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As high-latitude soils warm, microbes in the soil change how they handle nutrients like nitrogen. Normally, these microbes are nitrogen recyclers, pulling it from the soil and turning it into inorganic forms—like ammonium and nitrates—that plants can absorb. But a new study published in Global Change Biology suggests that with rising temperatures, microbes are changing their strategy. They take up more nitrogen for themselves while reducing the amount they release back into the environment. This change alters the flow of nitrogen through the ecosystem, potentially slowing vegetation growth and affecting the rate at which our planet warms.

These findings come from experiments carried out in subarctic grasslands near Hveragerði, Iceland. In 2008, earthquakes rerouted groundwater in an area that had been warmed by geothermal gradients, creating patches of soil heated between 0.5°C and 40°C above normal temperatures. The event turned the region into a natural laboratory where researchers could study how ecosystems respond to long-term warming under natural conditions.

Earlier research in this location had already shown that in warming soils, microbes become highly active while plants are dormant. As a result, nitrogen-containing compounds released into the soil by the microbes were lost, either by leaching into groundwater or by escaping into the atmosphere as the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.

An abandoned greenhouse near the experimental sites in Iceland serves as a reminder that climate change is having an especially strong effect on high-latitude soils. Credit: Sara Marañón Jiménez

In this work, scientists added nitrogen-15 to the soil, which they could track to determine how much the plants had used up and what they did with it. Researchers found that after the initial nutrient loss, microbes became more conservative in their handling of nitrogen, recycling nitrogen internally rather than absorbing more from the ground. At the same time, microbes stopped releasing ammonium, a nitrogen-rich by-product of their normal metabolism that is usable by plants—the microbial equivalent of urine, said study coauthor Sara Marañón Jiménez, a soil scientist at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications in Spain.

Nitrogen Heist

This change in nitrogen cycling has important consequences for the whole ecosystem. On the one hand, it has a positive effect because it prevents further nitrogen loss.

“The study shows that nitrogen is not released as inorganic nitrogen, but it seems to go directly in an organic loop,” said Sara Hallin, a soil microbiologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala who was not involved in the study. “You could say that it’s a positive aspect, and so it’s more beneficial for the ecosystem if that nitrogen is sort of retained.”

“If microorganisms start immobilizing nitrogen, it could lead to competition between microbes and plants.”

On the other hand, microbes’ nutrient-hoarding behavior might reduce nitrogen availability for plants. “There’s a delicate feedback between plants that take nitrogen, make photosynthesis, and put carbon in the soil as organic matter and microorganisms that take this organic matter, recycle it, and release nitrogen in forms the plants can use,” Marañón Jiménez said. “If microorganisms start immobilizing nitrogen, it could lead to competition between microbes and plants.”

The team is now working on a study to determine what exactly happens to soil at the very early stage of warming, before nutrients have been lost. “This way we hope to recover the first chapters, to see what we’ve been missing,”

To this end, they transplanted bits of normal soils into heated areas to study the process in detail from the very beginning. “Soils exposed to [soil] temperature increases showed the same nutrient loss after 5 years [as] after 10 years,” Marañón Jiménez said, suggesting that most of the nutrient loss occurs early on.

A Greenhouse Time Bomb

Climate models may be underestimating how the loss of nitrogen and carbon from cold soils is contributing to global warming, researchers said. Disruptions to nutrient cycling at these latitudes could represent a previously overlooked source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Arctic soils store massive amounts of carbon, built up over thousands of years from plant material that microbes cannot fully break down. This partially decomposed organic matter accumulates, forming one of the largest carbon reservoirs on Earth. As temperatures rise, scientists expect microbes to become more active, accelerating decomposition and releasing much of this stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

“As biomass is lost from the microbial mass, that means there’s less storage capacity for carbon and nitrogen in the soil, leading to poorer soils where plants can’t grow as well.”

Researchers had hoped warmer temperatures would allow plants to grow more vigorously, absorbing some of the extra carbon released by Arctic soils.

The new findings call this idea into question. “It’s a chain reaction,” Marañón Jiménez explained. “As biomass is lost from the microbial mass, that means there’s less storage capacity for carbon and nitrogen in the soil, leading to poorer soils where plants can’t grow as well, and plants cannot compensate emissions by absorbing more carbon.”

Studying these geothermally heated soils could yield confusing results, though. “It’s not really the way global warming works,” Hallin said. Global warming includes increases in air temperature, she explained, whereas the plants in the current study had only their root system in a warmer climate, not their aboveground shoot system. “That could potentially cause some effects [the researchers] are not accounting for,” she said.

Finally, the authors of the new study also warn that not all soils have the same response to warming. The Icelandic soils in this study are volcanic and rich in minerals, unlike the organic peat soils that dominate many Arctic regions. Deep peatlands in Scandinavia and northern Russia store vast amounts of carbon and may behave differently, highlighting the need for similar long-term studies across a wider range of Arctic landscapes.

