Phys.org: Earth science

Aviation's climate impact is partly due to contrails—condensation that a plane streaks across the sky when it flies through icy and humid layers of the atmosphere. Contrails trap heat that radiates from the planet's surface, and while the magnitude of this impact is uncertain, several studies suggest contrails may be responsible for about half of aviation's climate impact.

The low-latitude highlands region of southwestern China experienced two major climate events in recent years: a severe drought in 2009–2010 and an extreme heat wave in 2019. Though both sprang from similar large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, the events produced different responses, raising questions about how multiple stressors can push ecosystems toward contrasting outcomes.

Though ice sheet melting is widely talked of and debated, there is limited knowledge about what happens after the period of melting. Researchers dig into this "after" period and see how it relates to previous patterns.

An existing body of research indicates that climate change is making tropical cyclones wetter and more powerful. Now, a new study is indicating the same thing may be happening to the precursors of these storms: the wet weather systems that sometimes give rise to destructive hurricanes and often cause hazardous rain and flooding. The findings are published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.

A multinational scientific team led by UiT has uncovered the deepest known gas hydrate cold seep on the planet. The discovery was made during the Ocean Census Arctic Deep–EXTREME24 expedition and reveals a previously unknown ecosystem thriving at 3,640 meters on the Molloy Ridge in the Greenland Sea. The groundbreaking findings regarding the Freya Hydrate Mounds, which hold scientific significance and implications for Arctic governance and sustainable development, have recently been published in Nature Communications.

A 400-mile blanket of fog has socked in California's Central Valley for weeks. Scientists and meteorologists say the conditions for such persistent cloud cover are ripe: an early wet season, cold temperatures and a stable, unmoving high pressure system.

A swarm of at least a dozen earthquakes reaching up to magnitude 3.9 rattled San Ramon near San Francisco, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.

"Kablooey!" That's the word U.S. Geological Survey volcanic experts used to describe a muddy eruption at Black Diamond Pool in Yellowstone National Park on Saturday morning.

Wildfires may disappear from the landscape within weeks, but their hidden effects on the soil can persist for decades. An international research team led by the University of Göttingen, together with partners in Tübingen, Berlin and Chile, has shown how wildfires in humid temperate rainforests and Mediterranean woodlands of central Chile lead to very different pathways of soil recovery and ecosystem resilience. The study shows that soil structure and nutrients continue to change for more than a decade after a fire. The results are published in the journal Catena.

Several hundred volcanoes lie dormant beneath the Eifel in western Germany. They are typical examples of what is known as distributed volcanic fields. To better understand their formation and activity, researchers from the GFZ Helmholtz Center for Geosciences and partner institutions conducted Germany's largest seismological volcano experiment in this region between September 2022 and August 2023.

In recent years, the global climate has become increasingly extreme, with intensifying alternations of droughts and floods—particularly in ecologically vulnerable mid-latitude regions. But what is driving this hydroclimatic variability? Scientists have long debated the underlying mechanisms.

Trees contain valuable information about Earth's past, so much so that studying their rings may help fill in hidden gaps in Ohio's environmental history.

Camp Mystic in Texas flooded on July 4, killing 27 people, including 25 children. Over 200 millimeters (over seven inches) of rain fell over the area in 12 hours, and the Guadalupe River rose nearly 8 meters (26 feet) in just 45 minutes.

Mountain permafrost is warming and thawing worldwide due to climate change, with ground temperature being a key control of its mechanical stability. Heat conduction is the dominant mode of heat transfer in frozen ground, and thermal diffusivity governs the rate at which temperature changes propagate through the subsurface. Despite its relevance, there are few field-based estimates of thermal diffusivity.

An international assessment report has been released to provide definitive statements on the atmospheric impacts from a huge volcanic eruption in 2022.

An international research expedition involving Cornell has uncovered new details as to why a 2011 earthquake northeast of Japan behaved so unusually as it lifted the seafloor and produced a tsunami that devastated coastal communities along with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

New findings about ocean processes in the Antarctic show melting ice shelves and changes to sea ice could have catastrophic implications for the global climate.

Wildfires on Alaska's North Slope were more active this past century than at any time in the past 3,000 years, according to a study published in the journal Biogeosciences.

British policymakers planning for climate change now have detailed worst-case scenarios at their disposal, filling a gap that left the UK unprepared for extreme outcomes.

Just when we thought we had described all the possible marine environmental recipients of plastic pollution, new research comes in to overturn the picture.