Feed aggregator

The origins of the earliest life on Earth, prior to the rise of oxygen and photosynthesis, remain a mystery. Graveyards in brine pools at the bottom of the Red Sea may hold some answers.

The fall equinox is Tuesday, when light and darkness split the day evenly. It marks the beginning of fall for the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

Recent heat waves in Europe have been intensified by the greenhouse gases emitted since nations committed to limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to a Sep. 22 study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Source: AGU Advances

The origins of the earliest life on Earth, prior to the rise of oxygen and photosynthesis, remain a mystery. Graveyards in brine pools at the bottom of the Red Sea may hold some answers.

Brine pools are underwater ponds or lakes that sit at the bottom of the sea. They’re dark, full of salt, and devoid of oxygen. For years, they were presumed to be lifeless. But research revealed that for certain extremophiles, these brine pools aren’t inhospitable: They’re oases. And the bacteria and archaea that thrive there leave geochemical signatures long after they’re gone, Chakraborty et al. show in a new study.

The researchers analyzed the geochemical composition of sediments and organic matter in an active brine pool, three nonbrine seafloor spots, and a spot they suspected was an “extinct” brine pool based on mineral rings around a depression filled with dead marine organisms. They used metagenomics and metatranscriptomics to characterize the microbial communities at the sites.

The active pool, 1,770 meters below the surface of the Red Sea, was teeming with bacteria and archaea. And the sediments under the microbial mat were extremely enriched in metals like manganese, iron, molybdenum, and copper, with some areas hosting concentrations upward of 100 times higher than their non–brine pool counterparts. The extinct pool, nearly 1,400 meters below the sea surface, had similar enrichment patterns.

The presence of oxidized manganese and molybdenum-enriched organic matter in the sediments of both the active and extinct brine pools will improve interpretations of similar patterns in the rock record. Metagenomic analyses of the active pool revealed manganese oxidizers such as Nitrospira.

That finding, together with oxidized iron-manganese phases in the sediment, offers some evidence that microbial oxidation of Mn(II) to manganese oxides could have served as a mechanism for energy production prior to the rise of atmospheric oxygen during the Great Oxidation Event around 2.4–2.2 billion years ago.

Overall, though the authors note that more research is needed, the findings support hypotheses that metal enrichment in the early oceans could have occurred independently of oxygenic photosynthesis or photoautotrophy. Chemotrophic oxidation of manganese and iron could well have been the engine of the earliest life in the oceans. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026AV002570, 2026)

—Rebecca Dzombak, Science Writer

Citation: Dzombak, R. (2026), Briny “death pools” hold clues to early life, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260301. Published on 22 September 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.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

The Van Allen radiation belts are huge, doughnut-shaped regions of highly energetic charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetosphere. These charged particles play a major role in space weather, so studying them is important for predicting and managing risks to satellites, astronauts, power grids, and other infrastructure.

Geomagnetic storms and other events can rapidly and dramatically increase or reduce the number of highly energetic electrons trapped in the radiation belts. During a key type of event known as a relativistic microburst, trapped electrons escape from the outer belt into Earth’s atmosphere in an intense surge lasting less than 1 second. Microbursts could influence radiation belt hazards and may even alter atmospheric chemical composition.

However, new research by Romero-Minaya et al. challenges the prevailing understanding of what triggers highly energetic electron microbursts.

The study focuses on chorus waves—naturally occurring electromagnetic waves that ripple through the vast mass of charged particles, or plasma, surrounding Earth. Chorus waves are named for the sounds made by a radio receiver when it detects them. They are known to be able to accelerate trapped electrons to high speeds, and they are thought to be the primary drivers of microbursts.

The researchers analyzed statistical associations between chorus waves and relativistic microbursts using data from NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms (THEMIS) and Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) missions. The dataset included chorus waves and microbursts detected by the satellites between June 2010 and November 2012.

They discovered that only a very small percentage of the chorus waves happened in conjunction with relativistic microbursts—far fewer than expected, given the strong links seen in prior studies.

