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One of the most devastating extinctions in Earth's history is best known for what didn't die—dinosaurs. But the end-Triassic extinction 201 million years ago wiped out roughly 60% of Earth's species, and scientists are still piecing together how it unfolded.

Off Track, On Purpose

Iceland, Chile, Kenya, Antarctica, Papua New Guinea, and the Great Salt Lake. That ambitious lineup covers (most of) the destinations where scientists featured in our annual fieldwork collection have ventured to test innovative instruments and answer pressing questions about natural processes on—and off—Earth.

Read along to learn about some fascinating field science and to hit all these hot spots and cool destinations for yourself.

In “Discovering Venus on Iceland,” scientists describe a multiweek effort traversing three rugged and rocky sites to collect samples and validate airborne radar measurements. Iceland’s basaltic lava fields are about the closest analogue to the surface of Venus that Earth has to offer, and the team’s data collection is helping to test the performance of instruments that will be a part of NASA’s VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) mission in several years’ time.

From Iceland, travel west and south to Chile, Guatemala, and Idaho to learn how researchers have been building and using their own inexpensive, lightweight sensors to detect infrasound emanating from volcanoes, earthquakes, and wildfires in “Sensing the Sounds from Earth’s Hazardous Environments.” At Villarica volcano in the Chilean Andes, for example, they have deployed sensor clusters on, around, and even hanging from a cable above the volcano’s summit crater to better understand how infrasound may be useful for eruption monitoring.

Meanwhile, at Lake Turkana in Kenya, scientists have been partnering with local industries to map the subsurface and better understand how the continent is unzipping along the East African Rift System, as Kimberly Cartier describes in “Eastern Africa Is Splitting Apart, but Not Where We Expected.”

Stick with Cartier for another leg of our fieldwork trip as she relates how researchers have instrumented an underwater volcanic vent off Papua New Guinea to track effects of ocean acidification on corals in “Coral Diversity Drops as Ocean Acidifies.”

From there, head to the decidedly less tropical climes of the South Pole, where a team recently installed a pair of seismometers deep in the Antarctic ice, completing a challenging and years-long feat of engineering, reports Grace Van Deelen in “These South Pole Seismometers Will Detect Vibrations 1.5 Miles Under the Ice.”

Finally, journey to the North American interior to learn what scientists found when they installed electrodes on the now-desiccated surface of Utah’s Great Salt Lake in Carolyn Wilke’s—spoiler alert—“What’s Below the Great Salt Lake? More Water.”

We’ll understand if you need a break after all that globe-trotting. But you’re always welcome to join us for more adventures in the field.

—Timothy Oleson, Eos Senior Science Editor

Citation: Oleson, T. (2026), An off-road itinerary, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260181. Published on 1 June 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.

Source: AGU Advances

The Indian monsoon has shifted over the past quarter century. Northwest India now receives substantially more rain than it once did, while a lack of rain sends the Indo-Gangetic Plain toward drought.

More than a billion people rely on the monsoon to confer economic stability across southern Asia; further changes to this weather system could lead to widespread hardship. Scientists have struggled to predict how this weather pattern will change moving forward because commonly used climate models fail to capture changes to the monsoon that have already occurred.

Mahendra et al. suggest that models do not adequately represent either changes in the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean or how those temperature changes are linked to weather patterns around the rest of the globe. As a result, the coupled models tend to fail to predict this monsoon shift.

Specifically, current climate models lack the ability to incorporate information about the cold blob, a patch of cold water off the south of Greenland. When the researchers added the cold blob to climate model results, they found that it can alter the jet stream in a way that makes it pull moisture toward northwest India while also preventing storm systems from forming elsewhere. This is exactly the type of shift that has been observed in monsoon patterns. When a large-scale wind pattern prevents the formation of smaller-scale weather patterns in this way, it is called a barotropic governor mechanism.

This barotropic governor mechanism also explains why midlatitudes around the globe have observed more storm activity in recent years. The results highlight the importance of connecting processes from disparate parts of the globe when formulating climate models, the authors write. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002173, 2026)

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

Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2026), The surprising link between a cold blob and the Indian monsoon, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260177. Published on 1 June 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.

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

This week, a parade of scientists will spend 50 hours straight speaking about the importance of weather and climate research in the United States.

Now in its second year, the Weather & Climate Livestream will feature hundreds of scientists describing their work and why it matters. Last year’s event, which lasted 100 hours, saw more than 180,000 views and led to 30,000 phone calls to Congress to #SaveAmericasForecasts.

“The first aspect of it is just communicating science,” said Haley Crim, a climate literacy researcher at MIT and the founder of Climateliteracy.earth. “The second half of it is to inspire people to call their representatives in support of funding for climate and weather science, and science more broadly.”  

