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The world's methane emissions continue to rise steadily with no signs of slowing, as global trade contributes some 30% to the total amount of the greenhouse gas swirling around the planet, a new study reveals.

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

Being an experienced researcher can come with a lot of heavy professional responsibilities, such as leading grant proposals, managing research teams or labs, supervising doctoral students and postdoctoral scientists, serving on committees, mentoring younger colleagues … the list goes on. This may also be a time filled with greater personal responsibilities beyond the job. Why add to the workload by taking on a book project? In the third installment of career-focused articles, three scientists who wrote or edited books as experienced researchers reflect on their motivations and how their networks paved the way for—and grew during—the publishing process.

Douglas Alsdorf co-edited Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry: A Foundation for the Future, which discusses new scientific discoveries in the Congo Basin and is published in both English and French. Nancy French co-edited Landscape Fire, Smoke, and Health: Linking Biomass Burning Emissions to Human Well-Being, which presents a foundational knowledge base for interdisciplinary teams to interact more effectively in addressing the impacts of air pollution. Michael Liemohn authored Data Analysis for the Geosciences: Essentials of Uncertainty, Comparison, and Visualization, a textbook on scientific data analysis and hypothesis testing in the Earth, ocean, atmospheric, space, and planetary sciences. We asked these scientists why they decided to write or edit a book, what impacts they saw as a result, and what advice they would impart to prospective authors and editors.

Why did you decide to write or edit a book? Why at that point in your career?

ML: I was assigned to develop a new undergraduate class on data-model comparison techniques. I realized that the best textbooks for it were either quite advanced or rather old. One book I love included the line, “if the student has access to a computer…” in one of the homework questions. I also was not finding a book with the content set that I wanted to cover in the class. So, I developed my own course content set and note pack, which provided the foundation for the chapters of the book.

DA: Our 2022 book was a result of a 2018 AGU Chapman Conference in Washington, DC, that I was involved in organizing. About 100 researchers, including 25 from sub-Saharan Africa, attended the conference, and together we decided that an edited book in the AGU Geophysical Monograph Series would become a launching point for the next decade of research in the Congo Basin.

The motivation for the book was not to advance my career, but because the topic was important to get out there.

NF: The motivation for the book was not to advance my career, but because the topic was important to get out there. The book looks at how science is trying to better inform how to manage smoke from wildland fires. The work was important because people in fire, smoke modeling, and health sciences do not work together often, and there were some real misconceptions about how others do the research and how detailed the topics can be.

What were some benefits of completing a book as an experienced researcher? 

NF: Once you have been working in a field for a while you want to see how your deep expertise can benefit more than just the community of researchers that you know or know of. Reaching into other disciplines allows you to understand how your work can have broader impact. And, you are ready to know more about other, adjacent topics, rather than a deeper view of what you know already. I think these feelings grow more true as you move to later stages of a career.

I think that I would have greatly struggled with this breadth of content if I had tried to write this particular book 10 years earlier.

ML: I was developing my data-model comparison techniques course and textbook for all students in my department, so I wanted to include examples across that diverse list of disciplines—Earth, atmosphere, space, and planetary sciences. Luckily, over the years I had taught a number of classes spanning these topics. Additionally, I had attended quite a few presentations across these fields, not only at seminars on campus but also at the annual AGU meeting. I felt comfortable including examples and assignments from all these topics. Also, I knew colleagues in these fields, and I called on them for advice when I got stuck. I think that I would have greatly struggled with this breadth of content if I had tried to write this particular book 10 years earlier.

What impact do you hope your book will have?

The next great discoveries will happen in the Congo Basin and our monograph motivates researchers toward those exciting opportunities. 

DA: There are ten times fewer peer-reviewed papers on the Congo Basin compared to the Amazon Basin. Our monograph changes that! We have brought new attention to the Congo Basin, demonstrating to the global community of Earth scientists that there is a large, vibrant group of researchers working daily in the Congo Basin. The next great discoveries will happen in the Congo Basin and our monograph motivates researchers toward those exciting opportunities. 