The small number of chorus waves that were associated with relativistic microbursts tended to have larger amplitudes and other distinctive characteristics, suggesting that only a small subset of chorus waves drive microbursts at these high energies. Future research could explore this possibility and further clarify these surprising results, the researchers say. (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL124627, 2026)

—Sarah Stanley, Science Writer

Citation: Stanley, S. (2026), Presumed role of chorus waves out of tune with new data, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260302. Published on 22 September 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.

Author(s): S. Chintalwad and David J. Stark

Laser-driven ion acceleration offers a promising route toward compact high-energy particle sources, yet achieving control of beam collimation, spectral width, and laser-to-ion energy conversion remains a central challenge for most applications. Using two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simul…

[Phys. Rev. E 114, 035212] Published Tue Sep 22, 2026

In Japan, record breaking rainfall associated with Typhoon Dujuan has triggered at least six fatal landslides in the Kanto region.

Over the last 24 hours or so, rainfall associated Typhoon Dujuan has swept across the Kanto Region in Japan, bringing exceptional (and in some cases record breaking) rainfall. There are multiple reports of landslides, some of which have been fatal.

The rainfall associated with typhoons can be hard to visualise. In Oshima, on the Izu islands, 832 mm were recorded in 48 hours – that is more than the entire annual rainfall of the city (Nottingham) in which I work. Totals exceeding 400 mm in 48 hours have been recorded widely across parts of Kanto.

The Japan Times has a report that describes a series of fatal landslide events. These include:

• Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture: one fatality
• Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture: two people missing
• Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture: one person missing
• Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture: one person missing
• Sodegaura, Chiba Prefecture: “a 51-year-old worker died after he and the heavy machinery he was operating fell into a bamboo grove while he was removing mud and debris from a road…A landslide had occurred around the site.”
• Kamogawa, Chiba Prefecture: one fatality
• Sanmu, Chiba Prefecture: one fatality

A cluster of six or more fatal landslides is quite unusual for Japan, which works extremely hard to manage landslide risk.

James Reynolds has been recording Typhoon Dujuan – he has tweeted this image of a landslide on Highway 34 near Kyonan Hota IC:-

A debris flow on Highway 34 near Kyonan Hota IC in Chiba triggered by Typhoon Dujuan. Image tweeted by James Reynolds.

Typhoon Dujuan is now moving away from Japan, so more information will emerge over the next 24 hours about the impact of the storm. I expect that we will see a large number of landslides in those upland areas most affected by the intense rainfall.

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage 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.

Ph.D. candidate Natalia Seliutina has followed gemstones from the -30° temperatures of Siberia to the carving studios of Ōtepoti and the particle accelerators of Taiwan in her quest to discover why pounamu is one of the toughest natural materials on Earth. Fresh from the publication of Natalia's paper in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, Kathryn van Beek catches up with her to find out how understanding the properties of pounamu might one day help us explore space.

SummaryThe Central Apennines (Italy) host a distributed network of active normal faults capable of generating infrequent but destructive earthquakes with recurrence intervals that often exceed the duration of available historical and paleoseismological records. This observational limitation hampers our understanding of long-term fault behavior, seismic cycle variability, and multi-fault rupture potential. In this study, we apply the MCQsim earthquake-cycle simulator to a three-dimensional fault model comprising 42 major active normal faults in the Central Apennines, generating seven 100 000-year synthetic earthquake catalogs by systematically varying rupture-controlling parameters: fault strength magnitude and heterogeneity, and numerical mesh resolution. We evaluate how these parameters influence seismic productivity, the shape of magnitude–frequency distributions, and the scaling of rupture area and average slip with magnitude. Simulated catalogs are compared with the Italian Parametric Earthquake Catalog (CPTI15) and with empirical magnitude–scaling relationships to assess consistency with observed seismicity. The simulations reproduce the regional magnitude–frequency distribution and yield rupture scaling consistent with empirical relationships, with the strongest sensitivity observed for changes in the difference between static and dynamic friction coefficients and the parameters controlling fault strength heterogeneity. Analysis of interevent times for earthquakes with Mw ≥ 6 shows that recurrence variability is broadly consistent with a quasi-periodic process, while intermittent clustering at multi-centennial timescales is also captured. Although the use of a uniform fault dip and a simplified seismogenic depth boundary, rather than depth-varying fault geometry, may affect the detailed representation of individual ruptures, the overall consistency between synthetic and observed seismicity demonstrates that MCQsim provides a physically grounded framework for investigating long-term fault system behavior and earthquake recurrence variability in the Central Apennines.

