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In computer simulations of the Big One—a large-magnitude earthquake that may occur along the San Andreas Fault in California—seismic waves ripple from the epicenter of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake near the Salton Sea into the Los Angeles Basin.

Climate & Personal Health

The health effects of our warming climate go far beyond heat illnesses and direct fallouts from more frequent natural disasters. This issue of Eos explores some of the more nuanced ways that climate change is influencing personal health outcomes.

As deputy editor Emily Gardner bluntly states in the headline of this month’s new feature, “Antimicrobial Resistance Is Killing Millions. Climate Change Is Making It Worse.” Although climate change is far from the only (or even the leading) cause of antimicrobial resistance, it is a factor: “Climate change can modify the environmental, ecological, and social conditions that allow resistant microorganisms and resistance genes to emerge, persist, move, and reach humans, animals, and ecosystems,” environmental health scientist Ronan Adler Tavella explains.

There are many other correlations between specific effects of climate change and personal health. Some scientists have linked an increase in particulate air pollution driven by more intense, more frequent wildfires to greater instances of stroke. Others have found that sea surface temperatures may help predict seasonal risks of malaria thousands of kilometers away.

Researchers have long tracked the mental toll of climate change but are now drawing specific lessons from specific instances. Scientist-authors Maheshwari Neelam and Kamaldeep Bhui, for example, explain how lake bed dust from the drying Great Salt Lake is associated with mental health outcomes across Utah in “Lessons from Linking Great Salt Lake Desiccation and Depression.” Scientists are only beginning to learn the lessons of extreme temperatures and fatal overdoses, explains science reporter Grace van Deelen in “Extreme Heat and Extreme Cold Drive an Increase in Fatal Overdoses.”

Finally, effectively communicating the relationships between climate change and personal health is a science unto itself. That’s one message from research in GeoHealth that Rebecca Owen covers in “Many Americans Underestimate Health Risks of Extreme Weather, New Study Finds.” Poor risk communication can leave affected populations underprepared to face health dangers that can accompany climate-driven ecological changes, extreme heat and cold, and more intense instances of natural hazards.

We hope this issue of Eos helps improve risk communication by allowing you to better appreciate the scope and influence of climate change.

—Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Editor in Chief

Citation: Micalizio, C.-S. (2026), Individual consequences of a global crisis, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260279. Published on 1 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.

Erosion rates on parts of the Kaikōura Peninsula more than doubled after the 2016 earthquake, showing major quakes can "rapidly alter" the way coastlines evolve, an Otago researcher says.

Climate & Personal Health

Born with cystic fibrosis, Ella Balasa is used to doing several breathing treatments a day and taking antibiotics to fight the infections in her lungs. By her mid-twenties, the antibiotic courses were taking longer and longer to work. In 2019, she got severely sick. Despite a combination of oral and intravenous antibiotics, her lungs would fill up with mucus every few hours. Her lung function dipped down to the teens. (Normal function is 80% or higher.)

“I’m not going to live to be able to fight off these infections,” she remembers thinking. “Antibiotics aren’t working, and that’s all we have, so I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

In her mid-twenties, Ella Balasa faced a serious lung infection caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that left her struggling to breathe. Credit: Laventie Benoit-Joseph/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“Antimicrobial use remains one of the central drivers of AMR, but climate change can modify the environmental, ecological, and social conditions that allow resistant microorganisms and resistance genes to emerge, persist, move, and reach humans, animals, and ecosystems.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in six infections is drug resistant. In some areas, it’s one in three. In 2021, WHO estimated that bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was associated with more than 4.7 million deaths around the world.

There are many factors driving the rise of AMR, including the misuse and overprescription of antibiotics not just for humans, but for controlling disease among livestock and agricultural crops. But a growing body of research suggests there’s another piece of the puzzle: a changing climate.

“Antimicrobial use remains one of the central drivers of AMR, but climate change can modify the environmental, ecological, and social conditions that allow resistant microorganisms and resistance genes to emerge, persist, move, and reach humans, animals, and ecosystems,” Ronan Adler Tavella, an environmental health scientist at the Antimicrobial Resistance Institute at the Federal University of São Paulo, told Eos in an email.