—Javier Barbuzano (@javibar.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Barbuzano, J. (2026), As some soils warm, microbes stockpile essential nutrients, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260043. Published on 28 January 2026. Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: GeoHealth

Polluted air causes an estimated 7 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization. Much of the mortality comes from PM2.5, particulate pollution smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that can enter the lungs and bloodstream and cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems. In addition to particles emitted directly into the atmosphere, ammonia (NH3), nitrogen oxides (NOX), and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which are emitted by factories, ships, cars, and power plants, are all precursors that can contribute to the formation of PM2.5. The effects of particulate pollution are not evenly distributed, however.

Oztaner et al. model the consequences of air pollution across the Northern Hemisphere by region, offering a more granular look at where targeted mitigation policies could be the most beneficial. Using the multiphase adjoint model of EPA’s Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling platform, the authors assessed the benefits of mitigating various pollutants from the perspective of both lives and money saved. Monetary values of air pollution impacts were calculated using a well-established method used by international agencies, although the method introduces ethical concerns because it assigns values to lives partly based on different countries’ per capita gross domestic products (GDP).

Overall, they found that a 10% reduction in all modeled emissions could save 513,700 lives and $1.2 trillion each year in the Northern Hemisphere.

The largest mortality reductions came from China and India, where cutting emissions would save 184,000 and 124,000 lives, respectively, each year. The largest cost savings were found in China, followed by Europe and North America. Health benefits also varied by type of emissions and sector. NH3 causes more issues in China, whereas NOX is relatively more harmful in Europe than in other places. Across the Northern Hemisphere, the agricultural sector contributes most to particulate and precursor pollution, with a 10% reduction in agriculture-related emissions projected to save 95,000 lives and an estimated $290 billion. This is followed by the residential and industrial sectors.

The authors note that caution is warranted when comparing results across similar studies, in part because the link between pollutant concentrations and health outcomes is not always linear and in part because different regions may have different methodologies when accounting for emissions by sector. Also, their study focuses only on PM2.5-related mortality and does not consider other pollutants, such as ozone. Overall, they suggest their work offers a meaningful reference for comparing the effects of different pollutant mitigation strategies in the Northern Hemisphere. (GeoHealth, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GH001533, 2026)

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2026), Which countries are paying the highest price for particulate air pollution?, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260026. Published on 28 January 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Mangrove forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle, particularly within the marine carbon system. Growing along tropical and subtropical coastlines, these salt-tolerant trees are among nature's most efficient "blue carbon" sinks, capturing and burying vast amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm Earth's atmosphere. Much of this carbon is stored in thick, waterlogged soils, where it can remain locked away for centuries, making mangroves a major contributor to long-term coastal carbon sequestration.

SummaryGeothermal energy production emits significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide (H2S). A strategy to mitigate the emissions is to reinject the H2S into basaltic formations, where it reacts with the rock to form pyrite. Due to the polarization properties of pyrite, the direct current resistivity (DC) and induced polarization (IP) geophysical method (i.e., DCIP) has shown the potential for monitoring H2S mineral storage. However, field applications of DCIP monitoring have been limited by the low spatial coverage of wireline logging and by the ambiguity in interpreting IP signals due to multiple processes that contribute to the polarization response. This study integrates DCIP with field-scale reactive transport modeling, utilizing both synthetic modeling and field investigations, to assess the ability of surface and cross-hole DCIP to monitor H2S mineral storage at the Nesjavellir study site in Iceland. Two surface DCIP datasets were collected at Nesjavellir, with six months of continuous H2S injection between them. Time-lapse inversions, performed using a novel gridding scheme that accounts for electrode misplacement between the two DCIP surveys, recover no significant IP changes beyond data noise. Interpreting these results alongside the reactive transport results finds that pyrite mineralization during the six-month injection period is too small and too deep to be resolved by surface DCIP time-lapse surveying, highlighting the benefit of a joint geophysical-geochemical interpretation approach. Conversely, joint DCIP-reactive transport synthetic modeling shows the potential of cross-hole DCIP for monitoring long-term H2S mineral storage, provided that data noise is low and sufficient H2S is injected. The reactive transport models also provide insight into the mechanisms contributing to the polarization response, demonstrating that pyrite mineralization is the primary contributor to the polarization response, with minimal contribution from other minerals such as smectites and iron oxides. However, existing petrophysical relationships are simplistic, which adds uncertainty to the interpretation of the DCIP signal and the quantification of pyrite mineralization. Additionally, smectite formation has been shown to decrease both the polarization signals and the quality of the IP data due to its electrically conductive properties. At Nesjavellir, a decrease in the DC resistivity from 1925 to 325 Ωm is observed, attributed to the disposal of warm wastewater. This decrease is identified by comparing resistivity data collected in this study to historical vertical electrical sounding data collected prior to geothermal development. Lastly, petrophysical relationships linking DC resistivity, smectite content, and permeability suggest a high basalt fracture permeability of 7.9× 10−12 m2, which agrees with values recovered through flow model calibrations. This result demonstrates the value of geophysical surveying not only for monitoring but also for constraining key parameters in reactive transport simulations.