 
Related

•  The Weather & Climate Livestream
•  Get Involved: AGU’s Science Policy Action Center
 

Last year, Crim was an “avid watcher” of the livestream, so she was happy to help when a friend asked her to pitch in for the second iteration. But it’s also more personal this year, as she has since lost her position as a contractor with NOAA.

“It has a whole new meaning now, this year,” she said.

The livestream begins at 4 p.m. ET on Monday, 1 June, ending at 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 3 June. Speakers include meteorologist Jeff Masters and climate scientists Adam Sobel of Columbia University and Kim Cobb of Brown University. AGU President Brandon Jones and president-elect Benjamin Zaitchik will also speak from 2 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 3 June.

Science Under Attack

Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term in 2025, federal science funding has faced extensive cuts, with more proposed. In June 2025, for instance, a budget document proposed eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. In December 2025, the administration announced plans to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“This is really a full-frontal attack on climate science.”

“This is really a full-frontal attack on climate science,” said Andrew Williams, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who is helping to organize the livestream and will speak during it.

He added that even though Congress pushed back against the most drastic cuts proposed last year, leaving key science program budgets mostly intact, many agencies haven’t yet seen the money they’ve been granted in the budget. For instance, according to the organization Grant Witness, 112 grants have been awarded in the NSF Directorate for Geosciences so far this year, compared with 948 in total in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. The average total number of grants awarded between FY21 and FY24 was 1,418.

Both Crim and Williams said they hope the livestream provides the public with a better understanding of how climate and weather research affects us all, from allowing for timely evacuation warnings to affecting insurance rates. Williams offered the example of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, a federally funded NOAA research lab that would be eliminated under the president’s proposed FY2027 budget.

“It builds the engine of the U.S. weather forecasting model, which is what tells you day to day what the weather is going to be,” he said. “We’ve all been able to take for granted that these things are happening because the U.S. has for decades, for 60 or 70 years, had strong and stable federal funding for weather and climate science.”

—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

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
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.

The AGU Books Editorial Board comprises researchers spanning the breath of the Earth and space sciences. From diverse perspectives comes an interdisciplinary catalog of monographs and textbooks—and collaborations between scientists whose paths might not cross otherwise.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the AGU Books Program, we interviewed three members who have served on the Books Board since its founding in 2020: Estella Atekwana is a near-surface geophysicist and serves as a dean and professor at the University of California Davis; Xianzhe Jia is a space physicist and professor at the University of Michigan; Jim O’Connor is a research geologist with the United States Geological Survey. We asked these Editorial Board members about their favorite projects and why books remain important within the scientific literature  which is dominated by journals.

What is a memory or project that stands out from your AGU Books Editorial Board experience?

Supporting Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry pushed Board member Jim O’Connor to engage with new topics and geographic areas of study.

JOC: Two items stand out for me. One is one of the first books that I handled, Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry: A Foundation for the Future. This book was so far outside my zone (topically and spatially) yet so gratifying to be a small part of. It was really a very different book, discussing much classic hydrology but also touching on resource management and politics in an area where those topics are complicated. It was so interesting. And it was published in both English and French.

The other memory sticking with me is our early discussions on what AGU books could and should be about. The discussions were so wide-ranging (including children’s books!), and they really forced me out of what was probably a pretty narrow lane. I suppose such discussions might be expected when you put together a diverse group of scientists and give them a chance to explore what AGU books could be.

Board member Estella Atekwana saw Salt in the Earth Sciences progress from a proposal through multiple iterations and finally to a published book.

EA: One project that stands out is serving as the Subject Editor for the two-volume set Salt in the Earth Sciences: Evaporite Rocks and Salt Deposition and Salt in the Earth Sciences: Basin Analysis and Salt Tectonics by Webster Mohriak. It was a pleasure to work with Dr. Mohriak, who was thoughtful, responsive, and deeply engaged with the review process. I also developed a tremendous appreciation for the reviewers, who took the time to read the full volume carefully, sometimes through multiple iterations, and provide detailed and constructive feedback. Seeing the book move from proposal to publication was deeply rewarding. It reminded me how much care, expertise, and collaboration go into producing a high-quality scholarly book.

XJ: One project that stands out for me is a book that’s still in production. It is about exoplanets, focused on how stellar-driven space environments interact with (exo)planetary magnetic fields and atmospheres and, ultimately, shape habitability. What’s made it memorable is that the book sits right at the boundary between communities that don’t always share the same language—space physics, planetary science, and exoplanets. I’m excited for it to become a resource that helps readers move back and forth between exoplanets and our solar system with a shared comparative framework.

