Because they are used in everything from cosmetics to dental floss to nonstick pans, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are frustratingly abundant in our environment, including in our food, rain, and drinking water. They’re persistent, too, earning their nickname “forever chemicals,” and have been linked to health effects ranging from cancers to liver toxicity to reduced fertility.
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In their current state, climate policies around the world could leave a significant chunk of the global population exposed to simultaneous extreme heat and drought over five times more often by the end of this century than during the mid-to-late 20th century.
Machine learning allows us to detect millions of tiny earthquakes, but our current tools struggle to process this “data tsunami” with high precision. While a popularized mathematical approach called “Bayesian inference” can tell us exactly how reliable an earthquake’s location is, it is usually too slow to handle such massive amounts of information. This is especially true for “double-difference”…
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SummaryRobust, unbiased statistics describing long-term geomagnetic behaviour are sorely needed to elucidate the dynamics and evolution of Earth’s magnetic field and the geodynamo which produces it. While palaeomagnetic data are available across much of Earth’s history, their utility is hampered by highly inhomogeneous distributions in space and time and by associated uncertainties. To address this, a set of parameters based on robust statistics and describing the average strengths of the axial dipolar and non-axial dipolar components of the field, the time-variability of the total field, and certain ratios of these are proposed. A framework for estimating these parameters is developed whereby global datasets of palaeomagnetic directions and intensities are compared to outputs from an ensemble of numerical geodynamo simulations. A bespoke Monte-Carlo proxy-based approach allows measurement uncertainties and spatial inhomogeneity in the data to be accounted for and the framework further allows for independent validation tests to be performed. Estimates of these parameters obtained for three intervals: 0.1–1, 1–4, and 4–15 million years (Myr) ago, provide benchmarks against which field models and geodynamo simulations may be compared. Furthermore, the values obtained suggest that: (1) 0.9 Myr is an insufficient duration for fully defining the time-averaged field; (2) average axial and nonaxial dipole field strengths in the interval 0.1-1 Myr were ~50 per cent higher than in the two preceding intervals; (3) the time-variances of the total field in the three intervals were not distinguishable. In addition to demonstrating the utility of the new framework, these findings can potentially address a longstanding question in geomagnetism: why is a polarity reversal ‘overdue’?
In Puerto Rico, drought doesn't always arrive slowly. Sometimes, it appears in days. That speed can leave producers scrambling, reservoirs dropping, and communities facing water restrictions before they can react. In a place often associated with heavy rain and hurricanes, drought is often overlooked, but very much a reality. New research from Virginia Tech is helping explain why.
Publication date: Available online 1 April 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Dong Ye, Dawei Wang, Xinghong Huang, Haiyang Li, Xiao Chen
Publication date: Available online 31 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Soojeong Lee, Michael States, Keegan R. Bunker, Ryan J. Caverly
It transports far more than 100 times as much water as all of the Earth's rivers combined: The Antarctic Circumpolar Current rushes around the southern continent unhindered by land masses and is therefore a fundamental component of the climate system. In a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute describes how and when this mighty ring current developed in Earth's history.
Scientists have found a new way to detect subtle chemical signatures in seawater, revealing previously invisible details about the ocean's chemistry from data continuously collected by thousands of autonomous robotic floats drifting across the seas.
Every year, the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, tracks a set of key climate indicators—including the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Earth’s temperature—to assess how global warming is progressing. In their latest report, released last Sunday, the authors decided to include a new measure: the Earth’s energy imbalance. “Climate change is often discussed in…
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Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is a relatively new technique that uses optic cable to measure ground motion along its length, effectively turning the cable into thousands of vibration sensors and which measures dynamic strain over long distances. DAS is now widely used as an alternative to conventional geophones and seismometers. In practice, DAS cables are typically buried to ensure good…
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Mangrove forests are natural wonders that protect coastal areas, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions. They are able to dissipate wave energy and limit flooding, which can even mitigate tsunamis and coastal inundations during tropical cyclones. For this reason, mangroves are attracting attention as Nature-based Solutions, or NbS: natural infrastructure with the potential to enhance coastal resilience in an environmentally friendly way.