ML: I hope that the book has two major impacts. The first expected benefit is to the students that use it with a course on data-model comparison methods. I want it to be a useful resource regardless of their future career direction. The second impact I wish for is on Earth and space scientist researchers; I hope that our conversations about data-model comparisons are ratcheted up to a higher level, allowing us to more thoughtfully conduct such assessments and therefore maximize scientific progress.

What advice would you give to experienced researchers who are considering pursuing a book project?

NF: Here are a few thoughts: One: Choose co-authors, editors, and contributors that you can count on. Don’t try to “mend fences” with people you have not been able to connect with. That said, if you do admire a specific person or know their point of view is valuable, this is the time to overcome any barriers to your relationship. Two: Give people assignments, and they will better understand your point of view. Three: Listen to your book production people. They are all skilled professionals who know more about this than you do. They can be great allies in getting it done!

DA: Do it! Because we publish papers, our thinking tends to focus on the one topic of a particular paper. A book, however, broadens our thinking so that we more fully understand the larger field of work. Each part of that bigger space has important advances as well as unknowns that beg for answers. A book author who can see each one of these past solutions and future challenges becomes a community resource who provides insights and directions for new research. 

—Douglas Alsdorf (alsdorf.1@osu.edu, 0000-0001-7858-1448), The Ohio State University, USA; Nancy French (nhfrench@mtu.edu, 0000-0002-2389-3003), Michigan Tech Research Institution, USA; and Michael Liemohn (liemohn@umich.edu, 0000-0002-7039-2631), University of Michigan, USA

This post is the third in a set of three. Learn about leading a book project as an early-career or mid-career researcher.

Citation: Alsdorf, D., N. French, and M. Liemohn (2025), Experienced researcher book publishing: sharing deep expertise, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO255028. Published on 3 September 2025. 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 © 2025. 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.

Rare rocks buried deep beneath central Australia have revealed the origins of one of the world's most promising new deposits of niobium—a metal vital for producing high-strength steel and clean energy technologies—and how it formed during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent.

SummaryWe revisit the challenge of estimating velocities from global navigation satellite system (GNSS) coordinate time series by incorporating stochastic processes to address the quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in weighted least-squares estimation. We examine two advanced stochastic seasonal models (i.e., Fractional Sinusoidal Waveform (FSW) and Varying Periodic Band-Pass (VPBP)) and evaluate their efficacy on mitigating velocity biases by using both synthetic data and 14 Antarctic GNSS stations. The result shows that pure FSW cannot fully capture the spectral shape of the QPOs since the FSW's spectral shape is controlled by the fractional parameter d, which is unfortunately dependent on the global spectra slope of the GNSS data. In contrast, VPBP can fit the QPOs more freely by using the parameter phi. Nevertheless, both FSW and VPBP models, when used without augmentation, tend to underestimate velocity uncertainties due to spectral flattening at low frequencies. This poses a risk for applications requiring high-confidence geodetic velocity estimates. To solve this issue, adopting a hybrid noise model that is compensated with an additional appropriate noise background (e.g., power law) is recommended. This knowledge can guide future research on secular velocity estimation of GNSS stations.

