Phys.org: Earth science

A mysterious swarm of earthquakes that occurred near the Greek island of Santorini in early 2025 was caused by rebounding sheets of magma slicing through Earth's crust, according to a new study by an international team involving a UCL (University College London) researcher.

While it is well known that climate change is heating the world's oceans, it was thought that the deep sea was safe from its effects—until now. Researchers have discovered that a rapidly warming part of the Atlantic is leading to the heating up of Arctic Ocean depths.

Climate change will make monsoon storms in South Asia wetter and weaker, with more storms pushing further inland across India.

As global efforts intensify around restoring coastal wetlands to curb climate change, a new JCU-led study published in Reviews of Geophysics is the first to link wetland restoration and carbon cycling with groundwater dynamics, showing that subsurface flows can tip the balance from storing carbon to emitting it.

After a long and deadlocked bidding process for Australia and Pacific Island nations to co-host the UN climate summit (COP31), the event will now be hosted by Turkey. Australia's Climate Minister, Chris Bowen, will reportedly take a key role as "COP President for negotiations". More details are yet to emerge.

In recent years, more and more lobbyists from the oil, gas and coal industries have taken part in international climate negotiations. Estimates of lobbyist numbers have risen sharply, from 503 at the 2021 Glasgow talks to 1,773 at last year's talks in Azerbaijan's capital Baku.

Over the past week we've witnessed the many political discussions that go with the territory of a COP—or, more verbosely, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Magnetic data collected in the late 1960s has been brought back to life by a research team including a Keele scientist, who have used it to learn more about how the continent of Africa is stretching and splitting apart.

The tectonic plates under Africa and Asia are slowly drifting apart, as the Gulf of Suez that separates these two land masses continues to widen at a rate of about 0.26–0.55 millimeters per year.

If heat-trapping pollution from burning coal, oil and gas continues unchecked, thousands of hazardous sites across the United States risk being flooded from sea level rise by the turn of the century, posing serious health risks to nearby communities, according to a new study.

Soil stores more carbon than Earth's atmosphere and plants combined, which makes the speed of soil carbon's decomposition an important variable in models used to predict changes to our climate.

Scientists have revealed that ancient bogs in the Southern Hemisphere hold clues to a major shift in Earth's climate thousands of years ago.

Climate history recorded in a calcite deposit in a southern Nevada cave indicates that the hot, arid southwestern United States experienced significant shifts in temperature and rainfall over the last 580,000 years.

Earthquake faults deep in Earth can glue themselves back together following a seismic event, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The work, published in Science Advances, adds a new factor to our understanding of the behavior of faults that can give rise to major earthquakes.

Predicting earthquakes has long been an unattainable fantasy. Factors like odd animal behaviors that have historically been thought to forebode earthquakes are not supported by empirical evidence. As these factors often occur independently of earthquakes and vice versa, seismologists believe that earthquakes occur with little or no warning. At least, that's how it appears from the surface.

New research led by Royal Holloway reveals for the first time why Europe could gain more than an extra month of summer days by 2100 using climate data from the last millennia.

Climate change may seem a uniquely 21st-century concern, but people have been wrestling with the idea for a long time.

Since 6 November 2025, Belém has become the center of attention for the entire planet for two weeks. COP30 is bringing together a record number of delegations, dozens of heads of state and intense public participation. President Lula transferred the government to the capital of Pará, symbolizing Brazil's commitment to the Amazon and the future of the global climate.

Twelve million people in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Delta face serious long-term health risks from the harmful substance, arsenic, in their drinking water.

US budget cuts risk creating blind spots in Earth monitoring systems that would imperil weather forecasting and climate research for years to come, the deputy chair of a key UN-backed climate monitoring body warned in an AFP interview.