Phys.org: Earth science

New research reveals the surprising ways atmospheric winds influence ocean eddies, shaping the ocean's weather patterns in more complex ways than previously believed.

Constructed wetlands do a good job in their early years of capturing carbon in the environment that contributes to climate change—but that ability does diminish with time as the wetlands mature, a new study suggests.

The Earth's atmosphere has strengthened its ability to remove air pollutants, including the potent climate-warming gas methane, according to research published in Nature Communications.

A relatively small amount of groundwater trickling through Alaska's tundra is releasing huge quantities of carbon into the ocean, where it can contribute to climate change, according to new research out of The University of Texas at Austin.

An international study has investigated the causes and impacts of the devastating flood disaster in the Himalayas in October 2023, which destroyed large areas along and surrounding the Teesta River in Sikkim, India.

While a single plant is capable of fixing inorganic carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, the entire ecosystem surrounding the plant, including water, other organisms and soil conditions, influences how efficiently the ecosystem exchanges CO2.

Geospatial modeling methods have become an important tool for environmental monitoring, which is used to manage environmental risks and monitor natural disaster threats. The modeling results are an important source of information for forecasting and understanding the consequences of various scenarios of socio-economic development and climate change.

Studies of sediment cores from the sea floor and the coastal regions surrounding the Aegean Sea show that humans contaminated the environment with lead early on in antiquity.

An international team of Earth and environmental scientists has found evidence that the Ronne Ice Shelf in the West Antarctic did not melt during the last interglacial event, suggesting it could survive modern climate change. In their study published in the journal Nature, the team analyzed ice core samples taken from a site near the shelf's edge. The editors at Nature have also published a Research Briefing summarizing the work.

An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has investigated the influence of the forces exerted by the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdistan region of Iraq on how much the surface of the Earth has bent over the last 20 million years. Their research has revealed that in the present day, deep below the Earth's surface, the Neotethys oceanic plate—the ocean floor that used to be between the Arabian and Eurasian continents—is breaking off horizontally, with a tear progressively lengthening from southeast Turkey to northwest Iran.

The Yellow River, which stretches from the Tibetan Plateau to the Bohai Sea in China, is so called because of the color lent by massive amounts of suspended sediments along its 5,400-kilometer length. Its waters, sediments, and nutrients support more than 100 million people and many endemic plant and animal species. China's "Mother River" also transports metals such as iron, cobalt, arsenic, and platinum, a process with important implications for the health and evolution of downstream ecosystems.

Weather, climate and hydrometeorology forecasts require accurate surface–atmosphere coupled modeling. This requires the use of proper coupling heights in computing surface turbulent fluxes, or the exchanges of heat, moisture and momentum between the surface of the Earth and the near-surface thin layer of air called the surface layer.

Mangrove forests along the Amazon coast release significant amounts of trace elements such as neodymium and hafnium. These elements and their isotopic compositions can serve to understand the inputs of micronutrients which are vital for marine life.

New Cornell University led-research challenges the long-standing belief that active volcanoes have large magma bodies that are expelled during eruptions and then dissipate over time as the volcanoes become dormant.

The state of Maine was hit by a rare 3.8 magnitude earthquake Monday morning, a tremor that could be felt across the New England region.

As we burn fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is gradually rising, and with it, the planet's average temperature. How fast the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide—and with it, the temperature—goes up matters for the ability of humans and ecosystems to adjust. A slower increase gives humans time to move away from low-lying areas and animals time to move to new habitats.

The rate of ocean warming has more than quadrupled over the past four decades, a new study has shown. Ocean temperatures were rising at about 0.06 degrees Celsius per decade in the late 1980s, but are now increasing at 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade.

The Arctic's "Last Ice Area" (LIA)—a vital habitat for ice-dependent species—might disappear within a decade after the central Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free in summer, which is expected to occur sometime around mid-century, a new study by McGill University researchers using a high-resolution model has found.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from NTU Singapore, and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands, has projected that if the rate of global CO2 emissions continues to increase and reaches a high emission scenario, sea levels would as a result very likely rise between 0.5 and 1.9 meters by 2100. The high end of this projection's range is 90 centimeters higher than the latest United Nations' global projection of 0.6 to 1.0 meters.

Clouds, composed of tiny water droplets or ice crystals, play a vital role in regulating Earth's climate by influencing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the surface. The cloud phase significantly impacts the surface energy balance as liquid water clouds reflect more radiation than ice clouds.