SummaryNortheast China hosts one of the largest intraplate Cenozoic volcanic provinces and has experienced multiple collisions during the Paleozoic, extension during the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous and compression during the Pliocene. Tectonism in Northeast China has been largely controlled by subduction of the western Pacific plate since the Mesozoic and is typically characterized by the formation of multiple intraplate volcanic groups and sedimentary basins. The mechanism underlying the tectonism in this area, particularly the origin of the Cenozoic intraplate volcanoes and the evolution of the supersedimentary Songliao basin, remains controversial. To address these issues, we conducted seismic tomography to image the P-wave velocity and azimuthal anisotropy of the crust and uppermost mantle beneath Northeast China. In this study, we adopt an eikonal equation-based traveltime tomography method to invert high-quality P-wave first arrivals. We manually pick 21,006 P-wave first arrivals from 890 regional earthquakes recorded by 426 broadband seismic stations. Four prominent features are revealed by tomographic inversion. First, the results reveal a significant low-velocity anomaly in the uppermost mantle of the Changbaishan volcano and strong azimuthal anisotropy with E–W-oriented fast velocity directions distributed along the low-velocity anomaly. This feature indicates horizontal flow in the uppermost mantle beneath the Changbaishan volcano. Second, a prominent low-velocity anomaly is present in the mid-lower crust below the Changbaishan volcano, implying the presence of a magma chamber. Third, the crust of the Wudalianchi volcano is characterized by a nearly normal velocity structure and strong azimuthal anisotropy with N–S-oriented fast velocity directions, suggesting that magmatic activity has little effect on the crustal structure. Fourth, a widespread distinct low-velocity anomaly in the mid-lower crust beneath the Songliao basin reflects the mechanically weak properties of the mid-lower crust.
SummaryThe western South Tianshan foreland records late Cenozoic deformation associated with the India-Eurasia collision, yet the timing and nature of Miocene kinematic changes remain poorly constrained. Here we present new magnetostratigraphic, paleomagnetic, and anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) data from a ~12–6 Ma succession in the western Keping fold-and-thrust belt (FTB). Paleomagnetic results from 39 site-mean directions reveal small-magnitude vertical-axis rotations since ~12 Ma, characterized by two distinct rotational phases: an earlier clockwise (CW) rotation (potentially reaching ~8-9° when evaluated relative to a younger counterclockwise (CCW) background) prior to ~10 Ma, followed by a persistent but minor CCW rotation (~4°) from ~10 to 6 Ma. Although the magnitude of rotation is limited, this pattern indicates a subtle change in rotational behavior. Importantly, the persistence of the CCW rotation throughout the younger interval suggests that the observed rotations were not fully acquired during deposition, but may have been modified by deformation younger than ~6 Ma. AMS fabrics show corresponding variations in magnetic anisotropy, indicating a shift from relatively organized tectonic strain to more distributed deformation. We interpret these results as reflecting progressive basinward propagation of thrusting in the South Tianshan foreland, with rotation-related deformation occurring during a relatively late stage. Overall, the dataset highlights the limited magnitude and young timing of rotational deformation within the Keping FTB.