What is your favorite thing about serving on the AGU Books Editorial Board?

EA: When I was first asked to serve as on the AGU Books Editorial Board, I approached the role with some skepticism. I wondered why early- and mid-career faculty or scientists would choose to write books when the academic reward system often emphasizes journal articles, citation counts, and publications in high-impact journals. However, serving on the Board has changed my perspective. I have enjoyed reviewing book proposals, encouraging leaders in the field to consider writing books, and working with an editorial team that provides thoughtful support every step of the way.

My favorite thing about serving on the AGU Books Editorial Board is getting to help shape syntheses—not just what’s new, but what the community collectively understands.

Xianzhe Jia

XJ: My favorite thing about serving on the AGU Books Editorial Board is getting to help shape syntheses—not just what’s new, but what the community collectively understands. This role gives me the opportunity to work with Volume Editors and authors to turn a set of strong contributions into a coherent, usable resource, and to do that in a way that brings different subfields into the same conversation.

JOC: I suppose my favorite thing has been similar to that of being a journal editor. One is forced to confront a much wider scientific arena than that framed by one’s particular scientific discipline. Every AGU book I’ve worked with has had some element of “new and cool” that came with it.

Why are books important for Earth and space science communities? 

XJ: Scientific fields advance by connecting pieces that are often studied separately—stars and their activity, planets and their atmospheres and magnetospheres—and those connections are hard to establish from individual papers alone. A good book synthesizes what we know across those interfaces, makes assumptions and terminology explicit, and highlights where knowledge gaps exist. That’s valuable both for training new scientists and for enabling collaboration; books help researchers from different disciplines meet on common ground, especially when we’re trying to interpret sparse data and compare very different environments.

JOC: I believe that in many instances books enable better stories. The length and format freedom, particularly in relation to journal articles, allows for longer and more fully developed narratives. And I believe good storytelling is essential for communicating science. My personal experience is that books I have been a part of have much wider and long-lasting reach to a wider public than most journal articles. Though this may be changing (or already changed) in the social media age.

In many fields, a well-written book becomes the go-to reference for generations of students, researchers, and practitioners.

Estella Atekwana

EA: Books are important because they provide a trusted, comprehensive place to access knowledge on a particular topic. In many fields, a well-written book becomes the go-to reference for generations of students, researchers, and practitioners. I am reminded of the book Geodynamics by Donald Turcotte and Gerald Schubert, which was foundational to my own studies as a Ph.D. student and has remained an essential text in the field through subsequent editions. It was a special delight when I came to UC Davis to meet Professor Donald Turcotte, then Professor Emeritus in Earth and Planetary Sciences, the author of a book that had been so fundamental to my intellectual development. That experience reinforced for me the lasting impact books can have. They synthesize knowledge, broaden access, and help sustain a global scientific community.

—Dara Liling (dliling@agu.org; 0009-0005-6828-2811), American Geophysical Union, USA; Estella Atekwana (0000-0003-1424-4068), University of California Davis, USA; Xianzhe Jia (0000-0002-8685-1484), University of Michigan, USA; and Jim O’Connor (0000-0002-7928-5883), United States Geological Survey, USA

Citation: Liling, D., E. Atekwana, X. Jia, and J. O’Connor (2026), The Editorial Board marks the latest chapter in AGU Books, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265023. Published on 1 June 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.

SummaryDistributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) using metropolitan telecom fibre-optic cables provides an unprecedented opportunity for seismic monitoring in sedimentary basins, exemplified by Mexico City. In this study, we analyze 15 months of nearly continuous DAS measurements to identify previously undetectable details of wave propagation, thereby enabling the precise localization of local earthquakes. Using real seismic velocity models, we overcome the inaccuracies of traditional constant ${{V}_P}/{{V}_S}$ approaches, highlighting significant limitations of Wadati diagrams in sedimentary environments. Our results reveal clear hydro-seismic coupling, where intense early-season rainfall, coinciding with low aquifer levels, generates sufficient stress perturbations to trigger moderate-magnitude earthquakes (Mw ∼ 3.5). These main events subsequently induce slow slip along local faults and secondary seismicity on a perpendicular plane, driven primarily by stress imbalance rather than fluid involvement along faults. We further identify basin-converted and conical phases as dominant sources of ground shaking, underscoring the urgent need to integrate these secondary seismic phases into urban seismic hazard assessments and building codes. Our findings underscore the crucial role of continuous DAS measurements in comprehending urban seismic risk and managing aquifer resources, thereby establishing a robust monitoring framework with global applicability in sediment-filled megacities.