SummaryMegathrust earthquakes occur at subduction zones and produce many of the largest magnitude earthquakes on record. The ruptures of megathrust earthquakes have classically been thought to nucleate at asperities, zones on the subduction interface of rheological strength which accumulate strain as the plates move. Imaging such asperities would critically inform seismic hazard analyses, to the benefit of millions who live adjacent to major subduction boundaries. We created a 3D shear wave attenuation (QS) tomography of the 2015 MW 8.3 Illapel, Chile, earthquake rupture region by measuring QS using a body wave S/P spectral ratio method along 3,852 ray paths between 708 aftershocks of the 2015 earthquake and a network of 22 broadband seismometers. We then used these measurements in a 3D nonnegative least-squares regression inversion to determine the subsurface QS structure. We identify high QS anomalies on the Nazca – South America subduction interface in the Illapel region which correlate spatially with areas of high frequency seismic radiation and high coseismic slip from the 2015 earthquake, and we interpret these anomalies as asperities. We also observe elongated bands of alternating high and low QS on the plate interface which match the orientation of normal fault fabrics on the surface of the subducting Nazca plate. We interpret the high QS bands as subducted horsts, which are materially strong and prominent, and behave as asperities; low QS bands are subducted grabens full of more attenuating subducted sediments and underplated continental material. These structures guided the rupture of the Illapel earthquake: nucleation occurred in a region of moderate QS (∼400) within a graben, but propagated to two adjacent high QS (> 1000) asperities which were critically stressed to near-failure, one on a horst directly up dip and another on a horst directly down dip. Both of these asperities subsequently failed, causing a cascading rupture which characterized the great earthquake.

SummaryOver the past few decades, the global number of dams has increased substantially. Water impounded behind these dams, resulting in elevated crustal pore pressure and altered stress distribution around reservoirs, could potentially trigger or suppress the failure of nearby faults, leading to transient changes in seismicity. In this study, we analyze 14 years (2006-2019) of spatiotemporal seismicity recorded by a dense local network in the Gotvand area (SW Iran), covering about 5.5 years before and 8.5 years after impoundment. The initial catalog, comprising over 48,000 relocated earthquakes, was reduced to 6,464 background events by adopting a 3D ETAS declustering model with a cutoff magnitude of 1.3. We analyze the spatiotemporal background seismicity pattern in the Gotvand area in comparison with calculated reservoir-related spatiotemporal stress changes relative to the initial stress state before water impoundment, approximating the Gotvand reservoir by 726-point sources covering the reservoir surface. We find that following the initiation of impoundment, the local background seismic activity slightly increased during the impounding, pointing to induced/triggered seismicity. However, most importantly, the impoundment of Gotvand lake has altered the spatial seismicity patterns, leading to a notable reduction in seismic activity in the central area of the reservoir, which is in agreement with the calculated negative Coulomb stress changes in the same area. Using the Coulomb-Rate-and-State seismicity model, we find that the spatiotemporal seismicity response due to the calculated stress changes is consistent with the observations.

SummaryWe present a statistically and computationally efficient spectral-domain maximum-likelihood procedure to solve for the structure of Gaussian spatial random fields within the Matérn covariance hyperclass. For univariate, stationary, and isotropic fields, the three controlling parameters are the process variance, smoothness, and range. The debiased Whittle likelihood maximization explicitly treats discretization and edge effects for finite sampled regions in parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification. As even the ‘best’ parameter estimate may not be ‘good enough’, we provide a test for whether the model specification itself warrants rejection. Our results are practical and relevant for the study of a variety of geophysical fields, and for spatial interpolation, out-of-sample extension, kriging, machine learning, and feature detection of geological data. We present procedural details and high-level results on real-world examples.

SummaryThe Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) altimeter mission provides high-resolution sea surface heights (SSHs), which can be used to retrieve high-precision and high-resolution marine gravity fields. However, data acquisition from the SWOT satellite’s Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) is characterized by a 20-km nadir gap and a seam gap. Interpolation methods were employed to fill the nadir and seam gaps in the SWOT/KaRIn SSHs. The 20-km nadir gaps were interpolated using SWOT/KaRIn SSHs from flanking swaths on both sides. To reduce temporal decorrelation, seam gap interpolation was performed separately for each pass using SWOT/KaRIn SSHs from adjacent passes. The vertical gradient of gravity anomaly (VGGA) model was inverted from the interpolated SWOT/KaRIn SSHs using least-squares collocation and the remove-restore methods. The study region was selected as the Philippine Sea, with SWOT/KaRIn SSHs from cycle-02 serving as the experimental dataset. SWOT/KaRIn SSHs were processed using four schemes: Kriging interpolation, Cubic Spline interpolation (CSI), mean sea surface (MSS) interpolation, and no interpolation. The VGGA models inverted from the respective processed SWOT/KaRIn SSHs are hereafter referred to as Kriging_SWOT_VGGA, CSI_SWOT_VGGA, MSS_SWOT_VGGA, and NO_SWOT_VGGA. The results show that the NO_SWOT_VGGA model exhibits distinct strip artifacts, whereas the interpolated VGGA models eliminate these artifacts. All interpolated VGGA models exhibited superior consistency with the reference model compared to the NO_SWOT_VGGA model. Among them, the Kriging_SWOT_VGGA model achieved optimal consistency. Therefore, this study on interpolation methods for SWOT/KaRIn SSHs provides a novel methodological framework for the recovery of high-precision marine gravity fields from SWOT observations.