How Do Antimicrobial-Resistant Genes Spread?

Antimicrobial-resistant genes (ARGs) are found in nature because different microbial groups are often locked in ecological competition. In the soil, water, and even air, microbes produce antimicrobial compounds and resistance mechanisms designed to take out or communicate with competitor microbes. Bacteria are also capable of a unique phenomenon called horizontal gene transfer, meaning that bacteria can transfer genes between each other outside of a parent-offspring relationship, even across species.

Soil microbes, seen here under a microscope, naturally produce antibiotic genes as a form of offense against other microbes—and antibiotic-resistant genes as a form of defense. Credit: Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The field of medicine was transformed when physicians and researchers began taking advantage of ARGs to treat disease in the early 20th century. The broad class of antimicrobial drugs is designed to kill, inactivate, or slow the growth of microbes, which can include bacteria as well as viruses, parasites, and fungi.

“Antibiotics themselves are the pillar of basic and modern medicine.”

Antimicrobials are used to treat animal bites, pneumonia, strep throat, urinary tract infections, Lyme disease, cardiac infections, diarrhea, sexually transmitted diseases, ringworm, malaria, yeast infections, valley fever, eye and ear infections, parasitic infections, and many, many other ailments. In fact, experts say there’s not much we can do without them.

“Antibiotics themselves are the pillar of basic and modern medicine,” said Sarah Paulin-Deschenaux, a microbiologist and technical officer on antimicrobial resistance in WHO’s AMR department. “We need to have effective antibiotics to enable the treatment of simple cuts, the allowance of surgical procedures, [and] safe delivery for cancer chemotherapy.”

But there’s a catch.

An antimicrobial designed to kill a specific microbe—say, E. coli—doesn’t kill every single microbe. It kills many of them, but the most resistant ones survive. These microbes with ARGs can reproduce, creating a whole new community of microbes that don’t respond to the antimicrobial, creating the need for another.

However, overuse of antibiotics isn’t the only thing that can lead harmful microbes to grow stronger and spread. Everything from heavy metals to fertilizers to pharmaceutical waste in soil can cause stress to soil microbes.

“Anything that stresses them—heat, chemicals—all this is going to increase their mutation rates,” said Jason Burnham, an infectious disease and medicine professor at Washington University and VA St. Louis.

Fighting Infection in a Climate Hot Spot

Because Balasa, the cystic fibrosis patient, had to take antibiotics so often, the microbes in her body, which tend to proliferate in the scar tissue of her lungs, grew resistant over time.

But some antibiotic-resistant infections come seemingly without warning. Shortly after finishing her master’s degree in Mumbai, India, Bhakti Chavan was diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), though she had no previous history of the disease.

For 8 months, Chavan received antibiotic injections six times a week. Her course of oral antibiotics, a combination of four to five drugs taken daily, went on for another 16 months. Her side effects included depression, a darkened skin tone, and heavy nausea. She was unable to work for about 2 years. She stopped seeing friends and even stopped looking in the mirror.

“Without having any previous history of TB, I got directly diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis,” she said. “That means the strains are already circulating in the environment.”

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. Shortly after college graduation, Bhakti Chavan was diagnosed with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, despite having no history of the disease. Credit: Ajay Kumar Chaurasiya/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

India is a hot spot for both high heat and AMR, which can be a deadly combination. As of 2021, an estimated 31% of India’s population over the age of 15 had a tuberculosis infection. It’s a situation Chavan is all too aware of.

When Bhakti Chavan was diagnosed with an antibiotic-resistant strain of tuberculosis, she had to take specialized antibiotics for two years. Her symptoms included depression, nausea, weight loss, and a darkened skin tone. Credit: Bhakti Chavan

Humans are struggling in the face of climate change, but microbes “are growing faster, they are becoming stronger, and they are becoming resistant,” Chavan said. “We need to seriously look into climate change right now. Because we need to be one step ahead of them.”

