linearized joint inversion. The inversion further enables the reconstruction of an acoustically weighted effective descriptor that characterises the pressure-dependent contribution of compliant microstructural evolution to the observed velocity response. In parallel, we apply the Preisach theory of hysteresis to pressure-dependent acoustic velocities. In this framework, compliant microstructural features are represented by effective hysteretic units (hysteron) characterized by distributed closing and opening pressures. The resulting Preisach model reproduces the measured hysteresis with high accuracy and enables a model-dependent reconstruction of the Preisach density function, which provides an effective, non-unique representation of hysteretic switching contributions across closing and opening pressures. By combining the petrophysical and Preisach approaches, we introduce two diagnostic quantities, the Ratio of Hysteron Jumps (RHJ) and the Cumulative Hysteron Jumps (CHJ), which quantify the relative and cumulative contributions of hysteretic elements throughout loading and unloading. While both approaches reproduce the observed velocity–pressure hysteresis, they provide complementary information. The petrophysical model describes the macroscopic evolution of elastic properties via an effective state variable and its acoustically weighted representation, whereas the Preisach model resolves the distribution and activation of hysteretic switching contributions in Preisach space via the reconstructed density function. The results demonstrate that acoustic hysteresis measurements contain not only information on effective elastic properties but also recoverable signatures of pressure-dependent microstructural evolution relevant to seismic interpretation.

As autumn gives way to winter across the Arctic, the ground doesn't immediately freeze solid. Instead, soils often linger near the freezing point for days or even weeks in a phase called the zero curtain. In a new NASA-led study, researchers produced high-resolution maps of the Arctic zero curtain.

Sometimes science throws up the unexpected. When a team of researchers set out to model river erosion in Canada's High Arctic, they did not expect the findings to defy common sense.

SummaryThe São Francisco Paleocontinental block (SFPB) and the Congo Paleocontinental block (CPB) composed, prior to the Atlantic opening in the Cretaceous, the São Francisco-Congo Paleocontinent (SFCP). The SFCP was one of the landmasses involved in the Neoproterozoic Brasiliano-Pan African Orogeny and the assembly of Western Gondwana. Both the SFPB and CPB underwent reworking during the amalgamation of Western Gondwana, forming the orogenic belts that surround the preserved portions of the SFPB and CPB that are known today as the São Francisco and Congo cratons. Although the crustal portions in the outermost areas of these paleocontinents are no longer visible in the surface due to this reworking, the limits of these paleocontinents remain relatively intact at subcrustal depths. The objectives of this study are to delimit the SFPB and to image the structures beneath the Araçuaí belt at mantle lithosphere depths. We present the results of our study which were obtained by the multiple-frequency seismic tomography method for the SFPB and adjacent structures between depths of 68 and 587 km. Data were obtained by processing broadband seismograms recorded between 11-August-2023 and 31-July-2024 for P and PKIKP phases. The processed database comprised 9 254 residuals, which were added to the database of a previous regional study resulting in 97 150 traveltime delays. Checkerboard resolution tests using patterns with horizontal dimensions of 390×390 km reveal very good recovery between depths of 68 and 226 km, although the sharp vertical transition between the checkerboard layers is not fully recovered between the depths of 316 and 384 km. The checkerboard pattern with horizontal dimensions of 312×312 km reveals that the best recovery is observed in the southern and eastern portions of the São Francisco craton (SFCr) and in the Borborema province (BP) between depths of 68 and 226 km. Our results show a high-velocity anomaly with roughly NE-SW trend that extends from the Paranapanema block (PaBl), through the entire extension of the SFCr up to the southern BP. This anomaly contains two major segmentations, one in the southern Brasilia belt, marking the division of the PaBl with the SFPB, and the other dividing the eastern and western arms of the SFPB with a roughly NW-SE trend, interpreted as the Paramirim aulacogen. We also observe a high-velocity anomaly beneath the Araçuaí belt (ArBe) that dips with a SE direction. This anomaly starts at the northern end of the Abre Campo suture at a depth of 136 km, deepens to the south, and is interpreted as the foundered cratonic lithosphere that originated from the delamination of the SFCr due to the passage of the Trindade plume. To reinforce our interpretation, we tested several synthetic models with geometries that were based on our results and previous studies in the area. The synthetic model which presents the most resemblance to the real data model contains a high-velocity anomaly beneath the Araçuaí belt between depths of 226 and 384 km. A strong low-velocity anomaly beneath the Ribeira Belt is interpreted as material rising from the Nazca Slab dehydration.