SummarySpectral induced polarization (SIP) aims to characterize geological materials by measuring the dispersion of their complex conductivity in the frequency domain. Despite the complex-valued nature of SIP data, most machine learning models used for its analysis rely on real-valued representations that discard phase information and may limit performance. This study investigates the benefits of complex-valued neural networks (CVNN) for SIP applications by comparing their performance against real-valued neural networks (RVNN) across three tasks: mineral classification, Cole-Cole parameter estimation, and mechanistic modelling of ionic and electric potential perturbations around polarizable minerals. To ensure fair comparisons and emphasize the effect of complex-valued representations, we design CVNN and RVNN models with matched capacity, aspect ratio, and training duration. Our numerical experiments show that CVNNs consistently outperform RVNNs in the classification task, achieving lower validation loss and up to 5 percent higher classification metrics (p-value = 2.9 × 10−7). We test the Cole-Cole inversion networks on laboratory SIP measurements and validate the parameter estimation accuracy using synthetic data. Test results indicate that CVNNs produce curve fits that are ≈4 % more accurate for the imaginary part of resistivity (p-value = 3.1 × 10−4), and validation results show accuracy improvements of up to 2 percent for chargeability, relaxation time, and the Cole-Cole exponent (p-value = 1.7 × 10−7). CVNNs also yield more accurate approximations of mechanistic model variables, with error reductions of up to 1 percent for ionic concentrations (p-value = 1.6 × 10−4). Our experiments suggest that CVNNs provide modest but statistically significant benefits in SIP applications involving laboratory or synthetic data. While RVNNs may eventually reach comparable predictive accuracy if trained longer, we observe that CVNNs converge more rapidly under matched training conditions. This study provides a reproducible framework for benchmarking neural network architectures in SIP and supports the integration of CVNNs into geophysical workflows where phase responses encode physically meaningful information.

A research team led by Prof. Chen Cheng from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has retrieved global aerosol and surface properties using advanced polarization data from China's GF-5(02) satellite.

Nearly 40 years after breaking off Antarctica, a colossal iceberg ranked among the oldest and largest ever recorded is finally crumbling apart in warmer waters, and could disappear within weeks.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is responsible for approximately 74.5% of the reduction in rainfall and 16.5% of the temperature increase in the biome during the dry season. For the first time, researchers have quantified the impact of vegetation loss and global climate change on the forest.

The Amazon is the world's largest tropical forest, home to unmatched biodiversity and one of the planet's longest rivers. Besides the Amazon River, the Amazon rainforest also features "flying rivers:" invisible streams of vapor that travel through the atmosphere, fueling rainfall both within the forest and far beyond its boundaries.

U.S. cities are facing a growing threat that goes beyond hot weather or hazy air. New research from the University of Oklahoma reveals that "compound events"—periods when heat wave conditions coincide with high air pollution levels—are becoming more frequent and intense in urban areas across the United States.

Along the coast, waves break with a familiar sound. The gentle swash of the surf on the seashore can lull us to sleep, while the pounding of storm surge warns us to seek shelter.

Measurements analyzed by an international research team led by ETH Zurich show that the global ocean absorbed significantly less CO₂ than anticipated during the unprecedented marine heat wave in 2023.

Air pollution from secondary organic aerosols (SOA) has now become a greater problem in Chinese cities since 2013 because regulations have successfully reduced fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emitted directly from, for example, vehicles and industries, according to a study led by Prof. Huang Rujin at the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Marianne Glasius at Aarhus University.

The death toll following the recent earthquake in Afghanistan continues to rise. Taliban-led health authorities now say at least 800 people have been killed and 2,000 injured.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.

At low tide on Tybee Island, Georgia, the beach stretches out as wide as it gets with the small waves breaking far away across the sand—you’ll have a long walk if you want to take a dip. But these conditions are perfect for a team of researchers from the University of Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.

Every three months, at low tide, they set out a miniature helipad near the foot of the dune and send up their drone equipped with lidar—technology that points a laser down at the sand and uses it to measure the elevation of the beach and dunes. The team flies it back and forth from the breakers to the far side of the dune and back until they have a complete, detailed map of the island’s 7-mile beach, about 400 acres.

“I see every flip-flop on the beach.”

“It’s high accuracy, it’s a high resolution,” explained research technician Claudia Venherm, who leads this project. “I see every flip-flop on the beach.”

That detailed information is crucial because Tybee is a barrier island, and rising seas are constantly eating away at the sandy beach and dunes that protect the island’s homes and businesses as well as a stretch of the Georgia mainland. Knowing exactly where the island is eroding and how the dunes are holding up to constant battering can help local leaders protect this piece of coastline.

“Tybee wants to retain its beach. It also wants to maintain, obviously, its dune. It’s a protection for them,” said Venherm. “We also give some of our data to the Corps of Engineers so they know what’s going on and when they have to renourish the beach.”

