Phys.org: Earth science

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Europe's cartographers traded on their reputation for accuracy and detail at a time of huge societal change. But as demand grew for increasingly detailed maps of the world to support industrialization at home and colonization overseas, they didn't always get it right.

Stanford researchers have shown that instruments primarily used to understand earthquakes can capture key details about hurricanes, helping meteorologists better predict how storms will evolve and intensify.

The Arctic is warming at an accelerating pace. As permafrost thaws across vast areas and wildfires become more frequent, large amounts of methane (CH4) are being released. Together, these changes are reshaping the region's greenhouse gas emissions and further intensifying climate change.

The images of the major forest fires in Spain and France, with fire clouds near Bordeaux, have shocked many people. There have been numerous reports of the formation of a pyrocumulonimbus cloud—a fire-driven thundercloud—and the possible transport of smoke particles to Central Europe.

During the most recent ice age, much of North America disappeared beneath ice sheets several kilometers thick. These frozen giants covered most of present-day Canada and parts of the northern United States, while smaller ones spread across northern Europe.

Typhoons pose significant threats, with sudden, dangerous waves that endanger ships, offshore platforms and coastal infrastructure in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Current typhoon forecasting methods sometimes underestimate the largest waves during typhoons, but researchers in China have designed a new model that may offer improvements. Their new study, published in Ocean Engineering, describes how the model combines physics guidance with data-driven learning to improve typhoon forecasting.

Storm conditions capable of causing major coastal erosion at New Jersey's North Beach on Sandy Hook are occurring about twice as often as they did in 1979, according to Rutgers researchers. The finding offers new evidence that storm impacts are becoming more frequent along the Mid-Atlantic coast.

Fires in the Arctic are not solely a regional issue, as shown by the hazy skies in Switzerland last summer despite otherwise sunny weather. Smoke from major fires in northern Canada crossed the Atlantic and reached Europe. Until now, large-scale studies of Arctic tundra fires have focused primarily on rising temperatures and drought as the main drivers. The role of human activity has received much less attention, even as industrial development, settlements, roads and other infrastructure expand rapidly in parts of the Arctic, particularly in connection with extractive industries such as oil and gas production and mining.

Can a crack be supersonic? Can the fracture that triggers an avalanche propagate faster than the limiting velocity predicted by classical fracture mechanics? The question remains the subject of debate within the scientific community. While some numerical and experimental studies suggest that avalanche cracks may propagate at supersonic speeds, others offer a different interpretation.

The effects of climate change extend far beyond rising temperatures. As forests and other vegetation respond to a warming world, they also change the amount of biogenic emissions released into the atmosphere, influencing the formation of ozone (O3) and fine particulate pollution. Yet many atmospheric chemistry models still estimate these emissions using vegetation data from 2003, despite major ecological changes across East Asia over the past two decades.

Scientists have uncovered a previously unknown natural process that dramatically increases the number of cloud-forming particles in the Arctic atmosphere—potentially altering cloud cover, sunlight reflection and future climate change.

East Africa's shrinking mountain glaciers on three peaks in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania will soon be no more. The 2025 State of the Climate in Africa report (page 13) estimates that the ice areas on Mount Kenya, the continent's second-highest peak, have shrunk 96% in the past 115 years. The ice cap will cease to exist in three to five years, says the report. Rainer Prinz, who studies climate-glacier relationships, explains the intricate processes behind the retreat and what the consequences will be.

Groundwater pumped to irrigate cannabis crops in California's Emerald Triangle can cause some streams that normally run year-round to dry up entirely during summer, say researchers from Simon Fraser University, the University of California, Berkeley and the United States Department of Agriculture.

For most of the year, the Barnes Ice Cap in the Canadian Arctic lies quiet under a blanket of snow. By summer, that snow melts back, and the ice cap transforms in texture, its bare ice dotted with turquoise ponds and its surface threaded with meltwater channels. In summer 2026, this seasonal awakening arrived fast and early.

The West Eifel Volcanic Field comprises more than 100 maars—circular lakes formed by explosive eruptions. Until now, little was known about when these volcanic eruptions occurred. A research team from Heidelberg University, Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and the University of Göttingen has now reliably dated the most recent eruptions of the maar volcanoes.

The processes that capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it on the seabed are crucial for climate balance. However, assessing these mechanisms is often complicated because it requires measurements ranging from the surface to the deep ocean.

Salty water flowing through Antarctica's Blood Falls contains a distinct community of marine-specific microorganisms, providing evidence that the brine system beneath the glacier has a marine origin, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience. The findings offer new insights into how microbial communities can persist through major environmental transitions.

El Niño continues to intensify steadily and is expected to dominate global climate patterns in the August to October 2026 season, increasing the likelihood of above-normal temperatures across much of the world and driving significant shifts in rainfall patterns, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

When a hurricane roars toward land, forecasters try to predict how high sea levels will rise to help coastal communities prepare for the worst impacts.

Thick smoke from massive wildfires has been spreading in North America and Europe once again in 2026. The health impacts of breathing this particle-filled air are becoming well known, but wildfires' influence on the weather is less widely recognized.