Beneath the vast frozen wastes of Antarctica lie the remains of ancient mountains that have long since eroded. Even though they're no longer standing, they can still reveal a few lost secrets. New research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters suggests that these vanished peaks may have played a fundamental role in the evolution of complex life on this planet.

For decades, Arctic sea ice has been melting earlier in spring and freezing later in fall, extending the melt season and contributing to widespread ice loss. A new NASA-led study published in Communications Earth & Environment has found that while the Arctic melt season has lengthened dramatically since satellite records began, that trend unexpectedly stabilized around 2010.

On Wednesday 7 October 2026 at 6 pm I will deliver my NTU inaugural lecture entitled “Landslides in a changing climate”. This is a public lecture, so all are welcome.

In UK universities, there is a long tradition of inaugural lectures for newly appointed professors. Wikipedia describes an inaugural lecture as follows:-

“An inaugural lecture is a formal public lecture given at a university by a newly appointed full professor, the holder of a chair. It marks the professor’s official introduction to the academic community. These lectures are often attended by colleagues, students, and sometimes the general public. They are a way to showcase the professor’s expertise and to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution.“

Whilst I have been a professor in a variety of institutions since some time in the early Cretaceous, I am of course a newly appointed professor at NTU. As such I get the privilege of an inaugural lecture.

This is scheduled for Wednesday 7 October 2026, 6 pm (UK time) at the City Campus of NTU. It is a public event, so anyone can attend. I have chosen to title this: “Landslides in a changing climate”. This is the synopsis:-

Landslides are one of the most deadly but poorly appreciated natural hazards. Occurring on every continent on the planet, and indeed on other planets as well, they are responsible for thousands of deaths and billions of pounds worth of losses annually.

Over the 40 year career of Professor Petley, there has been growing evidence that the pattern of landslides is being heavily modified by the effects of human-induced climate change, which is altering both large-scale weather systems, such as the Asian monsoon, and localised rainfall events, such as cloudbursts.

This lecture will draw upon examples from New Zealand, the Himalayas and the UK to examine how both our understanding of the impacts of climate change on landslides, and the patterns of loss from landslides have changed. Reviewing initially the devastating August 2026 landslide and debris flow in Nepal and Tibet, in which over 5,000 people were killed, it will explore the ways in which new technologies have allowed huge improvements in our understanding of landslides. It will review global patterns of landslide losses, and investigate the ways in which these have are being changed by the rapid shifts occurring in our climate. Finally, it will review future prospects for landslide triggered losses, emphasising that both climate driven changes in the hazard and human driven changes in vulnerability mean that losses are likely to accelerate in the coming years.

You are welcome to attend – the event details are here:-

https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/events/events/2026/10/professor-dave-petleys-inaugural-lecture

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage 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.

In 2024 alone, flood-related disasters around the world caused more than 8,700 deaths and economic losses exceeding 450 billion euros, with cumulative global losses of about 2.7 trillion euros over the previous decade. Against this backdrop, Europe's recent floods—from riverine events in large basins to flash floods in dense urban areas—have exposed the limits of existing protection systems and emergency responses.

Around 631,000 years ago—a geological blink of an eye—catastrophe unfolded in what is now northwestern Wyoming, U.S. During what is thought to have been a series of immense volcanic eruptions, life within hundreds of kilometers of the blasts was shattered. Ash was dispersed across much of North America, and the effects were felt worldwide. This was a super-eruption of the massive volcanic system located in what is now Yellowstone National Park.

