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In a new paper, an international team led by scientists from Charles University, Czechia, has brought evidence linking widespread release of methane (CH₄)—a strong greenhouse gas—from the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) to a warmer period 9–4 thousand years ago. CH₄ has been detected at retreating glacier margins worldwide, raising concerns about potential climate feedbacks associated with their widespread retreat, but this is the first time that a study has systematically investigated the whole margin of an entire ice sheet. The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

About 600 million years ago, the continents wandered Earth, yet to settle into their current positions. Their locations during the Ediacaran (as this time is called) have been tough for scientists to pin down. Earth's magnetic field appears to have behaved in erratic ways, and applying standard techniques to calculate the continents' positions based on records of the magnetic field yields implausible results. In particular, scientists debate the location of an ancient continent called Baltica, which is now part of Europe.

Florida State University researchers have discovered how to accurately predict winter weather forecasts months in advance, affording sectors such as agriculture, water management, energy use and public health a longer lead time to prepare for inclement conditions. The research, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, shows a method for forecasting how the stratospheric polar vortex, or SPV, will behave from winter through summer, before winter even starts.

For generations, the mild and temperate climate of northwestern Europe has been credited to one legendary force: the Gulf Stream. This idea is so deeply entrenched in our cultural identity that in James Joyce's Ulysses, the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, refuses to take a bath, arguing that "all Ireland is washed by the Gulf Stream."

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

The number of peer-reviewed scientific studies authored by scientists at the EPA has declined since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration, according to a new analysis.

The analysis was published by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonprofit organization that advocates for public employees in the natural resource and environmental professions. The report tracks the number of peer-reviewed scientific studies authored by EPA scientists since 1977. 

According to PEER’s analysis, 61 peer-reviewed publications by EPA scientists have been published so far this year, putting the agency on track to publish 183 articles by the end of 2026. That would be 67% of the number of articles published the previous year and 54% of the number of articles published in 2024.

“These numbers represent a diminution of scientific contributions from the fewer, remaining EPA scientists,” Kyla Bennett, a science policy director at PEER and a former EPA attorney, said in a statement. “The net result is that the scientific contribution of EPA to a greater understanding of what affects human health and the environment will be diminished.”

The number of peer-reviewed publications authored by EPA scientists in 2026 will be just over half of the number published in 2024, if current publication rates continue. As of 5 May, 2026, EPA authors have published 61 peer-reviewed articles for the year. Credit: PEER, Grace van Deelen

Peer-reviewed publications can take years to review and publish, meaning the work for a publication may have occurred during a previous administration. But the decline in publications may indicate a shift away from long-term basic research at the agency, according to PEER. 

Since Trump took office, hundreds of scientists have been terminated from the EPA or have chosen to resign, and scientists working within at least one of its research office have been told to pause efforts to publish research, representing “millions of dollars of research, potentially, that’s now being stopped,” one EPA employee told The Washington Post anonymously.

 
Related

•  Read the PEER Analysis: Sharp Dropoff in EPA Scientific Publications
•  The State of the Science 1 Year On: The Federal Workforce
•  How the Trump Administration Ended Independent Science at the EPA
• Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
 

In February, the EPA took final steps to eliminate the Office of Research and Development, the arm of the agency responsible for conducting research. In its place, Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that a new office, called the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, would be formed but would not operate as a separate division. 

Six EPA scientists who signed an open letter expressing frustration about changes to the agency, including the elimination of the Office of Research and Development, were terminated and have filed claims with the federal government arguing that their terminations were illegal retaliation.

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

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. 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.

From a geothermal hotspot to the one-time "Lighthouse of the Pacific," the heat is on beneath the volcanic landscape of western El Salvador.

Heavy rains causing repeated river flood intrusions into Florida's freshwater springs are changing the function of the clear natural resource. Findings from University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researchers Paul Donsky and Matt Cohen reveal that these intrusions can cause flow reversal, worsening already present problems.

There's more bad news about microplastics. We already know they pose a risk to health and can pollute ecosystems, but now researchers have discovered that tiny plastic particles drifting in Earth's atmosphere could be a significant contributor to global warming.

Earth's ice is melting. As icebergs break away from glaciers and melt away, the fresh meltwater mixes into its saltwater surroundings. However, icebergs do not exist in isolation. In Greenland, for example, jammed collections of icebergs and sea ice make up what are known as mélanges. Determining how these pieces of ice are affected by the meltwater of their neighbors is key to understanding—and eventually reducing—global ice loss.

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool built by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) can help forecasters look further into the future as they work to identify the potential for deadly severe weather outbreaks.