Researchers at the University of Kansas have shown the National Severe Storms Laboratory's Warn-on-Forecast System (WoFS) has potential to help weather forecasters issue warnings to emergency managers and the general public well before tornado formation. Their study appears in the peer-reviewed journal Weather and Forecasting.

In its natural state, peatland is one of the largest carbon stores in nature. This is because the soil is so waterlogged and low in oxygen that dead plant material breaks down very slowly. The plants do not fully decompose but instead accumulate over thousands of years, forming thick layers of peat. When a peatland is drained for agricultural use, the water level drops and oxygen enters the peat layer. Microorganisms can then break down the old plant material much faster, releasing carbon that has been stored for many years as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) crowdsourcing platform Did You Feel It? (DYFI) rapidly transforms people's earthquake shaking intensity experiences into detailed maps of damage extent. While the tool's reach is global, language and technology barriers prevent participation in certain areas, according to a USGS and University of Michigan Engineering study published in Seismological Research Letters.

Mass extinctions are extremely catastrophic events on Earth. Throughout Earth's evolutionary history, numerous mass extinctions have occurred, with five major mass extinctions being particularly representative. These extinctions have reshaped the course of life's evolution on Earth. In addition to the five major mass extinctions, many frequent, lower-order extinctions have also taken place on Earth, such as the Norian–Rhaetian Extinction during the Triassic. Regarding the triggering mechanisms of extinctions, the five major events have been relatively well studied. However, the triggering mechanisms of the frequent lower-order extinctions remain unclear.

Narrow bands of ocean covering just over one-third of the world's seas are responsible for absorbing nearly three-quarters of the carbon dioxide that oceans pull from the atmosphere, new research shows. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, reveals ocean fronts play a far larger role in regulating Earth's carbon cycle than previously understood.

Smoke from wildfires may be responsible for 17,000 strokes each year in the United States, new research suggests.

The study, published in European Heart Journal, examined various sources of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (about 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair). Also known as PM2.5, such particles are so small that they can be inhaled and enter the bloodstream, where they have been linked to an array of health effects, including decreased lung function, cardiovascular diseases, and even neurological disorders. But the new study seems to indicate that PM2.5 from wildfires is particularly harmful.

“The longer you’re exposed to smoke, the greater your stroke risk.”

Scientists examined a cohort of about 25 million people over the age of 65 who were covered by Medicare, a federal health insurance program. Between 2007 and 2018, about 2.9 million of those people experienced a stroke. The researchers calculated the average amount of wildfire smoke, as well as nonsmoke PM2.5, that each study participant was exposed to over the course of each year on the basis of participants’ zip codes.

After 1, 2, or 3 years of exposure to nonsmoke PM2.5, the participants’ risk of stroke didn’t change much.

“But for smoke, this picture is very different,” said Yang Liu, a health and environmental scientist at Emory University and corresponding author of the paper. “It’s like you are seeing some kind of a dose-response effect: The longer you’re exposed to smoke, the greater your stroke risk.”

More specifically, the study found that an increase of 1 microgram per cubic meter in the average concentration of wildfire smoke was associated with a 1.3% increase in stroke risk. Researchers found that Medicaid-eligible individuals (those who qualify for the program have limited income and resources) were especially vulnerable to the effects of wildfire smoke.

Unique Harms of Wildfire Smoke

The researchers input air quality data from several sources, including satellites, ground-based air monitors, and low-cost sensors such as PurpleAir devices, into a machine learning framework. The framework was used to estimate the daily wildfire smoke PM2.5 and nonsmoke PM2.5 concentrations across the contiguous United States at a 1-kilometer resolution. The team then used this information to calculate the average exposure rates within each zip code over 1, 2, and 3 years.

Their model and subsequent analyses of the findings were also designed to control for other factors that could affect stroke risk, including meteorology (extreme heat can increase stroke risk), access to care, Medicaid eligibility, and substance abuse disorders.

Jennifer Stowell, a geohealth scientist at the University of Maryland, said this was an “important” study.

“I really like where this paper has gone because they’ve characterized exposure slightly differently,” she said. “Rather than looking at more acute exposure, they looked at up to 3 years of exposure prior to a stroke. Also, other studies, for the most part, rely on emergency department data. So the fact that this is data in addition to that, from doctors’ offices and all sorts of things, is a big plus.”

The study did not establish the reason for the link between wildfire smoke exposure and stroke risk, but previous studies have suggested that inhaling pollutants can cause oxidative stress that affects the function of the endothelial cells (those lining the blood and lymphatic vessels) and of the cardiovascular system as a whole.

