Phys.org: Earth science

Antarctica is at risk of abrupt and potentially irreversible changes to the continent's ice, ocean and ecosystems that could have profound implications for Australia and beyond, unless urgent action is taken to curb global carbon emissions.

In a bright, open laboratory nestled along Washington State's Sequim Bay, among rows of glassware filled with seawater and green and purple seaweed, researchers are investigating a new way to produce the critical minerals that are vital to everyday life.

Ash dieback and other tree diseases are resulting in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought because a large amount of carbon is escaping from woodland soils, a study has found. This is in addition to carbon losses from tens of millions of dying trees and reduced removal of CO2 from the atmosphere due to the widespread deaths of mature ash trees.

What lies beneath Fickle Hill in northern California? Maybe the answer to an earthquake mystery that has puzzled seismologists for decades.

The Amazon is the world's largest rainforest. It harbors immense biodiversity and plays a crucial role in the global climate system by storing vast amounts of carbon in its vegetation.

The odds of high-severity wildfire were nearly one-and-a-half times higher on industrial private land than on publicly owned forests, a new study found. Forests managed by timber companies were more likely to exhibit the conditions that megafires love—dense stands of regularly spaced trees with continuous vegetation connecting the understory to the canopy.

Earth's climate is a dynamic system of interconnected physical processes and events occurring around the globe. Many of these processes are coupled so that changes in one event or process in one geographical area will result in changes in many other geographical areas. It is one of the challenges in climate science to understand the various processes, how they affect each other and how they change over time and space.