Since the 1970s the Army Corps of Engineers has helped maintain Tybee Island’s beaches with regular renourishment: Every seven years or so, the Corps dredges up sand from the ocean floor and deposits on the beach to replace sand that’s washed away. The data from the Skidaway team will only help the Corps do this work more effectively. Lidar isn’t new, and neither is aerial coastal mapping. Several federal agencies monitor coastlines with lidar, but those surveys are more typically several years apart for any one location, rather than a few months.

The last renourishment finished in January 2020, and Venherm and her team got to work a few months later. That means they have five years of high-resolution beach data, recorded every three months and after major storms like Hurricane Helene, creating a precise picture of how the beach is changing.

“I can compute what the elevation of the dune is, as well as how much volume has been lost or gained since a previous survey.”

“I can compute what the elevation of the dune is, as well as how much volume has been lost or gained since a previous survey,” said Venherm. “I can also compute how long it will take until the beach is completely gone, or how long will it take until water reaches the dune system.”

The Corps conducts regular renourishment projects on beaches all along the East Coast, and uses a template to inform that work, said Alan Robertson, a consultant who leads the city of Tybee’s resilience planning. But he hopes that such granular evidence of specific changes over time can shift where exactly the sand gets placed within the bounds of that template. An area near the island’s north end, for instance, is a clear hot spot for erosion, so the city may push for concentrating sand there, and north of that point so that it can travel south to fill in the erosion.

“We know exactly where the hotspots of erosion are. We know where there’s accretion,” he said, referring to areas where sand tends to build up. “[We] never had that before.”

The data can also inform the city’s own decision-making, because it provides a much clearer picture of what happens to the dunes and beach over time after the fresh sand is added. In the past, they’ve been able to see the most obvious erosion, but now they can compare how different methods of dune-building and even sources of sand hold up. The vegetation that’s critical to holding dunes together, for instance, takes root far better in sand dredged from the ocean compared to sand trucked in from the mainland, Robertson said.

“There’s an example of the research and the monitoring. I actually can make that statement,” he said. “I actually know where you should get your sand from if you can, and why. No one could have told you that eight years ago.”

That sort of proven information is key in resilience projects, which are often expensive and funded by grants from agencies that want confirmation their money is being spent well.

“Everything we do now on resiliency, measuring, and monitoring has become a priority,” said Robertson. “We’ve been able over these years through proof statements of ‘look at what this does for you’ to make it part of the project.”

—Emily Jones (@ejreports.bsky.social), Grist

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/science/inside-a-georgia-beachs-high-tech-fight-against-erosion/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Author(s): Zhaoye Wang, Nichen Yu, Ao Xu, Chen Liang, C. Reichhardt, C. J. O. Reichhardt, and Yan Feng

Langevin dynamical simulations are performed to investigate the depinning dynamics of a two-dimensional (2D) solid dusty plasma, which is modulated by one-dimensional (1D) nonlinear deformed periodic substrates, and also driven by the combination of the DC and AC forces. As the DC driving force incr…

[Phys. Rev. E 112, 035201] Published Tue Sep 02, 2025

Too little snowfall is now also shaking the foundations of some of the world's most resilient "water towers," a new study led by the Pellicciotti group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) shows. After establishing a monitoring network on a new benchmark glacier in central Tajikistan, the international team of researchers was able to model the entire catchment's behavior from 1999 to 2023.

The natural phenomenon of upwelling, which occurs annually in the Gulf of Panama, failed for the first time on record in 2025. A study led by scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) indicates that the weakening of the trade winds was the cause of this event. This finding highlights the climate's impact on fundamental oceanic processes and the coastal communities that depend on them.

Publication date: 1 September 2025

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 76, Issue 5

Author(s): Napat Tongkasem, Pornchai Supnithi, Phimmasone Thammavongsy, Michi Nishioka, Septi Perwitasari, Susumu Saito, Jeff Klenzing, Lin Min Min Myint

Publication date: 1 September 2025

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 76, Issue 5

Author(s): D. Fernandes, N.G. Rudraswami, V.P. Singh