SummaryNon-Newtonian pore-fluid behaviour is incorporated into a generalized Lagrangian–dissipation framework for wave propagation in fluid-saturated porous media. In contrast to approaches that rely on prescribed pore-scale flow patterns, pore geometries, or other microscopic structural assumptions, the present formulation introduces nonlinear rheological effects directly at the macroscopic constitutive level. The resulting model remains consistent with continuum mechanics and Biot-type poroelasticity while allowing non-Newtonian effects to enter three fluid-related dissipation mechanisms: Darcy-type fluid–solid friction, local-deformation (LD) relaxation, and bulk-viscous dissipation. Nonlinear dissipation potentials are constructed for these mechanisms and then reduced, through a first-harmonic approximation, to effective frequency-dependent coefficients for harmonic wave analysis. Numerical examples show that the non-Newtonian Darcy-friction and LD mechanisms primarily modify the characteristic frequencies of the corresponding relaxation processes, whereas the non-Newtonian bulk-viscosity mechanism affects both the frequency range and the strength of attenuation and dispersion, with a strong sensitivity to the assumed magnitude of the pore-fluid bulk viscosity. The framework also allows alternative nonlinear representations of Darcy-type fluid–solid friction to be compared within the same Lagrangian–dissipation structure; an alternative nonlinear dissipation operator produces wave-propagation predictions nearly indistinguishable from those obtained using the power-law Darcy-friction model, suggesting that different nonlinear constitutive assumptions may lead to similar effective attenuation structures at the macroscopic scale. Calibration against laboratory measurements on tight carbonate rocks shows that the observed attenuation and velocity-dispersion behaviour can be reproduced using physically interpretable non-Newtonian parameters. These results suggest that non-Newtonian pore-fluid rheology may contribute to frequency-dependent wave-propagation effects in fluid-saturated porous media and provide a flexible macroscopic framework for investigating fluid-related dissipation beyond conventional Newtonian poroelastic models.

SummaryGravity data is widely applied to determine Moho topography due to globally dense and homogeneous gravity observations. Compared with gravity data, gravity gradients can reveal more details of Moho structure, which are more competitive. However, gravity gradients must be transformed into gravity data for common Vening Meinesz-Moritz (VMM) methods, which causes loss of some high-frequency signals. Thus, an improved method by constructing direct function relation between Moho topography and gravity gradients is proposed in this paper. Subsequently, A case study in Tibetan Plateau is conducted using this improved method, and a new Moho topography with higher spatial resolution is determined. More refined tectonic implications can be also revealed from this new Moho topography: (1) the prevailing wavelengths of detected Moho folds are approximately 578 km in the east-west direction and approximately 515 km - 708 km in the north-south direction; (2) two possible lower crustal mass flow channels can be identified clearly according to the traces leaving on Moho topography in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau (3) clearer Moho subsidence, approximately 5 km, can be observed in the central Tarim Basin.