The study’s findings are also in line with previous research: A 2021 study suggested that PM2.5 from wildfires is up to 10 times more harmful than PM2.5 from other sources, such as ambient pollution.

“It all comes down to what [materials] wildfires are burning,” Stowell said. “There is a lot of organic matter, chemicals, and particles that we don’t normally see in air pollution from traffic or from industry that can be emitted during a fire. This is especially true if that fire burns any sort of man-made structures. Then, you start getting some highly toxic, synthetic emissions that we don’t normally breathe.”

Only a Small Part of the Picture

In a world where wildfires are growing both more frequent and more severe, Liu said he hopes a study like this will help guide future research, noting the importance of a large-scale epidemiological study to complement lab-based research.

“Policymakers can look at the disease burden numbers and say, ‘Wow, it may be worthwhile to spend more money on firefighting, or forest management, because it’s a huge disease burden.’”

“I think its real burden is going to be much, much larger than what we show in this paper.”

Liu said he wasn’t at all surprised by his team’s findings because stroke is only one part of the overall picture of how smoke affects overall health.

“I think its real burden is going to be much, much larger than what we show in this paper,” Liu said. In fact, he noted that the study focuses only on the fee-for-service Medicare population and doesn’t account for the more than 40% of the Medicare population enrolled in private insurance.

“So even for the overall Medicare population, or just the elderly population in the U.S., we are underreporting the burden, maybe by half,” he said.

—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), Wildfire smoke linked to 17,000 strokes annually in the United States, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260042. Published on 27 January 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Americans set few everyday expectations for science, but they are fundamental: We expect the weather forecast to be right, we expect science and technology that allow weather hazards to be anticipated within reason, and we expect public services to protect our lives and livelihoods from such hazards—floods, fires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

NCAR is not just another research center. It is purpose-built critical infrastructure designed to integrate observations, modeling, supercomputing, and applied research in ways that no single university, agency, or contractor can replicate on its own.

Well, the fulfillment of those expectations is in real doubt now that the Trump administration plans to dismantle the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a federally funded institution that underpins critical science that Americans rely on. Administration officials have argued that NCAR’s work can simply be redistributed to other institutions without loss. But NCAR is not just another research center. It is purpose-built critical infrastructure designed to integrate observations, modeling, supercomputing, and applied research in ways that no single university, agency, or contractor can replicate on its own.

Although Congress rejected the administration’s proposed funding cuts to NSF, the most recent spending bill did not include explicit language protecting NCAR as a unified entity.

As a result, the center remains vulnerable—not through outright defunding, but through fragmentation. The administration could try to cut interagency contracts that NCAR relies on to fund its staff, lay off staff, and relocate critical capabilities. NSF has already outlined plans to restructure NCAR, including moving its supercomputer to another site and transferring or divesting research aircraft it operates. These risks would hollow out the institution itself, breaking apart integrated teams, disrupting continuity in projects, and weakening the unique collaborative model at NCAR that accelerates scientific progress in weather, water, climate, and space weather.

This distinction matters. NCAR’s value does not lie solely in the science it produces, but in how that science is organized, sustained, and shared across the nation.

The following are five of the many ways Americans will lose the benefits of scientific research if plans to dismantle NCAR unfold, and two ways we can work to prevent it.

1. Air Travelers Will Lose Protection

Every day, millions of Americans board airplanes expecting to arrive safely at their destinations. What most passengers never see is the science working behind the scenes to keep flights safe through better understanding of atmospheric conditions such as turbulence and microburst winds.

Turbulence alone is the leading cause of injuries on U.S. commercial flights and cargo operations, and NCAR research has played a central role in reducing that risk by improving how turbulence is detected, predicted, and avoided. NCAR scientists helped develop advanced forecasting techniques that allow pilots and dispatchers to reroute aircraft away from dangerous air currents before passengers are ever put at risk.

In addition to safety, NCAR research has reduced the $100 million financial strain severe turbulence costs the U.S. aviation system every year through aircraft damage, inspections, medical costs, and delays.

NCAR’s contributions to aviation safety extend well beyond turbulence. In the 1970s and 1980s, NCAR scientists led research that identified and explained microbursts, a poorly understood weather phenomenon consisting of powerful downdraft winds produced by thunderstorms. Microbursts had caused multiple fatal airline crashes during takeoff and landing, and NCAR findings convinced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and international aviation authorities to develop radar warning systems to detect these threats. Since these tools have been deployed, fatal U.S. airline crashes caused by microbursts have effectively been eliminated.

Dismantling NCAR and moving this work elsewhere would break the integrated system that makes aviation safety research effective in the first place. NCAR uniquely brings together long-term observational data, advanced modeling, specialized instrumentation, and direct operational partnerships with agencies like the FAA under one roof. Fragmenting that capacity across multiple institutions would disrupt decades of trusted, public service relationships with the aviation community, making it harder and slower to translate research into real-world protections for pilots and passengers. With millions of people in the sky every day, this is not a risk we should take.

