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Publication date: 15 January 2025

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 75, Issue 2

Author(s): Marco Felice Montaruli, Luca Facchini, Niccolò Faraco, Pierluigi Di Lizia, Mauro Massari, Germano Bianchi, Claudio Bortolotti, Andrea Maccaferri, Mauro Roma, Moreno Peroni, Luca Salotti, Elena Vellutini

A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment gives possible insight into the underprediction of sea ice depletion and the formation of Arctic cyclones. Led by Steven Cavallo, a professor in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, the study could lead to more accurate weather and climate models and better forecasting of Arctic cyclones.

A research team led by Prof. An Zhisheng and Prof. Zhou Weijian from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed an innovative approach to examining the contrasting hydroclimate impacts of summer monsoons and westerly circulation in the hyper-arid Asian interior since the middle Holocene.

Fewer wildfires burn in North American forests today than in previous centuries, increasing the risk of more severe wildfires, according to research published in Nature Communications. The findings may seem counterintuitive, but frequent low-lying surface fires often maintain balance in forests by reducing fuel sources across large areas.

SummaryThe Guerrero seismic gap in the Mexican subduction zone exhibits a slip behaviour distinct from that of adjacent segments, which typically experience large earthquakes. With the acquisition of offshore seismic data in this region and the discovery of shallow tectonic tremors, the study of slow earthquakes has gradually increased. This study presents the detection of tectonic tremors and low frequency earthquakes (LFEs) in the Guerrero seismic gap using a combination of a modified envelope cross-correlation method and a matched filter applied to Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) data for a continuous two-year observational period. The modified envelope cross-correlation method was used to detect and locate tremors, and the matched filter technique enabled the detection of LFEs. These methods allowed for better constraints on the depths of the detected events, offering new insights into tremors and LFE activity offshore the Guerrero seismic gap. Our results show that the spatial distribution of these phenomena, along with seismicity, residual gravity anomalies, and seafloor topography, suggests that a section of the shallow plate interface within the gap has experienced stable slip. This study builds on previous work by enhancing the detection and location accuracy of these slow earthquakes, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of subduction dynamics in the region.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 12 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41561-025-01646-y

Natural gradients across surface ocean regions show that changes in carbonate chemistry projected for ocean alkalinity enhancement could promote the proliferation of calcifying phytoplankton. This shift would increase an alkalinity sink, thus reducing the efficiency of ocean alkalinity enhancement as a CO2 removal method.

Nature Geoscience, Published online: 12 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41561-025-01644-0

Intensive ocean alkalinity enhancement will cause a proliferation of calcifying organisms, which reduces its effectiveness as a carbon sequestration approach, according to an analysis of coccolithophore sensitivity to natural carbonate chemistry variability.

Abstract

The dynamics of the Earth’s outer radiation belt, filled by energetic electron fluxes, is largely controlled by electron resonant interactions with electromagnetic whistler-mode waves. The most coherent and intense waves resonantly interact with electrons nonlinearly, and the observable effects of such nonlinear interactions cannot be described within the frame of classical quasi-linear models. This paper provides an overview of the current stage of the theory of nonlinear resonant interactions and discusses different possible approaches for incorporating these nonlinear interactions into global radiation belt simulations. We focus on observational properties of whistler-mode waves and theoretical aspects of nonlinear resonant interactions between such waves and energetic electrons. We consider only sufficiently energetic particles, which can be treated as test particles and do not have a significant feedback to the waves. The review covers two main regimes of nonlinear resonant wave-particle interactions: the regime of long wave-packets, historically better studied, and the regime of short wave-packets, actively investigated more recently based on refined spacecraft observations.

Abstract

An International Space Science Institute (ISSI) workshop was convened to assess recent rapid advances in studies of magnetic reconnection made possible by the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission and to place them in context with concurrent advances in solar physics by the Parker Solar Probe, astrophysics, planetary science and laboratory plasma physics. The review papers resulting from this study focus primarily on results obtained by MMS, and these papers are complemented by reports of advances in magnetic reconnection physics in these other plasma environments. This paper introduces the topical collection “Magnetic Reconnection: Explosive Energy Conversion in Space Plasmas”, in particular introducing the new capabilities of the MMS mission used in majority of the articles in the collection and briefly summarizing the advances obtained from MMS.

A research team from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new framework to evaluate soil moisture stations' spatial representativeness globally. Their study found that about 63% of existing soil moisture observation stations reliably reflect conditions at the satellite pixel scale.

Researchers have generated the first dataset of water flow beneath the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet, which will lead to more accurate projections of sea level rise. The findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

A team of geologists and mineral physicists at Harvard University, the University of California, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago has found evidence via lab experiments that show the Earth's mantle is far more complex than previously known.

Extreme precipitation events in Antarctica, which are mostly dominated by snowfall due to sub-zero temperatures, also include rainfall, according to new research.

A windy, dusty day can ruin your new car wash and leave you with grit in your mouth and dirt on your floors. But a new study in the journal Nature Sustainability, published by researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso, George Mason University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, estimates that the societal costs of blowing dust and wind erosion go far beyond personal inconvenience, totaling approximately $154 billion per year across the United States.

About 400 kilometers northwest of Sydney, just south of Dubbo, lies a large and interesting body of rock formed around 215 million years ago by erupting volcanoes.

A new study has given key insights into South Australia's coastal management by examining how Cape Dombey's rocky headland in Robe on the state's Limestone Coast influences waves, currents and sand movement.

The world's largest known lithium deposit exists within a vast salt pan called the Salar de Uyuni, which stretches for thousands of square miles atop a high, dry Andean plateau in Bolivia. For most of the year, salt crystals encrust the terrain, white as confectioner's sugar. During the wet season, pooling rainwater mirrors the surrounding mountains and sky.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are known to be contaminants originating in industrial processes and materials, as well as a reason for substandard indoor air, but they are also formed in nature, including wetlands, forests, volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.

Scientists at Yale and in Singapore have devised what may be the ultimate acid test—a comprehensive model for estimating the origins of Earth's habitability, based in part on ocean acidity.

Greenland's ice sheet currently spans over 1.7 million square kilometers and is the largest freshwater reservoir in the northern hemisphere. The ice sheet has already lost over a trillion tonnes of its total mass since the 1980s, with melting rates six times higher in the last decade. Indeed, a recent study found that an average of 30 million tonnes of ice is now being lost every hour.