Phys.org: Earth science

The carbon cycle in our oceans is critical to the balance of life in ocean waters and for reducing carbon in the atmosphere, a significant process to curbing climate change or global warming.

A new study led by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has uncovered the first observational evidence of lateral negative re-discharges occurring on negative leader channels. Published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, the findings offer new insights into how lightning channels remain electrically active and how their structures evolve before and after a return stroke.

A new study led by Prof. Duan Weili from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography (XIEG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences emphasizes the importance of selecting appropriate datasets for global soil moisture research. The study was published in the Science Bulletin on Oct. 31.

In the middle of a chilly October night in 2025, my two friends and I suited up at the Cottonwood Creek trailhead and started a trek into the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado. It was a little below freezing as we got moving at 1:30 a.m., and the moon illuminated the snowy mountaintops above us.

Clues contained in tree rings have identified mid-14th-century volcanic activity as the first domino to fall in a sequence that led to the devastation of the Black Death in Europe.

A common misconception about research is that it takes place in climate-controlled labs with microscopes, beakers, and Bunsen burners. While that is true for many fields, obtaining geoscience data can demand fieldwork in remote, rugged terrain with potentially extreme weather conditions. These investigations may require flying across the world, hiking for days above 14,000 feet of elevation in the Himalayan mountain range during all kinds of weather, and even sacrificing personal hygiene.

The speed at which glaciers move changes predictably each year, according to the first-ever global map of how glacier and ice sheet speeds vary with the seasons. Knowing this yearly rhythm could help us better predict sea-level rise driven by long-term climate change.

Dr. Magali Nehemy stood on the banks of the Tapajós River in the Amazon rainforest when the community's chief—a man in his seventies who had lived there his whole life—looked out over the bare shoreline and shook his head.

K'gari is the world's largest sand island and known for its world-famous lakes, but research from the University of Adelaide has discovered its largest lakes could be vulnerable to drying.

A study led by researchers at the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science has found that certain populations of the seaweed sargassum have experienced a significant decline over the past decade, even as increased abundance of sargassum in the tropical Atlantic has caused large mats of the seaweed to inundate beaches across the Caribbean and Gulf regions.

For the first time, researchers have produced a detailed, high-resolution map of peatlands in the EU, showing that these areas emit twice as much greenhouse gases than previously thought. The research, led by eco-hydrologist Quint van Giersbergen of Radboud University, has been published in Nature Communications.

Atmospheric dust plays an important role in the way Earth absorbs and reflects sunlight, impacting the global climate, cloud formation, and precipitation. Much of this dust comes from the continuous reshaping of Earth's surface through the erosion of rocks and sediments, and understanding how this process has shaped landscapes can help us decipher our planet's history—and its future.

New England's a complicated place, especially when it comes to flooding.

A new study highlights how Indigenous leadership, science and business can unite to protect coastal ecosystems while building long-term environmental and cultural knowledge.

A recent study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters is the first to directly link earthquakes to climate change-induced glacial melt. Scientists analyzed 15 years of seismic activity in the Grandes Jorasses—a peak that is part of the Mont Blanc massif between Italy and France—to better understand this association. This massif is one of the more seismologically active areas in the region, and examining how climate change may affect earthquakes there could prove useful in preparing for them.

New research shows how the combination of extreme climate events, sea-level rise and land subsidence could create larger and deeper floods in coastal cities in future.

A new study shows that during drought, it's not how hot or how dry it is that determines gas emissions from plants—but how quickly conditions change. This discovery reshapes our understanding of the relationship between drought, vegetation, and air pollution.

The Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region spanning modern-day Middle Eastern countries, is considered the cradle of civilization and where farming first emerged. But little is known about how climate change influenced early societies in this part of the world. Now, new research into ancient climate history is shedding light on how farming and civilization began. And the insights are coming from an analysis of a stalagmite in a cave in Kurdistan.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba and the Meteorological Research Institute have identified how atmosphere–ocean interactions in the midlatitudes reinforce the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). During strong monsoon seasons, cold air outbreaks from the Eurasian continent cool the midlatitude western North Pacific (WNP). This oceanic cooling, in turn, alters atmospheric circulation in a manner that further intensifies the monsoon.

University of Alberta geochemists have discovered a missing piece to one of the great mysteries of science—the origin of life on Earth.