2. Food Security and the U.S. Agricultural Economy Will Be Put at Risk

Agriculture contributes hundreds of billions of dollars annually to the U.S. economy, and food security remains a national priority, making NCAR’s research crucial to this weather-sensitive sector. Drought, heat waves, and floods are recurring stresses that affect what crops farmers can grow, as well as food prices for consumers.

NCAR’s long-standing collaborations, integrated modeling and computing capacity, and role as a trusted public service institution are what allow farmers to rely on consistent, decision-ready information year after year.

NCAR research is directly relevant to food security. For example, NCAR scientists are working in conjunction with universities in Kansas and Nebraska and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop CropSmart, a next-generation system that aggregates weather forecasts, crop data, soil conditions, and other inputs into actionable, decision-ready information for farmers, agribusinesses, and agricultural officials. Early projections from CropSmart suggest that if advanced decision support systems like this were adopted on even half of irrigated farms in a state like Nebraska, farmers could save up to 1 billion cubic meters of water and $100 million in irrigation energy costs annually while also cutting about a million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

If NCAR is broken up, we lose this economic opportunity and the myriad ways it supports U.S. agriculture. NCAR’s long-standing collaborations, integrated modeling and computing capacity, and role as a trusted public service institution are what allow farmers to rely on consistent, decision-ready information year after year.

All the agricultural tools housed, supported, or innovated by NCAR would be put at risk, leaving farmers with fewer early warnings, less reliable guidance, and greater exposure to weather extremes. These losses would translate to the food on our tables having a higher price tag, which inevitably increases food insecurity, already a significant problem in the United States.

3. U.S. National Security and Military Readiness Will Be Weakened

The U.S. military depends on weather and climate intelligence to operate safely, effectively, and strategically. From flight operations and naval deployments to training exercises and base infrastructure, weather conditions shape nearly every aspect of defense readiness. When forecasts are wrong or incomplete, missions can be delayed, equipment can be damaged, and personnel and our national defense are put at risk.

Accurate environmental intelligence reduces risk, lowers costs, and strengthens national security.

NCAR’s research and operational tools provide the environmental intelligence that defense planners, operators, and test authorities rely on to keep us safe. Accurate, NCAR-enhanced forecasts have saved the U.S. Army millions of dollars by reducing weather-related test cancellations and avoiding needless mobilization costs. NCAR weather forecasting tools have been used for defense-related purposes, including anti-terrorism support at the Olympic games, protection of the Pentagon, support for firefighters, and analysis of exposure of our military personnel to toxins.

The strategic value of this work is reflected in the breadth of defense agencies that rely on NCAR today. NCAR maintains active partnerships and contracts with the Air Force, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Ground Intelligence Center, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Army Test and Evaluation Command. These relationships exist for a simple reason: Accurate environmental intelligence reduces risk, lowers costs, and strengthens national security.

Dismantling NCAR is a national security threat. Defense agencies rely on specialized, mission-critical environmental products and expertise that are developed, maintained, and refined through streamlined, long-standing relationships with NCAR scientists. These capabilities cannot be replaced quickly without disruption, and even short gaps in trusted weather and environmental intelligence would increase operational risk for current and future missions. Protecting NCAR is an investment in military readiness, operational efficiency, and the safety of those who serve.

4. Americans in Disaster-Prone Areas Will Have Less Time to Prepare for, and Evacuate from, Extreme Weather

Since 1980, weather hazards have cost the United States thousands of lives and more than $3.1 trillion. In 2025 alone, disasters cost nearly 300 lives and $115 billion in damages to homes and businesses. And these weather hazards are expected to worsen because of our changing climate.

A 2010 study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that public weather forecasts and warnings deliver roughly $31.5 billion in annual economic benefits in the United States. These gains in preparedness and economic benefit would not have been possible without sustained scientific research from NCAR.

Hurricane forecasting provides a clear example of how NCAR research has secured the safety and mitigated the economic losses of residents and businesses. Since 1980, hurricanes have caused nearly $3 trillion in damages in the United States.

For decades, NCAR scientists have worked to develop and refine instruments and methods to collect real-time hurricane observations and improve our understanding of storm behavior. By the 1980s, data and modeling advances emerging from NCAR research were being used operationally by NOAA, contributing to a roughly 20%–30% improvement in the accuracy of hurricane track forecasts compared to earlier decades.

NCAR continues to enhance forecasting capabilities for hurricanes, as well as their associated flood risks, through the center’s sophisticated flood risk model. Today, the model is used operationally by the National Weather Service in more than 3,800 locations serving 3 million people.

If NCAR’s role in advancing forecast science is weakened by dismantling it, these gains in disaster preparedness will be put in jeopardy. Forecast improvements do not happen automatically; they require sustained research, coordination, and testing. If NCAR’s research capabilities to develop and improve weather forecasting disappear, the United States will face a major public safety risk.

5. Americans Lose a Unique Source of National Pride

NCAR was never designed to serve a select few. It was built with public investment to serve the nation as a whole.