Seven breached Planetary Boundaries continue to worsen as record ocean heat, droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme heat reveal an Earth system under strain, according to the latest Planetary Health Check. The annual update is authored by more than 60 scientists and produced by the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Smoke from African agricultural fires brightens clouds over the southeast Atlantic—but new research from scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science shows that the same weather pattern carrying the smoke also thins clouds and reduces cloud cover, effectively offsetting its cooling effect.

On board the EPA research vessel Lake Guardian, every scientist works a 12-hour shift. From 4:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. or vice versa, researchers survey and sample the Great Lakes to better assess water quality and food web conditions.

This grab sampler takes sediment samples from the bottom of Lake Michigan—sometimes with views of the Chicago skyline. Credit: EPA

“We sample day or night, 24/7,” said Anne Scofield, a physical scientist at the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office, technical lead for the office’s Biology Monitoring Program, and one of the researchers on board the Lake Guardian during the office’s 43rd annual summer survey, conducted this August.

The annual summer surveys take about a month to traverse all five Great Lakes. Another annual survey in the springtime monitors lakes when their water temperatures are at their coldest. Since April, the Lake Guardian has traveled more than 12,500 nautical miles (23,150 kilometers) and sampled 282 locations. The vessel will travel for one more survey in Lake Superior and one more survey in Lake Erie before the end of the year.

“It really does remind me of being in the ocean, because the lakes are just so huge,” Scofield said.

Data from Lake Guardian surveys help scientists and natural resource managers track how stressors like nutrient pollution, chemical contaminants, and invasive species affect the ecology of the Great Lakes over time.

“It’s one of the foundational datasets that all the scientists in the region use.”

The Lake Guardian also offers non-EPA scientists a chance to join the survey, collect data, and use those data in their own research. Each annual survey is funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a multiagency fund meant to understand and mitigate the largest threats to Great Lakes ecosystems.

“We’re the only group out there that is measuring the same things in the same places in the same way year after year after year for all five of the Great Lakes,” Scofield said. “It’s one of the foundational datasets that all the scientists in the region use.”

Freshwater Finds At night, tiny crustaceans called mysids migrate upward in the water column, giving scientists on board the chance to sample them. Credit: EPA

During their shifts on the Lake Guardian, scientists and crewmembers deploy sampling equipment and prepare samples for storage or analysis. At night, they deploy nets to collect mysids, the Great Lakes’ largest zooplankton and an important food source for fish.

The team uses water samples to monitor nutrient concentrations, algae, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and invertebrates living on the lake bed. They measure a suite of physical characteristics, too, such as turbidity, pH, and water clarity. And they drill sediment cores, which provide insight into how the chemistry and contaminants in the lakes have changed over time.

Every year, the Lake Guardian’s overall monitoring is supplemented by an in-depth study of one of the Great Lakes’ lake bed invertebrate communities. During those studies, an underwater video camera helps the team map the spatial distribution of invertebrates on the lake bed, and a giant claw collects chunks of sediment from the bottom of the lake for analysis.

This in-depth approach allows the agency to track changes in lake bed ecology, particularly changes to populations of invasive mussels. “We’re trying to understand their trajectories and what that might mean for the lakes going forward,” Scofield said.

Invasive quagga mussels threaten fisheries across the Great Lakes. Credit: EPA

The in-depth survey for 2026 is ongoing in Lake Superior. Scientists on board are monitoring and mapping the distribution of lake bed organisms such as Diporeia, a tiny freshwater crustacean that serves as an important food source for fish.

Though scientists have not yet analyzed data from the 2026 summer survey, Scofield said she has already noticed interesting features of lake health. In Lake Michigan, for example, the team noticed few mysids, especially in the southern basin of the lake. This observation contributes to a consistent trend documenting decreasing populations of mysids since the early 2000s, she said, possibly because of a reduction in phytoplankton in the lake as well as increasing water clarity over time, which limits habitat for these light-sensitive organisms.