SummaryThe northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau exhibits pronounced spatial variations in present-day vertical crustal deformation, yet the mechanisms controlling these differences remain debated. In particular, contrasting uplift patterns are observed between the Liupanshan tectonic belt and the Maxianshan Fault, two key tectonic structures along the northeastern expansion front of the plateau. Here we develop two three-dimensional viscoelastic finite element models constrained by geological structures, seismic profiles, and GNSS observations to investigate the controls on vertical deformation. The modeling results show that when the mid–lower crustal viscosity is laterally uniform between the Longxi Basin and the Ordos Block, vertical deformation of ~2 mm/a is concentrated within a ~50 km-wide zone near the Liupanshan tectonic belt, consistent with leveling observations. This deformation pattern mainly reflects crustal shortening and thickening dominated by pure shear. In contrast, the observed ~4 mm/a uplift along the hanging wall of the Maxianshan Fault can only be reproduced when weak mid–lower crust and enhanced crustal flow are introduced beneath the Linxia Basin, indicating that northeastward mid–lower crustal flow is converted into vertical uplift along the fault. These results suggest that the Maxianshan Fault represents the northeastern termination of mid–lower crustal flow within the Qilian Block, whereas deformation in the Liupanshan tectonic belt is primarily accommodated by crustal shortening. Our findings highlight the fundamental role of lateral rheological heterogeneity in controlling vertical deformation and provide new insights into the mechanisms of present-day lateral growth of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau.

Earth's inner core, composed primarily of iron with a small percentage of light elements, may enter a superionic state at extreme pressure and temperature, according to experimental results from researchers at Science Tokyo. Using laser-heated and electrically wired diamond-anvil cells, the researchers identified experimental signatures of superionic iron hydride at conditions relevant to Earth's core. These findings provide new insights into the composition and dynamics of Earth's deep interior.

Why do some lakes remain plagued by harmful algal blooms even after phosphorus pollution has been reduced? Part of the answer lies beneath the surface. A new Concordia study has uncovered a previously overlooked chemical process that can help trap phosphorus in lake sediments, preventing it from returning to the water, where it can fuel excessive plant and algal growth.

Seismic waves produced by thunderstorms, called thunderquakes, can be used as a novel source for seismic imaging, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.

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From 2020 to 2022, California faced one of its driest periods on record, in part because of human-caused climate change. Though the drought has eased, scientists have noticed lasting effects on the state’s aquifers that may affect their ability to store water in the future.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that the drought and resulting overpumping of groundwater caused some aquifers in the Sacramento Valley to collapse and become irreversibly damaged. The study is the first to capture this kind of aquifer collapse in high-resolution satellite data and provides evidence in support of giving the Sacramento Valley’s aquifers additional protections, the authors write.

“How fast part of the Sacramento Valley is subsiding was quite surprising to us,” said Stacy Larochelle, a geophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of the new study. “This is really one of the first times we could capture this transition in so much detail.”

“It’s sad that the Sacramento Valley is seeing more subsidence, but that it’s being recognized, documented, and looked at in more detail is a good thing,” said Claudia Faunt, a retired hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey California Water Science Center who was not involved in the new study.

Sinking Sacramento Valley

Larochelle did not set out to measure the drought’s impact on Sacramento Valley aquifers. Rather, she noticed a periodic trend in regional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data, which track ground deformation using fixed, ground-based instruments. The data showed that aquifers were being depleted and refilled at a regular, seasonal pace from 2016 to 2020. She noticed a striking change around 2021, when parts of some aquifers suddenly sank.

Wanting more information, Larochelle and the research team looked to interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data, which track land surface deformation over time using radio waves sent from satellites. InSAR data, GNSS data, and groundwater monitoring wells all showed the same pattern.

When humans pump groundwater out of an aquifer, they remove water between the aquifer’s rocks and sediment. This removal creates empty space, and the aquifer shrinks. Usually, this process is elastic: Once the aquifer fills with water again, the spaces between the rocks and sediment swell, and the aquifer rebounds.

“You have a permanent collapse of the pore space.”

But if too much water is removed too rapidly, the structure of the aquifer’s sediment deforms irreversibly, and it loses its ability to recharge and store water in the future. “You have a permanent collapse of the pore space,” Larochelle said.

When water was removed during the 2020–2022 drought, for example, some areas of the Sacramento Valley subsided at rates up to 30 centimeters per year, enough to damage the aquifer’s infrastructure.