NCAR was never designed to serve a select few. It was built with public investment to serve the nation as a whole. From its founding, NCAR embraced the idea that understanding the Earth system—its atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice—requires collaboration across institutions, disciplines, and generations, not isolated efforts working in parallel.

That collaborative model is embedded in how NCAR operates. It is stewarded by a consortium of more than 120 colleges and universities across the United States, representing a wide range of regions, institutional types, and scientific strengths. This structure allows knowledge, tools, and expertise to flow across the country, connecting large research universities with smaller institutions, federal agencies with academic scientists, and fundamental research with real-world applications for the public and private sectors. The result is a shared national capability that no single institution could sustain on its own.

There is something deeply American in that collaborative vision, a belief that publicly funded science should be openly shared, collectively advanced, and used to strengthen the common good. NCAR represents what is possible when a nation chooses to invest in science as a public good.

For more than 6 decades, NCAR has shown that open, collaborative science can save lives, support economic resilience and national defense, and expand opportunity across generations. Preserving and celebrating NCAR are choosing a future where shared knowledge, innovation, and public-serving science continue to thrive.

What We Must Do Now

This moment demands more than concern—it requires action.

First, NSF is requesting feedback regarding its intent to restructure NCAR. Feedback “will be used to inform NSF’s future actions with respect to the components of NCAR and to ensure the products, services, and tools provided in the future align with the needs and expectations of stakeholders to the extent practicable.”

Respond, and inform NSF about the value and benefits of all of NCAR, not only its constituent parts. Readers can submit comments through 13 March.

Second, Congress ultimately holds the authority to fund and protect NCAR, and lawmakers need to hear clearly that dismantling it would put the health, safety, and financial stability of Americans at risk. By October 2026, Congress will address the funding of NSF for next year; we must actively and consistently reach out to our congressional representatives now and throughout the year.

Readers can contact their members of Congress through easy-to-use resources provided by AGU and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Author Information

Carlos Martinez (cmartinez@ucs.org) is a senior climate scientist with the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Citation: Martinez, C. (2026), What Americans lose if their National Center for Atmospheric Research is dismantled, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260041. Published on 27 January 2026. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

On every continent, unassuming rocks covered in a thin, slimy layer of microbes pull carbon from the air and deposit it as solid calcium carbonate rock. These are microbialites, rocks formed by communities of microorganisms that absorb nutrients from the environment and precipitate solid minerals. 

“We’re going to learn some critical information through this work that can add to our understanding of carbon cycling and carbon capture.”

A new study of South African coastal microbialites, published in Nature Communications, shows these microbial communities are taking up carbon at surprisingly high rates—even at night, when scientists hypothesized that uptake rates would fall. 

The rates discovered by the research team are “astonishing,” said Francesco Ricci, a microbiologist at Monash University in Australia who studies microbialites but was not involved in the new study. Ricci said the carbon-precipitating rates of the South African microbialites show that the systems are “extremely efficient” at creating geologically stable forms of carbon.

The study also related those rates to the genetic makeup of the microbial communities, shedding light on how the microbes there work together to pull carbon from the air.

Microbes that rely on photosynthesis live primarily in the top layer of a microbialite, while microbes with metabolisms that don’t require sunlight or oxygen reside deeper within. Credit: Thomas Bornman

“We’re going to learn some critical information through this work that can add to our understanding of carbon cycling and carbon capture,” said Rachel Sipler, a marine biogeochemist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine. Sipler and her collaborator, Rosemary Dorrington, a marine biologist at Rhodes University in South Africa, led the new study.

Measuring Microbialites

Over several years and many visits to microbialite systems in coastal South Africa, Sipler and the research team measured different isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to study the microbial communities’ metabolisms and growth rates. They found that the structures grew almost 5 centimeters (2 inches) vertically each year, which translates to about 9–16 kilograms (20–35 pounds) of carbon dioxide sequestered every year per square meter (10.7 square feet) of microbialite. 

Results showed the microbialites absorbed carbon at nearly the same rates at night as they did during the day. Both the nighttime rates and the total amount of carbon precipitated by the system were surprisingly high, Ricci said.

 “Different organisms with different metabolic capacities work together, and they build something amazing.”

The traditional understanding of microbialite systems is that their carbon capture relies mostly on photosynthesis, which requires sunshine, making the high nighttime rate so surprising that Sipler and the team initially thought it was a mistake. “Oh, no, how did we mess up all these experiments,” she remembers thinking. But further analysis confirmed the results.

It makes sense that a community of microbes could work together in this way, Ricci said. During the day, photosynthesis produces organic material that fuels other microbial processes, some of which can be used by other organisms in the community to absorb carbon without light. As a result, carbon precipitation can continue when the Sun isn’t shining.

 “Different organisms with different metabolic capacities work together, and they build something amazing,” Sipler said.

Future Carbon Precipitation

The genetic diversity of the microbial community is key to creating the metabolisms that, together, build up microbialites. In their experiments, the research team also found that they were able to grow “baby microbialites” by taking a representative sample of the microbial community back to the lab. “We can form them in the lab and keep them growing,” Sipler said.

