Phys.org: Earth science

Scientists in Scotland have developed a new method to understand the heat and intensity of fires that burned out millions of years ago, which could unlock our understanding of wildfires during past and present periods of climate change.

Recent wildfires are larger and more intense than they've ever been in the historical record. If you've been watching the news at any point in the last decade, that's no surprise.

The surface of the Earth's inner core may be changing, as shown by a new study by USC scientists that detected structural changes near the planet's center, published in Nature Geoscience.

In 2018, the side of the Anak Krakatau volcano collapsed in a powerful eruption and produced a tsunami that killed hundreds and injured thousands on nearby Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. A new analysis of satellite data showed the mountainside was slipping for years and accelerated before the eruption—information that could have potentially offered a warning of the collapse.

Throughout the world, extreme weather is driving a growing death toll, exacting billions in damage, threatening food and water security and escalating forced migration. Yet some of the most sophisticated climate models—computer simulations of the Earth's vast, complex climate system, based upon the laws of physics—are missing crucial signals.

Beryllium-10, a rare radioactive isotope produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, provides valuable insights into the Earth's geological history. A research team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), in collaboration with the TUD Dresden University of Technology and the Australian National University (ANU), has discovered an unexpected accumulation of this isotope in samples taken from the Pacific seabed.

TIMES is the title of the international team's project, which is an acronym for "Time Integrated Matrix for Earth Sciences." The idea behind it is to launch a global program with the aim of synchronizing age models for particularly important geological climate records from the past 100 million years. The researchers have now outlined their motivation and necessity for this program in a publication in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.

A new study reveals that implementing enhanced weathering (EW), the practice of adding crushed basalt to soils, with U.S. agriculture could remove between 160 and 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere annually by 2050, rising to 250 to 490 million tons of CO2 removal by 2070.

Drylands, characterized by an aridity index (AI) below 0.65, cover about 45% of the Earth's land and support more than 3 billion people. Severe water scarcity in these areas poses significant risks to human well-being and ecosystems. However, our understanding of long-term changes in surface water storage and their causes is limited due to insufficient high-quality data with adequate coverage and resolution.

In 2016, nearly 200 world leaders pledged to do everything possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Since then, policymakers across the globe have designed countless laws around the assumption that warming would never cross that threshold.

Heavy metals naturally occur in the Earth's crust, but human activities can increase their concentration in the environment, including domestic sewage and waste disposal, fumes from vehicle exhausts, fertilizer runoff, mining and fuel leaks from ships. These elements, such as arsenic, lead and mercury, can be highly toxic even in small amounts and bioaccumulate persistently, proving harmful to humans and wildlife.

On February 8, 2024, NASA launched its PACE climate satellite with the Dutch aerosol instrument SPEXone onboard. A full year of observations now yields a world map of aerosols.

An accumulation of weak to moderate earthquakes has been recorded around the Greek island of Santorini since 24 January. The seismic activity is concentrated in the area between the islands of Santorini and Amorgos, with a center around 25 km northeast of Santorini.

As pandemic lockdowns forced humans into isolation, Earth's vegetation was thriving. The year 2020 was the greenest in modern satellite records from 2001 to 2020, according to a recent study published in Remote Sensing of Environment. Consistent growth in northern and temperate regions, combined with a brief period of tropical growth, primarily led to this remarkably verdant period.

The great ice streams of the Antarctic and Greenland are like frozen rivers, carrying ice from the massive inland ice sheets to the sea—and a change in their dynamics will contribute significantly to sea-level rise.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by microbial decomposition of soil organic carbon on a global scale is approximately five times greater than the amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Thus, it is essential to clarify the impact of climate change on soil CO2 release dynamics.

Polluted runoff is still smothering the Great Barrier Reef, our first national assessment of water quality trends in Australian rivers has revealed. The problem on the reef is getting worse, not better, despite efforts to improve farming practices and billions of dollars committed by governments to water-quality improvements.

In a new paper published in Nature Geoscience, experts from Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI) advocate for the use of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) methods in geoscience.

A new climate modeling study published in the journal Science Advances by researchers from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea presents a new scenario of how climate and life on our planet would change in response to a potential future strike of a medium-sized (~500 m) asteroid.

Reducing sulfur in the air may inadvertently increase natural emissions of methane from wetlands such as peatlands and swamps, a new study has found.