The end of the drought and influx of strong precipitation events in 2023–2025 have not returned these damaged aquifers to their former state, though researchers say more study is needed. “From preliminary observations, we don’t see a huge rebound,” Larochelle said. “We’re not seeing a full recovery; we’re not seeing the ground go back up.” She said she does not expect some parts of the aquifers to ever recover.

In the long term, that means the aquifer will not be able to store as much water for future generations, which could also increase flood risk as the ground is unable to absorb as much precipitation.

Protecting Aquifers

In 2014, California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) created statewide regulations guiding groundwater pumping. Water managers designated many basins in the San Joaquin Valley, adjacent to the Sacramento, as “critically overdrafted,” changing the basins’ monitoring requirements. (The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers interact with their valleys’ aquifers in complex ways. Though river flow is one indicator of the health of an aquifer, the California Department of Water Resources mainly monitors groundwater flow from wells.)

The Sacramento Valley, drained by the Sacramento River, is the northernmost part of California’s large Central Valley aquifer. It borders the San Joaquin River Basin, which has many “critically overdrafted” subbasins (colored in red). Click image for larger version. Credit: California Department of Water Resources

“Maybe we should change the designation of the Sacramento Valley,” Larochelle said, “so that we’re as careful in the way we extract groundwater from it as we are with the southern part of the valley.”

Faunt agreed, saying that the California Department of Water Resources should determine if changes to SGMA classification are warranted in areas where scientists are beginning to see a permanent loss of storage. “The authors have a point,” she said.

The team’s methods also provide a way to track the impacts of groundwater pumping on aquifers in real time using satellite data. Such tracking could give communities an early warning that they’re pumping too much groundwater, before an aquifer is irreversibly damaged, Larochelle said. Though that’s not a completely new idea, Faunt explained that using InSAR data, GNSS data, and ground-based data all together in one method is a newer approach that helps scientists see how the different types of data align or diverge.

Another of the study’s findings was that most of the ground-based groundwater monitoring data in the Sacramento Valley are for shallow parts of the region’s aquifers. That disparity indicates a need to monitor all levels of an aquifer to be able to gather a three-dimensional picture of which layers are being affected by pumping, Faunt said.

The study could also help scientists better measure aquifers without ground monitoring data, Larochelle said. California has one of the best groundwater monitoring systems in the world, so using a combination of satellite data and ground-based measurements there can help calibrate satellite measurements in other parts of the world that may not have a dense network of ground-based instrumentation.

“That’s the dream, long term,” Larochelle said. “To be able to just use satellites to see what’s going on in the groundwater system.”

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

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), California’s drought irreversibly damaged Sacramento Valley aquifers, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260267. Published on 21 August 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.

Jennifer Bhatnagar spent the summer of 2023 traversing barren hillsides blackened by wildfire in northern California. She walked through devastated properties, examined the hot soil beneath her feet, collected samples and asked questions.

SummaryAmbient noise based monitoring of subsurface velocity changes is possible without the explicit retrieval of Green’s functions by correlation. Velocity variations can directly be observed from the fluctuations in the spectrograms of ambient noise time series or their cross-spectra. This approach is more resource efficient than the conventional Green’s function based monitoring and ideally suited for edge processing and the analysis of large volumes of data for example from fibre-optic records. The spectral fluctuations result from wave propagation in the heterogeneous subsurface and interference between different scattering paths. The fluctuations are directly related to the occurrence of coda waves in the Green’s function. In contrast to coda wave interferometry in the time domain, monitoring the evolution of spectral fluctuations allows for measurements of velocity changes that are unbiased by changes in the source spectrum. Recognizing that the imprint of the subsurface heterogeneity is directly encoded in the spectral fluctuations opens a new perspective on the investigation of subsurface scattering and attenuation.