Source: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems

About 600 million years ago, the continents wandered Earth, yet to settle into their current positions. Their locations during the Ediacaran (as this time is called) have been tough for scientists to pin down. Earth’s magnetic field appears to have behaved in erratic ways, and applying standard techniques to calculate the continents’ positions based on records of the magnetic field yields implausible results. In particular, scientists debate the location of an ancient continent called Baltica, which is now part of Europe.

To investigate, Xue et al. traveled to Egersund, Norway, to collect samples of rock that formed during a time when Baltica’s crust was being pulled apart, allowing magma to percolate up from below. As that magma hardened, it recorded snapshots of Earth’s magnetic field, storing information about Baltica’s position in the process.

The results of studying these samples revealed a much more complex picture of the ancient rocks than the scientists initially envisioned. The rocks contained a messy mix of at least six magnetic signals. Several appeared to have formed when more modern geological processes altered the original rocks. Three distinct signals may have survived from the Ediacaran period, two of which diverge from the most plausible Ediacaran signal, which places Baltica near the equator. These conflicting signals further support the idea that Earth’s magnetic field was behaving strangely at the time, adding new complexity to an already puzzling picture.

On the basis of the new results, the researchers place the Egersund paleomagnetic pole at 20.8°N, 89.0°E during the Ediacaran—which diverges from previous results—and suggest that Baltica was located near the equator, adjacent to the ancient continent Laurentia, but rotated slightly clockwise relative to previous reconstructions. The study demonstrates the convoluted nature of the magnetic signals preserved in ancient rocks and the importance of dissecting those records into their constituent components. Doing so, the researchers suggest, can shed new light on the enigmatic behavior of Earth’s magnetic field during the Ediacaran. (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GC012730, 2026)

—Saima May Sidik (@saimamay.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2026), Where was Baltica 616 million years ago?, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260124. Published on 5 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.

More than two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's irrigation water and a third of the country's drinking water comes from groundwater, yet aquifers are being depleted faster than they recharge. At the same time, sewage treatment generates large volumes of treated wastewater: 1.6 billion cubic meters of treated wastewater is underutilized throughout the country each year, says Mohammed Benaafi, a research scientist at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Water Resources Research

In the March 2026 issue of Water Resources Research, Zhang et al. [2026] interrogate conceptual hydrologic models’ ability to capture prolonged drought dynamics. The Australian Millennium drought serves as an example in the study. The results are quite sobering because the vast majority of more than 40 models fail. Unfortunately, calibration doesn’t generally help either and might result in massive overfitting. In essence, conceptual models miss deep aquifer storage components and associated hydrodynamic processes leading to a lack of time scales important in drought modeling. The study is a constructive reminder that model parsimony is not necessarily a good thing and that detailed representation of complex physical processes is part of hydrologic sciences.

Citation: Zhang, Z., Fowler, K., & Peel, M. (2026). Can conceptual rainfall-runoff models capture multi-annual storage dynamics? Water Resources Research, 62, e2025WR042226. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025WR042226

—Stefan Kollet, Editor, Water Resources Research

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.

Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

AGU Advances is excited to announce the journal’s inaugural Early Career Editorial Board! The editors of AGU Advances have selected three early career researchers to join the Early Career Editorial Fellow program:

Huilin Huang

University of Virginia

Yihe Huang

University of Michigan

Danielle Monteverde Potocek

Spark Climate Solutions

They will serve as Associate Editors from January 2026 to December 2027, under the leadership of the mentoring editors: David Schimel (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Thorsten Becker (The University of Texas at Austin, Jackson School of Geoscience), and Eric Davidson (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science), respectively. AGU Advances is excited to join AGU journals GeoHealth and JGR: Biogeosciences (Xenopoulos, M. A., and T. H. Nguyen, 2024) in launching an Early Career Editorial Fellow program and grateful to our exceptional Early Career Fellows for volunteering their time in service of scientific publishing. This mentorship program, designed to offer a hands-on approach for researchers interested in editorial roles, will support the next generation of researchers and journal editors and lead to stronger futures for our journals and scientific community.

The Early Career Fellows will work one-on-one with a current AGU Advances Editor.

The Early Career Fellows will work one-on-one with a current AGU Advances Editor to learn about the steps of the editorial process, the ethics of reviewing, and what goes into making a decision on a manuscript. They will also learn about the more challenging elements of the editorial process, such as securing reviewers, addressing conflicting reviews, addressing author and/or reviewer concerns.

