Phys.org: Earth science

A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami off Russia in late July tested an experimental detection system that had deployed a critical component just the day before.

On July 28, 170 researchers sent a letter to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Congress after NSF's 2026 budget request included plans to end its lease of a U.S. research vessel in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.

Climate change is driving more frequent and more intense wildfires around the world, including in the United States. These huge blazes cause a range of problems that affect health, the environment, property and the economy. However, a new study reveals a surprising paradox: the heat from wildfires in the western U.S. may actually improve air quality in the eastern part of the country.

The 19th-century American naturalist Henry David Thoreau described the small freshwater lake at Walden as "Earth's eye"—a measure of the complexity of ecological interactions.

An "enormous" submerged mountain that rivals peaks in the Rockies has been mapped for the first time in a previously unexplored area of the western Pacific, according to NOAA Ocean Exploration.

Under the lead of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), a sediment core from the Southeast Pacific was examined that reflects the last 8 million years of Earth's history.

If you were lucky 74,000 years ago, you would have survived the Toba supereruption, one of the largest catastrophic events that Earth has seen in the past 2.5 million years.

Recent heat waves in the United States underscore a growing public health threat: Extreme heat events are growing longer, hotter, and more frequent. Soaring temperatures raise the risk of various health problems, such as heat stroke and cardiovascular disease—particularly for older people, people with preexisting conditions, and people who work outdoors.

Global climate models are software behemoths, often containing more than a million lines of code.

Most of Earth's fresh water is locked in the ice that covers Antarctica. As the ocean and atmosphere grow warmer, that ice is melting at a startling pace with sea levels and global currents changing in response. To understand the potential implications, researchers need to know just how fast the ice is disappearing, and what is driving it back.

Farmers near Meeker, in northwestern Colorado, have been diverting water from the White River to flood their fields for irrigation for more than 100 years.

Researchers at Diamond Light Source have used advanced imaging to look at microscopic crystals, called nanolites, to see what they can tell us about volcanic eruptions.

The University of Texas at Arlington is far from California earthquake country, yet its researchers are helping pinpoint which sections of the San Andreas Fault are most active.

The Polarstern recently ended a two-month expedition in the central Arctic in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The international and interdisciplinary research team, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, focused on the summer melting of Arctic sea ice in three different regimes.

Earth's tropical regions drive some of the most powerful weather and climate variability globally. Among these, the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a dominant intraseasonal climate signal, characterized by large clusters of clouds and rainfall that slowly move eastward across the warm tropical oceans. In doing so, the MJO shapes rainfall patterns, influences tropical cyclones, modulates monsoons, and even impacts weather far beyond the tropics. Understanding the factors that govern its speed and intensity is therefore essential for improving subseasonal to seasonal climate forecasts.

Measuring mountain snowpack at strategically selected hotspots consistently outperforms broader, basin-wide mapping in predicting water supply in the western United States, a new study has found.

The global demand for wood-based products is constantly increasing, creating a challenge for the logging industry. In an attempt to keep up in a sustainable manner, the industry replaces logged areas with tree farms and nurseries to eventually replenish supplies. This use and regrowth of wood has also been thought to help maintain a carbon sink. While this may be true to some extent, a new study has found that an important source of carbon loss is often being left out of the equation.

Thorsten Becker, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences, is the author of a new textbook, "Tectonic Geodynamics." The book is co-authored with Claudio Faccenna, who was formerly at UT, and is now a professor at the Helmholtz Center for Geosciences in Potsdam and at Roma TRE University.

In Alaska's Brooks Range, rivers once clear enough to drink now run orange and hazy with toxic metals. As warming thaws formerly frozen ground, it sets off a chemical chain reaction that is poisoning fish and wreaking havoc on ecosystems.

Five well-publicized polar geoengineering ideas are highly unlikely to help the polar regions and could harm ecosystems, communities, international relations, and our chances of reaching net zero by 2050.