SummaryWe develop a discrete event modeling framework that captures the progression of geophysical systems toward catastrophic failure through sequences of distinct damage events. By representing geophysical system evolution as a succession of temporally accelerating and amplitude-varying events, the framework reveals how finite-time singularities, both logarithmic and power law types, naturally emerge from the interplay between shrinking interevent intervals and growing event magnitudes. This event-based perspective, which can be viewed as a discrete representation of progressive damage accumulation in heterogeneous geomaterials, provides an intuitive physical understanding of rupture processes, highlighting how precursory signals such as accelerating strain rate, event frequency, and energy release can be traced back to simple underlying mechanisms. A mean-field damage-based formulation further links the observed power law exponents to the evolving stiffness of the geophysical system under constant or time-varying stress. Incorporating stochastic fluctuations, the model captures the inherent randomness of natural systems leading to the emergence of stochastic finite-time singular behavior. Together, these results establish a simple yet powerful framework for interpreting the dynamics of catastrophic events, providing a common event-based perspective on observations from landslides, glacier breakoffs, volcanic eruptions, and other related processes, and strengthening the physical foundations of early warning and hazard forecasting.

SummaryThe Accurately Controlled Routinely Operated Signal System (ACROSS) is an artificial seismic source that generates highly repeatable and stable seismic waves for high-resolution temporal monitoring. While direct P- and S-waves from ACROSS have been widely used to monitor earthquakes, volcanic activity, and environmental changes, the scattered waves that arrive later, known as coda waves, have received limited attention. In this study, we used coda waves generated by ACROSS to monitor subsurface seismic velocity changes (dv/v) over 10 months. The ACROSS signals were recorded by a seismic array of 14 seismometers deployed approximately 3 km from the source in Morimachi, central Japan. By deconvolving the records with a known source function, we obtained transfer functions corresponding to band-limited Green’s functions. Coda wave interferometry applied to the coda portions of these transfer functions detected temporal variations in dv/v, exhibiting both seasonal long-term variations and rainfall-induced short-term variations. Comparative analyses using direct P- and S-wave travel-time changes from the same ACROSS data and ambient-noise interferometry show that, under the present observational conditions, these conventional methods primarily detect long-term variations; however, they do not resolve the rapid, transient short-term variations. In contrast, the stable ACROSS source combined with the broader sampling of coda waves provides superior sensitivity to environmental changes across both timescales over kilometer-scale distances, highlighting its effectiveness for high-temporal-resolution monitoring. To investigate the mechanisms responsible for the observed dual-timescale variations, we used a poroelastic model with precipitation input and considered thermoelastic effects and groundwater-induced changes as possible contributors to the long-term variations.

Offshore wind farms are a key pillar of the energy transition. The European Union plans to expand offshore wind capacity in the North Sea by 2050. A new study by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon indicates that a very extensive expansion could influence regional precipitation patterns: While precipitation over the sea could increase, it could decrease in coastal regions.

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Earlier this year, NASA announced that one of its powerhouse telescopes, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, was falling from orbit much faster than anticipated. Although Swift’s low-Earth orbit had remained relatively steady for more than 2 decades, unusually strong solar activity in 2024 destabilized it. The agency predicted that the telescope would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere by the end of 2026.

NASA soon after announced a commercial effort by U.S. company Katalyst Space Technologies to rescue the telescope by using another spacecraft to boost Swift’s orbit. The mission launched successfully on 3 July. However, after a month of technological issues with the rescuing craft’s maneuvering thrusters, NASA and Katalyst have pulled the plug on the mission, leaving Swift to its fiery fate.

 
Related

•  FAQ About Swift
•  About the rescue mission attempt
•  NASA Updates Next Steps for Commercial Swift Boost Mission
 

“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in a 19 August statement. “The team moved with extraordinary speed to give Swift a chance to carry out more science while advancing capabilities America will need for satellite servicing in the future.”

Swift launched in 2004 with the goal of monitoring unpredictable high-energy astrophysical phenomena called gamma-ray bursts. The mid-sized mission operates out of a small building near Pennsylvania State University in State College with the picturesque Allegheny Mountains as a backdrop.