Managing the Great Lakes

Many of the data collected by the Lake Guardian team are used to update the EPA’s State of the Great Lakes reports, which are published every 3 years and provide a summary of the health of the Great Lakes, from water quality to fish population metrics. These reports are part of a collaboration between the EPA and the Canada Water Agency to support the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a binational commitment signed in 1972 to protect the waters of the Great Lakes.

Water sampling equipment deploys in Lake Superior. Credit: EPA

Scientists reference these reports in their research, and resource managers use the data to help make decisions. “Fishery managers, especially, are always wanting to connect with us to understand what’s going on with the lower food web,” Scofield said.

Vic Santucci, the Lake Michigan program manager in the Division of Fisheries at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, is not involved in the Lake Guardian’s annual surveys but uses the data collected by the Lake Guardian team to make decisions about where, when, and how to manage Lake Michigan’s fisheries.

This video of Lake Michigan’s lake bed, taken in August 2025, shows the extent of invasive mussels. Credit: EPA

For example, in 2013 and 2016, Santucci used State of the Great Lakes report data on declines in lake productivity and the spread of invasive mussels to inform decisions to stock the lake with fewer salmon and trout.

“Long-term datasets are crucial for managing lakes the size of the Great Lakes,” Santucci wrote in an email.

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

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), Aboard the Lake Guardian, scientists search for clues about the Great Lakes’ health, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260299. Published on 21 September 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.

Source: Space Weather

Solar storms can have major effects on terrestrial technology, dating back to the earliest days of railroads and telegraph communications—most infamously the Carrington Event of September 1859. For that reason, space weather researchers use recorded disturbances from the past to characterize the strength of these storms and fill in the history of the solar cycle.

Determining the dates of the first disruptive solar storm turned out to be complicated by an error in a 19th century article, Wild et al. explain. An 1871 Nature article claimed the first communications disruption from a solar storm occurred on 18 October 1841, when magnetic interference in railway signaling telegraph lines led to a delay in the 10:05 p.m. passenger train departure out of Exeter, England.

The problem, as these scientific detectives discovered? That railway line wasn’t yet running in 1841.

The 1871 Nature article indicated that the train was delayed by a few minutes on the evening of 18 October 1841 because the telegraph lines that allowed operators to check whether the tracks were clear had been disrupted by the solar storm. However, England’s South Devon Railway Company began operating passenger trains between Exeter and Newton Abbot only in 1846. The researchers dug into records of aurorae and railway timetables, cross-referencing these events to pin down what actually happened.

Railway schedules reveal the 10:05 p.m. train out of Exeter was only time-tabled for a period of just over a year, starting in 1848. Contemporary observers recorded strong sunspot and aurora activity around 18 October 1848, precisely 7 years after the date mentioned in the Nature article.

In other words, the 1871 Nature story got the date right but the year wrong. This mistake means the Exeter delay was not the first known solar storm to affect human technology. Instead, accounts of geomagnetic disturbances affecting the telegraph system of the Midland Railway near Derby, England, on 19 March 1847 stand as the earliest credible report on record.

Knowing the correct date fills in an important detail of the recorded history of geomagnetic weather and helps researchers understand the links between solar cycles and communications disruptions. (Space Weather, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026SW005239, 2026)

—Matthew R. Francis (@BowlerHatScience.org), Science Writer

Citation: Francis, M. R. (2026), Of cosmic rains and delayed trains, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260287. Published on 21 September 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.

Author(s): Zhe Liu, Zhongping Zhao, and Yinjian Zhao

Cross-field electron transport in Hall thrusters is widely attributed to high-frequency E×B instabilities, yet its net spatial pathway remains poorly resolved. Here we perform instability-resolving three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of a Hall thruster using a boundary-faithful and highly…

[Phys. Rev. E 114, 035211] Published Mon Sep 21, 2026

Stand on the damp sand on a California beach and chances are you're standing on top of an active earthworks site. Sand hoppers (Megalorchestia spp.), the tiny, shrimp-like creatures commonly found eating away at kelp on the shore, have been found to move massive amounts of sand, excavating up to 50 kg (110 pounds) of sand per meter (3.3 feet) of shoreline per day.