Phys.org: Earth science

Researchers have made the ground shake in southern Switzerland, triggering thousands of tiny earthquakes in a monitored setting, as they seek to discover seismicity insights that could reduce risks.

On the evening of Aug. 9, 2025, passengers on the Hanse Explorer finished taking selfies and videos of the South Sawyer Glacier, and the ship headed back down the fjord. Twelve hours later, a landslide from the adjacent mountain unexpectedly collapsed into the fjord, initiating the second-highest tsunami in recorded history.

A key Atlantic Ocean current system that helps regulate the planet's climate could weaken more than expected by 2100, with potentially devastating consequences worldwide, a new study has found.

How are cold air masses advancing in the United States connected to fertilizers carried by "flying rivers" from Africa that nourish the soils of the Brazilian Amazon? An article published in Geophysical Research Letters reveals an atmospheric connection between these distant regions.

We replaced the stove with plywood, turning the kitchen of the dive boat into an impromptu research lab. Plugging in wires and connecting tubing, we assembled a scientific instrument within the cramped cabin. Then we cast off into Halifax Harbor, Canada, surveying the turquoise waters for signs of an unusual test: could we use the ocean itself to remove carbon dioxide from the air?

Imagine being tasked with counting every blade of grass in a field, noting every single species as you go. This is not far from the challenge many scientists face when analyzing microscopic samples packed with thousands of tiny particles.

What's the link between the global economy and the climate? Consumption drives extraction and carbon emissions. But there is more. The inequalities of the global economy don't just shape what goes into the atmosphere. They affect our understanding of the climate and our perspectives when it comes to possible solutions.

When Cyclone Gabrielle tore through New Zealand's Tairāwhiti region in 2023, it left behind more than silt and floodwaters.

A huge 11,000-carat ruby has been discovered in Myanmar, state media reported Friday, one of the largest ever found in the country renowned for its precious gemstones.

Antarctica is being ravaged by a triple-whammy of climate chaos that has melted sea ice to record lows, a new study has revealed. For decades, the frozen wilderness at the bottom of the world defied global warming trends, with ice levels actually growing—until 2015 when it suddenly reversed.

Every dollar spent on forest fuel treatments saves about $3.75 in wildfire damages, according to a new study, led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, of nearly 300 fires in the western United States. The study estimated that the treatments, such as forest thinning and prescribed burns, prevented $2.8 billion in losses, reduced wildfire spread and fire severity.

A devastating earthquake in Myanmar is giving scientists new insight into how major quakes start, spread, and grow. The findings could improve risk estimates for dangerous faults around the world. A new study, published in the journal Science and led by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, finds that faults that appear structurally simple can produce surprisingly complex earthquakes.

As the Arctic warms at an unprecedented rate, frozen soils that have remained locked in ice for most of the year are now thawing for longer periods. Yet new research led by an international team including scientists from Queen Mary University of London has found that these seasonal thaws only partially revive the hidden ecosystem beneath the surface.

Over the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, winds can whip around the globe relatively unimpeded by land. Intrepid sailors termed these southern latitudes the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties on account of the strong prevailing winds.

Climate change makes the southern Amazon's rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that "tipping point" arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.

Global sea levels may rise faster than previously expected, suggests a new study in Nature Communications. The reason is that warming oceans appear to be melting Antarctic ice shelves from below much more rapidly than expected.

The biological productivity of the Southern Ocean in the summertime is substantially greater than many previous estimates have suggested, according to new airborne research by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR). The findings provide new insight into the global carbon cycle and point to a reason why Earth system models have struggled to accurately capture the role of the Southern Ocean: Models that underestimate the ocean's biological productivity also tend to underestimate the ocean's capacity to uptake carbon.

The vast, deserted South Pacific is considered unspoiled nature. But this ocean is not as unspoiled as we would like to think. A new study by a group of researchers from ETH Zurich and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel sheds light on this premise.

Almost 60 countries, representing about a third of the global economy, met in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta for the first international summit on the transition away from fossil fuels.

Around two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest could shift into degraded forest or savanna-like ecosystems at 1.5–1.9°C of global warming if deforestation increases to roughly 22–28% of the Amazon, according to a new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published in Nature. Without additional deforestation, by contrast, such large-scale changes would likely occur only at much higher warming levels of around 3.7–4°C.