The telescope was designed with the ability of spotting these short-lasting explosions and quickly pivoting to monitor the events and their aftermaths in multiple wavelengths. But during its 21 years of science operations, Swift became a workhorse of multiwavelength astronomy observations, studying everything from the active centers of distant galaxies to supernovae near and far, as well as ravenous black holes, brown dwarfs, and interstellar objects. Take a look back at some of its most notable discoveries.

The BOAT: Over and over since its science operations began, Swift announced the detection of powerful gamma-ray bursts that shattered previous records, including the brightest of all time (BOAT). Since launching in 2004, it has made 829,336 observations and spotted more than 1,800 gamma-ray bursts.

Left: Swift has detected nearly 2,000 gamma-ray bursts since its launch in 2004. Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick, CC BY 4.0

Interstellar Object Chemistry: Swift also observed objects much closer to home, though these objects had distant and exotic origins, too. In 2019, Swift’s ultraviolet instrument detected water coming off of the interstellar object 2I/Borisov. In 2025, it performed similar observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.

Right: Swift detected the presence of outgassed water coming from interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

“Rosetta Stone” Supernova: In 2008, Swift spotted an X-ray burst in galaxy NGC 2770. It turned out to be the precursor to a supernova, spotted in an earlier stage than ever before. Because of Swift’s rapid response, astronomers around the world could observe the supernova throughout its evolution in multiple wavelengths. With so many types of observations of a single event, SN 2008D has been called the “Rosetta stone of supernova studies.”

Left: Some supernovae detected by Swift resulted in magnetars. Credit: NASA E/PO, Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet

Black Holes Snacking on Stars: When a star gets too close to a black hole, the black hole’s gravity can break the star apart into a stream of gas. The black hole can gobble up the gas and burp out some intense radiation. In 2023, Swift observed one black hole repeatedly taking bites out of an unlucky star that ventured too close. Every few weeks the black hole—with the mass of a whopping 200,000 Suns—swallows three Earth-masses of material from the star and belched out x-rays.

Right: Swift observed bursts of energy as a black hole snacked on a star. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA

Brown Dwarf Wandering By: Swift joined forces with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2016 to observe a microlensing event, which occurs when a close-by passing object distorts the light coming from a more distant one. With this technique, Swift helped discover a brown dwarf 80 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits close to a Sun-like star. Swift and Spitzer’s discovery, OGLE-2015-BLG-1319, is one of the few brown dwarfs found to orbit their host stars within a few Earth-Sun distances.

Left: Swift aided in the discovery of a rare brown dwarf using gravitational microlensing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Milky Way Magnetars: When some stars die they become small, dense balls of neutrons with extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetars can release short, strong bursts of energy as they interact with surrounding material. Swift has studied many of these magnetars, including one that hid in the center of the Milky Way and masqueraded as our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, and another one surrounded by a “wind nebula.”

Right: Magnetars can release intense bursts of radiation, which have been picked up by Swift. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, CC BY 4.0 Science After Swift

Swift launched with a nominal mission lifetime of 2 years. It has lasted nearly 22 years, and yet its demise will leave a gaping hole in NASA’s ability to study the high-energy universe. Although NASA said that it would “continue to prioritize finding new options to react readily to cosmic events,” no telescope in NASA’s current or upcoming portfolio will look at the universe at the same wavelengths as Swift or with the same ability to monitor unexpected transient events.

“We knew this was a high-risk, high-reward [rescue] mission—a first-of-its kind attempt, developed on an unprecedented timeline driven by the Sun’s activity,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division, said in a statement. “We were all hoping for more science from Swift. But we knew the takeaways from this mission would be worthwhile either way.”

—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 science or scientists? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Over the past 230,000 years, the growth and retreat of the Icelandic ice sheet have led to major changes in the seawater chemistry of the North Atlantic, caused by the interaction between volcanism and ice in Iceland. Scientists at the Institute of Environmental Physics at Heidelberg University have demonstrated this using sediment cores from the northeastern Atlantic—the Rockall Plateau.

A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment, with contributions from researchers at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), shows that higher seawater temperatures could significantly reduce the long-term ability of underwater plants to store carbon.