Phys.org: Earth science

Just a few minutes of freezing and thawing can have a decisive impact on how ferrihydrite, the most reactive iron mineral in cold soils, permafrost and glaciers, transforms, according to researchers at Umeå University. As climate warming intensifies freeze-thaw cycles and extends them into new regions, ice is becoming an increasingly important driver of Earth's ecosystems.

More than 150 people are dead and hundreds more are missing after an enormous wave of water, ice, mud and rock cascaded more than 170 kilometers (106 miles) down the Bhote Koshi River valley in Nepal. The valley is the main link between Kathmandu in Nepal and Lhasa in Tibet. At least 34 Australians are missing. There was little warning.

As an El Niño of historic proportions is taking shape in the tropical Pacific, a University of Michigan study has found that El Niño events have become nearly 40% stronger in the last 40 years than they were in the preindustrial era.

Climate change was once something scientists warned us about, and now it's a reality we are living in. In California's Central Valley, about one-third of climate-related groundwater loss between 2003 and 2024 can be attributed to emissions from the same actors. Scientists call them the "Carbon Majors," a group of 122 corporations that are the world's largest producers of oil, gas, coal and cement.

Spreading finely crushed basalt across farmland has been promoted as a relatively simple way to remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study led by Cornell researchers suggests the real-world potential of this method, known as enhanced weathering, may be far smaller than widely cited estimates.

Florida gets a lot of attention for its sinkholes, especially when they swallow cars and entire houses. But its sinkhole risk has nothing on Alaska's.

An international study led by researchers at the George Washington University indicates clear global evidence that permafrost is thawing across much of the planet. Using more than two decades of field observations from 156 monitoring sites across the Arctic, Antarctic and high-mountain regions, the study found increases in the thickness of the active layer, the uppermost layer above permafrost that thaws and refreezes each year. The findings confirm that permafrost degradation accelerated globally between 2000 and 2024.

The use of fossil fuels alters both the concentration and the carbon isotope composition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since surface water exchanges carbon dioxide with the atmosphere, this also alters the isotopic composition of the carbon dissolved in the ocean. In a new study, a team from MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen has now determined how deep this so-called Suess effect has already penetrated into the North Atlantic.

Whenever there's a series of destructive or notable earthquakes, scientists get asked the same question: Are earthquakes becoming more frequent?

Unlike conventional glaciers, rock glaciers appear as piles of rock that obscure large masses of unaccounted-for ice. Rock glaciers are common in the Wasatch and Uinta ranges, even appearing on the Colorado Plateau in the La Sal Mountains near Moab.

A new study that combines paleoclimate data and climate models suggests that large volcanic eruptions can disrupt the relationship between atmospheric circulation patterns over the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans. In addition, human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are now driving an unprecedented breakdown in interbasin coupling, according to researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Pure water freezes only at around -38°C (-36°F). Tiny mineral dust particles act as so-called ice nucleators—crystallization seeds on which ice crystals form. A research team at Bielefeld University and the University of Vienna, in cooperation with researchers at the University of Helsinki, has now demonstrated for the first time at the molecular scale why the mineral microcline is particularly effective at forming ice in clouds. The study, published in published in the journal Nature Communications, provides a new explanation for processes that influence climate and precipitation worldwide.

Selma Sarı and an international group of colleagues investigated the TOL-1 section in the Mut Basin (southern Türkiye), while documenting the world's highest known Late Middle Pleistocene (MIS 7) marine deposits, preserved at 1,177 m (3,860 feet) above mean sea level on the southern margin of the Central Anatolian Plateau.

Can a city's seawall stand up to a blockbuster storm? Will a region's power grid hold against record-breaking heat? And can a town's firefighting resources contain a major wildfire?

From Texas to Maine, coastal wetlands and marshes are releasing more than 1.45 billion pounds (660,000 metric tons) of carbon into the ocean each year, according to new research supported by NASA. Coastal marshes, like forests and tundra, store large amounts of carbon in their plants and soil, but changes caused by storms, rising seas and human development can affect how that carbon is stored and transported.

Tide levels can vary by almost a meter across a single bay, according to a new study that uses decades of satellite images to measure tides at the scale of individual beaches.

Marine heat waves and extreme ocean acidification events are each damaging on their own. But when both stressors hit simultaneously, their individual effects can be exacerbated.

Under global warming, scientists have widely expected tropical cyclones (including typhoons and hurricanes) to bring more intense and frequent rainfall. The underlying physics seems intuitive: Rising temperatures allow the atmosphere to hold more moisture, which, combined with intensifying storms, should theoretically trigger more destructive downpours. However, when researchers analyze climate model projections, they encounter a puzzling phenomenon.

A new study has reconciled a long-standing paradox in the South Asian summer monsoon cycle. Climate scientists have discovered why geological records from land and sea have told opposite stories about monsoons throughout history and found that rising temperatures over Southern Africa reduce upwelling in the Arabian Sea, which could damage marine productivity and fisheries. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As autumn gives way to winter across the Arctic, the ground doesn't immediately freeze solid. Instead, soils often linger near the freezing point for days or even weeks in a phase called the zero curtain. In a new NASA-led study, researchers produced high-resolution maps of the Arctic zero curtain.