Phys.org: Earth science

Despite continuous efforts to evaluate and predict changes in Earth's climate, most models still struggle to accurately simulate extreme precipitation events. Models like the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phases 5 and 6 (CMIP5 and CMIP6) use fairly coarse resolution due to computing constraints, making it a little easier, faster and less expensive to run simulations, while still providing some degree of accuracy.

New study reveals burning of fossil fuels is accelerating winter rainfall changes in the UK and Europe, almost 25 years sooner than expected.

An international team of scientists and students, led by the Arctic University of Norway, and including chemists and engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has announced a remarkable discovery of a venting system on the seafloor of the Arctic. This significant finding was made during the ongoing EXTREME25 expedition aboard the research vessel Kronprins Haakon.

Research led by polar scientists from Northumbria University has revealed new hope in natural environmental systems found in East Antarctica which could help mitigate the overall rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over long timescales.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a system of Atlantic Ocean currents that redistributes heat and nutrients between the tropics and the North Atlantic, is one of the planet's tipping points. That means there is a critical threshold that, once crossed, could trigger abrupt, irreversible climate shifts.

This year's COP30 comes after the international Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) finally acquired the required number of ratification votes by United Nations member states.

When militia attacks disrupted shipping lanes in the Red Sea, few imagined the ripple effects would reach the clouds over the South Atlantic. But for Florida State University atmospheric scientist Michael Diamond, the rerouting of cargo ships offered a rare opportunity to clarify a pressing climate question—How much do cleaner fuels change how clouds form?

The varied topography of the Western United States—a patchwork of valleys and mountains, basins and plateaus—results in minutely localized weather. Accordingly, snowfall forecasts for the mountain West often suffer from a lack of precision, with predictions provided as broad ranges of inch depths for a given day or storm cycle.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today presented a 26-member team with the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modeling in recognition of their project "Computing the Full Earth System at 1 km Resolution." The award honors innovative contributions to parallel computing toward solving the global climate crisis.

Who owns the rainforest—and who has the right to use it—might seem like a simple question.

Why do some earthquakes release more energy than others? A research team led by Prof. Dr. Armin Dielforder from the University of Greifswald has managed to demonstrate a clear physical connection between the energy released during earthquakes and the strength of rocks deep in the Earth's crust.

As a result of climate change, rising sea levels are threatening low-lying coastal areas around the world, such as the Wadden Sea in the North Sea. Tidal basins form a natural protective barrier there. They connect the mainland with the offshore islands. They fill with seawater during high tide and empty again during low tide. Sediments are deposited in the process, causing the seabed to rise steadily.

The explosiveness of a volcanic eruption depends on how many gas bubbles form in the magma—and when. Until now, it was thought that gas bubbles were formed primarily when the ambient pressure dropped while the magma was rising.

Across Europe, scientists and citizens are uncovering a hidden legacy of contamination beneath their feet. From Denmark's first PFAS crisis to a new generation of soil-mapping initiatives, a continent is learning to see—and stop—the pollution it once ignored

Imagine trying to predict wind patterns as air flows across a landscape. It's a straightforward task over a flat plain—but becomes more complex when the terrain shifts to jagged mountain ranges. Here, wind does not simply sweep over peaks; it is deflected, slowed, and forced into gravity waves.

A recent study led by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation shows how high-resolution maps of ground-level ammonia plumes can be generated with airborne sensors, highlighting a way to better track the gas.

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.