As the scientific world, and the world at large, change and shift, so too does the world of academic publishing and the needs of future researchers. By working with these Early Career Fellows, we will gain invaluable insight on how to keep our publications at the forefront for the Earth and space sciences.

Below, we asked the Early Career Fellows about their research interests and what they are excited about as they step into this new role (responses edited for length and clarity):

What is your current role and area of research?

Danie: “My areas of research include: biogeochemistry, geobiology, climate science, and global environmental change. “

Huilin: “My area of research is land-atmosphere interaction especially biosphere-atmosphere interaction and climate modeling.”

Yihe: “My group studies the physical mechanisms of earthquakes and faulting processes using both observational methods (e.g., seismic data analysis) and numerical tools (e.g., earthquake rupture simulation). We’re particularly interested in how fluid, fault zone structure, and fault geometry can affect the nucleation, propagation and arrest of earthquakes and how earthquakes contribute to the strain budget and structural evolution of fault zones and plate boundaries. We also have a broad interest in developing physical tools for seismic hazard mitigation and bridging earthquake science and engineering applications.”

Do you have prior experience as a journal editor?

Danie: “This is my first experience in an editorial role.”

Huilin: “I am currently working as the associate editor of Geophysical Research Letters.”

Yihe: “Yes, I’ve been an Associate Editor for JGR: Solid Earth since 2020, and I’ve been an editor for Earth, Planets and Space since last year.”

What interested you in joining the AGU Advances editorial board?

Danie: “I was eager to learn more about the publishing process from the editorial perspective, engage with fellow editors, and contribute to supporting the scientific community. I was also particularly drawn to the structure of the Early Career Board, which offers the opportunity to be mentored by a senior editor and develop editorial expertise before handling manuscripts independently. “

Huilin: “I am drawn to AGU Advances because it prioritizes high-impact studies that fundamentally shift our understanding.”

Yihe: “I’m interested in getting a broader perspective about how an editorial board works, especially for a cross-disciplinary high-impact journal like AGU Advances.”

What would you like to see next from AGU Advances or the AGU journals as a whole?

Danie: “AGU Advances already has a strong focus and track record of publishing research with global relevance and impact. I am excited to support this mission and would also like to see continued expansion of the author base to include more diverse geographies (particularly Asia and Global South) as well as a broader range of career stages.

I would also welcome AGU journals to continue their outreach and engagement with the community that balances traditional hypothesis-driven research with action-oriented perspectives addressing urgent scientific and societal challenges especially considering the rapidly shifting landscape of scientific research.”

Huilin: “I am particularly interested in seeing the conversation toward the use of new technolog[ies] (like AI/ML or new satellite, new models) to advanc[ing] process-level understanding.”

Yihe: “I would like to see editors’ perspectives on how AGU Advances distinguishes itself from other high-impact journals. I would also like to learn how we can advertise and communicate the advantages of publishing in AGU Advances through different avenues.”

We are so appreciative of our volunteer Editors, David Schimel, Thorsten Becker, and Eric Davidson, who will be mentoring our new Early Career Fellows. Here, we asked them what they are looking forward to most about the program:

What outcomes for AGU Advances do you hope to see from the Early Career Board?

Dave: “ECRs provide a fresh view and are often much closer to the methods and science in papers we receive. An ECR and a Board editor have a great combination, experience, perspective and familiarity up close with the work and the community.”

Eric: “The associate editors become interested in being full editors and are well prepared. At a minimum, they have an experience that makes them better authors and reviewers because of the perspective they’ve gained as associate editors. 

Why did you decide to become a mentoring editor?

Editing scientific papers can be a true joy of learning and discovery.

Thorsten Becker

Thorsten: “We value a diversity of perspectives and background when assessing contributions during initial and formal review, and it will be terrific to benefit from Yihe’s expertise. Editing scientific papers can be a true joy of learning and discovery, and we think this position will be a great pathway to take on a larger role in this community process while having a somewhat reduced workload and being able to participate in an exchange about best practices and a mentoring system that can hopefully facilitate sharing best practices and insights gained from prolonged work in an editorial role.”

Dave: “Oh, man, when I started as a peer reviewer and then a guest editor, followed by being a member of a board, each step was sink or swim!  I am happy to share a few lessons learned but also expect to learn a lot from my ECR’s view from the cutting edge.  I think we’ll have fun learning from each other.”

What advice would you give to early career researchers interested in becoming journal editors?

Seeing publishing from the other side is really important for maturing scientists!

