Phys.org: Earth science

The aridity index is an invaluable tool used for estimating how dry (or how humid) a location is based on the precipitation and evapotranspiration occurring in the area. It is useful for predicting the severity of droughts, studying water availability changes due to climate change, and determining the allocation of water in resource planning.

USGS streamgages show flood conditions are now underway, with live cameras providing real-time views on the USGS HIVIS website. Glacier-caused flooding has become an annual threat since 2011, with record-breaking floods over the past two years that impacted more than 300 homes and threatened public safety.

Since the mid-1990s, the Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass, leaving only three floating tongues remaining. One of these, Nioghalvfjerdsbræ or the 79°N Glacier, is already showing the first signs of instability.

Using geochemical analyses of marine sediments, researchers have been able to quantitatively reconstruct the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation over the past 12,000 years. The international research team, led by scientists from Heidelberg University and the University of Bern (Switzerland), is the first to calculate the large-scale circulation patterns of the Holocene. Their reconstruction shows that, while the AMOC experienced natural fluctuations over millennia, it remained stable for long periods of time.

The Mediterranean Sea is particularly susceptible to marine heat waves—such as the record-breaking 2022 heat wave, which was characterized by anomalously high sea surface temperatures—due to the interplay of air-sea heat fluxes and local oceanographic processes, leading to significant impacts on marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

As human activity across the world's oceans expands, scientists are zeroing in on shifts in atmospheric composition—particularly ozone, a key player in marine atmospheric chemistry. In a new study, researchers have completed China's first shipborne ozone-sounding campaign in the South China Sea, yielding high-resolution data that addresses a gap in understanding oceanic ozone dynamics.

A new wave of climate research is sounding a stark warning: Human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has tracked changes in more than 114,000 rivers in High Mountain Asia over a 15-year period. The paper, published in AGU Advances, reported that nearly 10% of these rivers saw an increase in flow, with an increasing proportion of that water coming from glacial ice melt compared to precipitation.

Extreme rainfall in New Zealand from future cyclones could rise by up to 35%. New high-resolution modeling predicts that rainfall from tropical cyclones will significantly increase under global warming.

Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have published a paper in Communications Earth & Environment that demonstrates for the first time that using data gathered on atmospheric particles from Chinese megacities to characterize air quality for U.S. urban centers leads to significant inaccuracies.

An international study led by Prof. Tamar Guy-Haim and Dr. Ximena Velasquez from the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research (IOLR) has revealed that tiny planktonic crustaceans carry a unique microbial signature that better reflects ocean currents and environmental gradients than microbes found freely in seawater.

As glaciers melt, huge chunks of ice break free and splash into the sea, generating tsunami-sized waves and leaving behind a powerful wake as they drift away. This process, called calving, is important for researchers to understand. But the front of a glacier is a dangerous place for data collection.

On May 12, 2008, the magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake shook central China, its destructive tremors spreading from the flank of the Longmen Shan, or Dragon's Gate Mountains, along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau.

In the journal Nature, 21 leading scientists prescribe ways to use food systems to halt and reverse land degradation, underlining that doing so must become a top global priority to mitigate climate change and stop biodiversity loss.

Research in the International Journal of Hydrology Science and Technology has shown that conventional approaches to measuring water storage across Europe's complex river systems may significantly underrepresent the scale and severity of changes linked to climate change.

From its olive groves to its coastal cities, the Mediterranean depends on a delicate balance of rain and sun, but climate change is tipping the scales.

By 2080, rising sea levels could cause seasonal waves to reach Ahu Tongariki, the iconic ceremonial platform that is part of the Rapa Nui National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site, according to a study published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage by a team of researchers from the UH at Mānoa. This coastal flooding also threatens 51 cultural assets in the area, including Rapa Nui's world-renowned moai statues.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have helped develop an advanced, real-time tsunami forecasting system—powered by El Capitan, the world's fastest supercomputer—that could dramatically improve early warning capabilities for coastal communities near earthquake zones.

Hydrogen-producing hydrothermal systems in the deep ocean are rare but critical to understanding Earth's internal processes and the conditions that may have fostered life's origins. Now scientists from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) have discovered a massive hydrogen-rich hydrothermal system beneath the western Pacific seafloor, offering a new glimpse into deep-sea serpentinization—a process in which iron- and magnesium-rich rocks chemically react with water to form serpentine minerals and release hydrogen.

What could the next mega-earthquake on California's notorious San Andreas fault look like?