A new analysis of global wildfire activity in 2025 reveals the world experienced some of the most destructive and deadly fire events in recent history, despite the second lowest area burned since 2002. It highlights a continued trend toward fires becoming increasingly extreme, costly, and disastrous—both economically and in lives lost.

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Takehiro Yasuda, Mai Bando, Shinji Hokamoto

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Yi Gu, Zihao Li, Hanqing Liu, Qizhang Luo, Huan Liu, Guohua Wu

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Xinwei Wang, Chao Han, Roel Leus

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, a research team led by Prof. Liu Lingli from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS) has identified a mean annual precipitation (MAP) threshold of approximately 700 mm, beyond which the dominant controls on ecosystem nitrogen retention shift.

Climate change is exacerbating rainfall, flooding and sea-level rises in coastal and low-lying areas. During the past few years, disastrous floods have swept through Lismore in New South Wales, Northern Queensland, and the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Large waves have pounded beaches, causing erosion in Byron Bay and Wamberal Beach in NSW and Lancelin, Western Australia.

Some 350,000 years ago, the center of New Zealand's North Island appeared much different than the mountainous, scrub-covered landscape it is today. Amid a glacial period, temperatures were colder and conditions harsher. Vast beech and podocarp forests blanketed the region, providing habitat for abundant native birdlife.

For the past several years, Penn State geoscientist Sarah Ivory and her students have been among a team of scientists scaling the East African Rwenzori Mountains, collecting sediment core samples from lakes formed at the end of the last ice age as glaciers began receding in the region some 12,000 years ago.

SummarySeismic reflections from mantle discontinuities provide critical constraints on the structure and dynamics of Earth’s interior, but their extraction remains challenging due to low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), interference from other seismic phases and uneven spatial distributions. In this study, we propose an array-based extraction strategy that integrates data reconstruction with subsequent denoising for enhancing the extraction of weak mantle reflections. This proposed strategy is independently implemented using the Curvelet-, F–K, and Radon transforms, and the performance of the three implementations is systematically evaluated. Compared with the time-space domain, coherent signals and noise are more easily separated in the transformed domain. We apply these methods to synthetic waveforms generated using a modified ak135 Earth model and test their effectiveness in retrieving reflections from the mantle transition zone (SS/PP precursors) and the D″ discontinuity (ScS/PcP precursors), including cases with random noise and missing traces. All three methods effectively isolate weak mantle reflections, with the Curvelet transform demonstrates the highest robustness and SNR improvement, particularly under conditions of sparse or noisy data. Field applications to data sampling the Central Pacific and Central America further confirm the methods’ ability to recover weak mantle reflections and expand the distance range of usable data. These results demonstrate the potential of array-based extraction strategy to advance deep Earth seismic imaging.

SummaryThe Earth’s figure axis is the axis of maximum inertia for the deformed (oblate) Earth, as described by the degree-two, order-one geopotential coefficients C21 and S21. An extended mean-pole model is presented for evaluating solid-Earth and ocean-pole tides. 50-year Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) data and 24-year GRACE/GRACE-FO data were analyzed to determine variations in Earth’s figure axis, as reflected in changes in the C21 and S21 coefficients. This study reveals that a significant atmosphere-ocean motion induced a variation in C21 that is captured by SLR data but does not appear in the GRACE solution. The current glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) ICE-6G model requires improvement to account for the observed linear rates of C21 and S21. A significant 30-year and 60-year signal with an amplitude of ∼ 3×10−11 in the Earth’s figure axis is observed using SLR and a ∼10 mas in the PM (polar-motion), which could be predominantly driven by a 0.05-degree tilt of the inner-core figure axis relative to the figure axis of the entire core and is linked to partial electromagnetic core-mantle coupling.

Understanding the dynamics of how water moves is deceptively simple in concept and endlessly complex in practice. Real-world marine environments are anything but controlled: weather, seasons, and geography change constantly. Yet understanding water movement is a critical aspect in areas of study like marine biology, coastal and environmental science, and even policy around how we recover from natural disasters.

Sitting at the northwestern edge of North America, Alaska stretches across a vast Arctic land of wilderness, culture, and wealth beneath the surface. Among its resources is the Donlin Gold deposit, located in southwestern Alaska's Kuskokwim River basin. As one of the world's largest undeveloped gold mines, it holds an estimated 39 million ounces worth more than $170 billion at today's prices.

As climate change intensifies drought conditions across the Southwest, researchers at The University of New Mexico are examining how agricultural water is used in one of New Mexico's most critical river systems.

A new international study published in Nature Geoscience reveals that dark brown carbon from wildfires exerts a powerful warming effect on the global climate—potentially matching or even exceeding that of black carbon in the visible spectrum.