Phys.org: Earth science

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.

Beryllium-7 is a radioactive isotope of beryllium produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere. A Japanese research team has explored, over space and time, how the beryllium-7 is transported from the atmosphere to Earth's surface. Their goal was to better understand the mechanisms of atmospheric mixing on Earth. Their research is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres on October 14, 2025.

For decades, scientists have been baffled by two enormous, enigmatic structures buried deep inside Earth with features so vast and unusual that they defy conventional models of planetary evolution.

Water levels are creeping upward on shorelines across the world, and decision-making systems are not keeping up. One barrier to including sea level rise projections in adaptation plans is limited information on the full range of possible outcomes.

The massive 2018 eruption of Kīlauea Volcano on Hawai'i Island lasted for months, destroyed neighborhoods, and was associated with 60,000 earthquakes.

In light of the ongoing fifteen-year megadrought in Chile, an international team of researchers, including Francesca Pellicciotti from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), addressed a bold future scenario. Their findings: by the end of the century, the considerably worn-out glaciers will not be able to buffer a similar megadrought. They call for coordinated global climate policies to develop effective water management strategies. The results are published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have identified stormlike circulation patterns beneath the Antarctic ice shelves that are causing aggressive melting, with major implications for global sea level rise projections.

The weather patterns that produced some of Europe's most extreme heat waves over the past three decades could prove far more lethal if they strike in today's hotter climate, pushing weekly deaths toward levels seen during the COVID pandemic, according to a study in Nature Climate Change.

An international team of scientists, including a senior researcher at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, has uncovered new evidence of ancient wildfires that reshapes our understanding of Earth's turbulent Early Triassic epoch, about 250 million years ago.

The first-ever audited account of the actual amounts of CO2 stored underground by CCS projects globally has been released. It was created by a new international consortium of scientists and industrial partners, including NTNU.

Two new studies from researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography provide encouraging news about California's beaches at both local and statewide scales.