SummaryThis study investigates the crustal and uppermost mantle architecture beneath the São Francisco Craton (SFC), which constitutes the core of the broader São Francisco Paleocontinent (SFP), and its surrounding tectonic provinces through Rayleigh wave tomography, integrating ambient-noise (periods of 6–50 s) and earthquake-derived (periods of 9–180 s) dispersion curves. Two-dimensional phase and group velocity maps were regionalized using adaptive parameterization, with the resolution assessed from checkerboard tests. A pseudo-3D shear-wave velocity (VS) model was generated down to 70 km depth, from which crustal thickness was also derived using the maximum velocity gradient method. Results at shallow depths (2–10 km) identify the Paraná, Parnaíba, and Tucano–Jatobá basins as low-velocity anomalies, while the São Franciscan Basin is not fully resolved because its reduced thickness falls below the model’s resolution limit, despite its broad surface extent. In the middle-to-lower crust (20–40 km) inside SFC, a low VS corridor characterizes the Paramirim Aulacogen, highlighting the role of inherited rift structures and subsequent thermal reworking within the cratonic interior. At greater depths (60–70 km), the Borborema Province exhibits low velocities that contrast with the high velocities of the stable SFC root. The Moho map derived from tomography indicates crustal thickening beneath the Paraná and Parnaíba basins and the Brasília Belt, in good agreement with receiver-function estimates. Overall, the VS anomalies and Moho geometry in the regions neighboring the SFC reveal high-velocity corridors with relatively thin crust (32-36 km) extending across the Tocantins, Mantiqueira, and Borborema provinces, and projecting northwestward beneath the Parnaíba Basin. These results demonstrate that the boundaries of the São Francisco Paleocontinent extend significantly beyond its exposed surface limits within the crust and uppermost mantle. These boundaries are clearly discernible mainly at lower crustal depths and likely reach the upper crust. Furthermore, marginal deformations are primarily restricted to shallower levels of the crust, suggesting the preservation of a mechanically strong and continuous cratonic foundation beneath the surrounding orogenic belts and intracratonic basins. The main exception occurs along the southwestern margin, where the absence of a clear seismic boundary between the SFP and the Paranapanema Block suggests deep lithospheric integration or a boundary too narrow to be resolved by the present station geometry.
SummaryAutomated seismic event classification is a critical component of modern earthquake monitoring and network operations, yet many previous studies have been limited by small datasets or binary tasks. This work presents the first systematic benchmark of mainstream deep learning models, including convolutional neural networks (CNNs), Transformer-based architectures, and Capsule Networks (CapsNet), on the large-scale DiTing 2.0 AI seismic dataset, which contains 19,384 labeled three-component waveforms spanning three classes (natural earthquakes, quarry blasts, and mine collapses). Thus, we provide reproducible baselines for the seismic events classifications. Several CapsNet variants optimized for DiTing 2.0 are evaluated, and our results show that the CapsNet+Res model using MFCC representations and data augmentation achieves 91.08% accuracy (weighted F1 = 91.10%) on the held-out test set. The multi-station voting further improves event-level accuracy to 97.52%, while a companion noise-event classifier attains 98.47% accuracy. Functionality testing on demonstration continuous records confirms reliable end-to-end operation within a transferable and user-friendly system, underscoring its feasibility for seismic network applications. Overall, this study bridges methodological development and operational application by providing robust baselines, insights into the interplay of input features and architectures, and a practical platform for automated classification; large-scale continuous-data evaluation, cross-regional transfer validation, and adaptive learning strategies remain important directions for future research.
Researchers have created the first map of a network of subglacial lakes in the Canadian Arctic showing 33 bodies of water under glaciers. Using a decade of ArcticDEM satellite data of Earth's surface height, a team of researchers including the University of Waterloo has developed a method that allowed them to track the draining and filling of active subglacial lakes in unprecedented detail. The team's paper is published in The Cryosphere.
Slow roiling convection currents deep within Earth's mantle, which are associated with the movements of tectonic plates, also deform the material of the mantle itself. Now, a new study in The Seismic Record confirms that much of this deformation in the lowest level of the mantle occurs where researchers think there may be deeply subducted tectonic slabs.
Some newly published findings from an Idaho State University professor and his colleagues point out how changes to currents an ocean away can impact climates on the other side of the globe. The new paper published in Nature Communications explains how Bruce Finney, professor in the departments of biological sciences and geosciences at ISU, and his collaborators, Lesleigh Anderson, research geologist with the United States Geological Survey, and W. Brad Baxter, Idaho State alum, came to understand how shifts in currents in the Atlantic Ocean led the climate of Alaska to cool, especially in winter, roughly 13,000 years ago.
Researchers at the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA) at the Universitat Politècnica de València have developed an advanced system for seasonal forecasting of meteorological droughts that enables these events to be predicted up to six months in advance, providing a key tool for water management and early warning in semi-arid regions, such as the Júcar river basin.