David Schimel

Dave: “Being an editor is an amazing way to broader your knowledge and network, but being an editor is serious work, is a paper going to advance science, or, with appropriate guidance could it advance science?  Does it build on the literature or ignore relevant work?  Accepting/rejecting papers has huge career impact on authors but we have to keep in mind we review papers to advance science, not to play career games, while recognizing publications have become very much about careers with all manner of distorted and perverse incentives. Seeing publishing from the other side is really important for maturing scientists!  Also, you learn that ten extra minutes to explain a decision to an author can change a life!  I’ve learned a HUGE amount from the peer reviewers and editors of my own papers!”

Eric: “Accept invitations to review manuscripts. Let an editor or EiC know of your interest. Make sure you have the time to do this.”

 —Allison Schuette (aschuette@agu.org, 0009-0007-1055-0937), Program Coordinator, AGU Publications; Alberto Montanari (0000-0001-7428-0410), Editor-in-Chief, AGU Advances; Huilin Huang (0000-0002-7328-6738), Early Career Fellow, AGU Advances; Yihe Huang (0000-0001-5270-9378), Early Career Fellow, AGU Advances; Danielle Monteverde Potocek (0000-0002-0198-8220), Early Career Fellow, AGU Advances; Thorsten Becker (0000-0002-5656-4564), Editor, AGU Advances; Eric Davidson (0000-0002-8525-8697), Editor, AGU Advances; David Schimel (0000-0003-3473-8065), Editor, AGU Advances; Kristina Vrouwenvelder (0000-0002-5862-2502), Assistant Director, AGU Publications; and Sarah Dedej (0000-0003-3952-4250), Assistant Director, AGU Publications

Citation: Schuette, A., A. Montanari, H. Huang, Y. Huang, D. Monteverde Potocek, T. Becker, E. Davidson, D. Schimel, K. Vrouwenvelder, and S. Dedej (2026), Announcing the inaugural AGU Advances Early Career Editorial Fellows, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265018. Published on 5 May 2026. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). 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.

Author(s): Manoj Kumar, Jaeho Lee, Dohyun Park, Inhyuk Nam, and Min Sup Hur

We present a method for generating a narrowband terahertz (THz) emission using a radially oscillating plasma oscillator formed in a plasma slab with a longitudinal paraboliclike density profile. Through quasi-three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we observe more stable, longer-lived plasma…

[Phys. Rev. E 113, 055201] Published Tue May 05, 2026

An international team led by researchers from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) has identified a key mechanism that has shaped Earth's continents over billions of years. This mechanism is the deep re-lamination of subducted continental crust, a process that explains the origin of certain magmas and offers a new perspective on continental evolution from the Archean (between 3.8 and 2.5 billion years ago) to recent times.

SummaryShear-wave velocity imaging is key for near-surface geotechnical characterization of foundation soils, for subsurface anomaly detection, and for process monitoring in urban environments. In this study, we propose a workflow for characterizing metropolitan areas using ambient and anthropogenic noise records from distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) data collected on telecommunications fiber. We developed a finite-element model that computes shear-wave dispersion curves for fundamental and higher-order surface-wave modes from a layered velocity profile. The model parameters allow intralayer linear and power-law variations of velocity with depth to provide realistic near-surface soil behavior. The forward model is coupled with an inversion algorithm that minimizes the model’s misfit to dispersion curves derived from the DAS data. We demonstrate the workflow using DAS data collected on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus network. The results are compared with the multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) method using a line of geophones co-located with one of the DAS sites and a nearby borehole log. Both solutions indicated a sharp change in shear-wave velocity at approximately 20 meters, corresponding to the depth of a sandstone formation at the site, and that a physically-based, power-law function better fits the velocity profiles of unconsolidated sediments. These results demonstrate that our method provides reliable near-surface imaging while suggesting likely soil types. The proposed measurements and modeling techniques can be extended to image the near surface wherever telecommunications fiber is available.

Urbanization, climate change, and fire suppression practices are contributing to increased wildfire risk at the densely populated wildland-urban interface. These factors make fires more unpredictable and harder to manage. In January 2025, this was made devastatingly clear in Los Angeles, when massive wildfires engulfed entire hillsides and canyons, destroying neighborhoods and damaging surrounding ecosystems.

A solar storm like the one that caused a nine-hour blackout across Quebec in 1989 could have even more dramatic effects if it struck the eastern United States today. Now, scientists have developed new tools to detect these storms before they strike by mapping the hidden electrical structure beneath our feet, revealing how the ground itself could influence the impact on our power grid.

Publication date: Available online 2 May 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research

Author(s): Edmund M. Henley, David R. Jackson, Mario M. Bisi, Maria M. Kuznetsova, Martin A. Reiss