Phys.org: Earth science

A study led by researchers from Brown University finds that rainfall patterns across northern Africa remained largely stable between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago—a pivotal period in Earth's climate history when the Northern Hemisphere cooled and places like Greenland became permanently glaciated.

The Earth is rapidly warming, and similar climate upheavals over 300 million years ago once triggered massive fluctuations in marine life.

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, became a widespread catastrophe due to the collapse of vulnerable buildings, which directly led to the majority of deaths and destruction, according to a new report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

Over the last two decades, the scientific community has made rapid strides in understanding climate change and air pollution—but progress on their combined effects remains limited. Traditional models often gloss over the complex web of interactions between land, sea, and sky, especially when simulating compound events like heat waves coinciding with stagnant air. These gaps are particularly troubling in densely populated coastal and urban zones, where human exposure is highest.

Volcanic islands, such as the islands of Hawaii and the Caribbean, are surrounded by coral reefs that encircle an island in a labyrinthine, living ring. A coral reef is punctured at points by reef passes—wide channels that cut through the coral and serve as conduits for ocean water and nutrients to filter in and out. These watery passageways provide circulation throughout a reef, helping to maintain the health of corals by flushing out freshwater and transporting key nutrients.

A research team led by the University of Aberdeen has developed a pioneering AI model to improve accuracy and reduce computational time in land cover mapping, particularly for vegetation.

Due to global warming, the North Atlantic Oscillation, an atmospheric circulation pattern that strongly influences European weather, is becoming more extreme in the summer, according to a study published in Communications Earth & Environment.

As Earth's largest carbon reservoir, the ocean locks carbon away from the atmosphere. However, scientists still struggle to measure and monitor exactly how much carbon is stored in the ocean, hindering efforts to model and respond to our changing climate.

Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science on June 19.

In Europe, people are increasingly exposed to extreme heat events—with serious consequences for human health, ecosystems, and agriculture. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology have developed and tested a method that can be used to improve the prediction of European hot summers up to a few years in advance.

Algae in the ocean can pose a significant risk to humans, marine life, and the seafood industry. Under favorable conditions for algae growth, certain algae species can multiply rapidly, a phenomenon known as algal blooms. Although algae always release small amounts of toxins, a massive increase in algae numbers leads to a high concentration of toxins in the water. These toxins can accumulate in marine organisms, such as mussels.

Humans have been reshaping the environment for at least 10,000 years. But the Anthropocene is the name given to the specific period of Earth history during which humans have had a global effect on the planet's climate and ecosystems. Despite formal rejection as a geological epoch, it's widely understood within academic research as useful shorthand for the age of human interference in the Earth system.

Earth's cloud cover is rapidly shrinking and contributing to record-breaking temperatures, according to new research involving the Monash-led Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for 21st Century Weather.

Intense, short-lived summer downpours are expected to become both more frequent and more intense across Alpine regions as the climate warms. In a new study, scientists from the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the University of Padova analyzed data from nearly 300 mountain weather stations and found that a 2°C rise in regional temperature could double the frequency of these extreme events.

Scientists used satellite data, drones and on-the-ground observations to assess the edges of existing peatlands (waterlogged ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon). The study—led by the University of Exeter—found peatlands in the European and Canadian Arctic have expanded outwards in the last 40 years.

The central estimate of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C is 130 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) (from the beginning of 2025). This would be exhausted in a little more than three years at current levels of CO2 emissions, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study published in the journal Earth System Science Data, and the budget for 1.6°C or 1.7°C could be exceeded within nine years.

An international team of geoscientists, chemists and climate scientists, has found evidence of a possible ghost plume beneath the territory of Oman. In their paper published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the group describes the different types of evidence for the plume they found and what it could mean for the study of plate tectonics.

Submarine canyons around Antarctica tend to have less sea ice, higher sea surface temperatures, and more biomass such as phytoplankton blooms than the shelves they cut into. Phytoplankton blooms feed Antarctic krill, making these canyons an attractive feeding ground for larger predators such as penguins, who make permanent homes for foraging and breeding on the shores surrounding submarine canyons.

During the last ice age, storms soaked the now-arid Southwestern U.S., while today's rainy Pacific Northwest remained relatively dry. As global temperatures rose and ice sheets retreated, those storms shifted north—reshaping the climate patterns that define both regions today.

A new tool that assesses the level of danger posed by tsunamis in real-time has been made operational on a global scale.