The findings could inform future carbon sequestration efforts: Because carbon is so concentrated in microbialites, microbialite growth is a more efficient way to capture carbon than other natural carbon sequestration processes, such as planting trees. And the carbon in a microbialite exists in a stable mineral form that can be more durable across time, Sipler said.

Additional microbialite research could uncover new metabolic pathways that may, for example, process hydrogen or capture carbon in new ways, said Ricci, who owns a pet microbialite (“very low maintenance”). “They are definitely a system to explore more for biotechnological applications.”

Sipler said the next steps for her team will be to continue testing the microbial communities in the lab to determine how the microbialite growth rate may vary under different environmental conditions and to explore how that growth can be optimized. 

“This is an amazing observation that we and others will be building on for a very long time,” she said.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), Rocks formed by microbes absorb carbon day and night, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260037. Published on 27 January 2026. Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: AGU Advances

Methane is the second-most important greenhouse gas and is increasing in the atmosphere. Unlike CO2, which is taken up by the land and oceans, CH4 (methane) is destroyed in the atmosphere, mostly by reaction with OH (methane-hydroxyl radical). As methane is one of the largest sinks for the OH radical, it is also a control over atmospheric OH concentration, which in turn controls the lifetime of CH4 in the atmosphere, creating a feedback.

He et al. [2026] shows how the recent increases can best be explained by enforcing consistence between three terms: the CH4 concentration itself, the isotopic concentration of CH4 which reflects sources with different signatures, and the abundance of OH simulated with a state-of-the art chemistry model. The results show that changes to atmospheric CH4 are best explained by a mix of increasing (tropical agriculture), and decreasing (biomass burning) sinks, modulated by the global OH trend. The authors also find that that the fate of emitted CH4 in the atmosphere is sensitive to chemical feedbacks, which, if ignored, could lead to incorrect assumptions about sources, and hence, diminish the effectiveness of mitigation.

Citation: He, J., Naik, V., & Horowitz, L. W. (2026). Interpreting changes in global methane budget in a chemistry-climate model constrained with methane and isotopic observations. AGU Advances, 7, e2025AV001822. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001822

—David Schimel, Editor, AGU Advances

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

The Nature Conservancy in Nevada (TNC in Nevada), DRI, and the University of Wisconsin—Madison (UW-Madison) have developed the Nevada GDE Water Needs Explorer Tool. This new online resource helps land and water managers understand how groundwater supports groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) and how changes in water levels can affect them.

In lush South Florida, trees and bushes grow all year round. And that means yard waste and dead trees never stop piling up. But leaving them in a landfill is a climate-warming issue. Two South Florida governments think they have a new solution—light it on fire, but in a planet-friendly way.

SummaryWe have analyzed direct S-waves of teleseismic earthquakes to investigate seismic anisotropy parameters, i.e., fast polarisation direction (FPD or φ) and splitting time delay (STD or δt) beneath southwestern Tibet (around the Karakoram Fault), that enable us to comprehend the upper mantle dynamics of the study region. To achieve this aim, we employ the Reference Station Technique, which is proven to be insensitive to source-side anisotropy; hence, it permits the use of teleseismic direct S-wave signals in splitting measurements. A total of 1,624 high-quality direct S-wave splitting measurements were obtained from 145 earthquakes (M ≥5.5) within an epicentral distance of 30○ to 90○, recorded at 31 temporarily deployed seismic stations of the Y2 network. We have found STDs ranging from 1.1 s to 1.8 s, indicating a significantly anisotropic upper mantle underneath the study region. Our splitting measurements reveal predominantly E-W FPDs in the western part of the study region, with a slight shift to the ENE-WSW direction in the eastern section. A comparison of our direct S-wave derived splitting measurements with prior SKS splitting measurements indicates a largely analogous pattern at most seismic stations. The seismic stations (WT04, WT05, WT11, and WT18), which previously lacked SKS-derived seismic anisotropy, are now complemented with new measurements with clear anisotropic signatures. Nearly E-W oriented FPDs that exhibit an oblique variation to the main strike of the southeastern segment of the Karakoram Fault (KKF) can be explained by the eastward movement of upper mantle material beneath southwestern Tibet. The significant discrepancies between the orientation of FPDs and the strike direction of KKF imply that the fault is not a lithospheric-scale fault but rather is confined to crustal depths. Integrating surface deformation derived from geodetic measurements (e.g., global positioning system data) and plate motion vectors of the Indian and Eurasian plates with splitting parameters indicates that the deduced deformation patterns result from both lithospheric deformation and sub-lithospheric mantle dynamics. The FPDs exhibit a significant deviation from GPS data, signifying a decoupling of crust and upper mantle materials beneath the study area. This suggests that mantle deformation in southwestern Tibet operates in a manner that is distinct from that of crustal deformation. Finally, our novel splitting measurements, enhanced by a greater number of direct S-wave data, provide new insights into the deformation of the upper mantle in the region, elucidating the mechanisms that have shaped the plateau over geologic millennia.