Strength in Adaptability

The climate has changed rapidly in the decades since the Industrial Revolution, leaving many individuals, communities, and nations struggling to adapt. In contrast, adaptability may just be bacteria’s greatest strength, Burnham explained.

For “some bacteria, their doubling time, or their ability to make a copy of themselves, is like 20 minutes. So, they can change really quickly to anything in their environment, whether that’s heat or pollutants or antibiotics,” Burnham said. “Obviously, we humans can’t do that as fast.”

Higher temperatures are making it easier for mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria, seen here under a microscope, to thrive. Credit: Hanna Sörensson/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Burnham used the example of the sickle cell anemia gene. Over time, the gene variant developed in people who live in tropical, mosquito-friendly areas where malaria is endemic because having a copy of the gene provides a strong resistance to malaria.

There were “similar conditions for so long that humans actually were able to adapt,” Burnham said. “Now things are changing so fast that they can’t” evolve quickly enough.

Higher temperatures are linked to increased risk of tuberculosis, COVID-19, and a wide array of other infectious diseases.

“Almost every type of bacterial infection categorization that we have, those are increased in warmer, more humid times of the year,” Burnham said. “So, surgical site infections, urinary tract infections, skin infections, pneumonias, bloodstream infections. All of these things are more common when it’s warm.”

All of this represents an indirect, but real, link between climate change and AMR: When it’s hotter, more people are sick. And when more people are sick, more people are taking antibiotics.

Paulin-Deschenaux of WHO was careful to state that climate change is not the cause of AMR but noted that evidence linking the two is growing.

There is some evidence indicating that climate change may “accelerate the development and spread of drug-resistant infections,” she said.

As a cystic fibrosis patient, Ella Balasa has battled forms of antimicrobial resistance throughout her life. Credit: Ella Balasa

Balasa, the cystic fibrosis patient, now works as a patient advocate and consultant, a role in which she speaks about the importance of examining alternatives to antibiotics. She herself has found success with an experimental bacteriophage treatment. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and destroy bacteria.

“Even if we develop new antibiotics in the future, bacteria are going to become resistant no matter what,” Balasa said. “And so, I really urge researchers and drug developers to think outside the box of the development of more traditional antibiotics. I just don’t think traditional antibiotics are a viable long-term solution.”

Another important piece of the puzzle, Paulin-Deschenaux emphasized, is prevention of infections in the first place, particularly in areas without strong health care systems and infrastructure.

“One of the best lines, really, for mitigating AMR is strengthening prevention: investing in clean water, sanitation, hygiene, and infection prevention practices, as well as immunization.”

The Air We Breathe

There’s more to the story than adaptability. A changing climate can also enhance bacteria’s ability to travel from one area of the globe to another.

AMR can spread through wastewater, such as when patients taking antibiotics pass remnants of the drugs as waste. When a natural disaster, such as a hurricane or flood, affects wastewater treatment plants, the spread can be dramatically sped up. Some research has even indicated that as glaciers melt, ARGs stored in the ice for thousands of years can be released into the environment.

AMR’s pathways through the soil can be affected by climate too. For instance, drought conditions can lead to desiccated soils that in turn lead to an escalation in the production of both antibiotics and ARGs.

But perhaps the most understudied transmission pathway is the air itself.

Airborne bacteria are shown here, magnified 3,000 times by optical microscopy. Credit: Josef Reischig/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY SA 3.0

Drug-resistant pathogens can travel vast distances when they are aerosolized, or made small and light enough to be carried through the air: A 2024 study showed that aerosolized bacteria and fungi (including resistant species) can travel thousands of kilometers through the air.

But it’s “very, very hard to analyze the air microbiome,” in part because of the potential for contamination, said Fumito Maruyama, an environmental microbiologist at Hiroshima University who focuses on antibiotic resistance and pathogens in the natural environment. “That’s one reason why we still don’t know much about the air resistome.”

Maruyama and Salametu Saibu, an environmental microbiologist and postdoctoral researcher in his lab, introduced the concept of the “air resistome,” or the community of ARGs held in and traveling through the atmosphere, in a 2026 review paper.

Organisms carrying ARGs can enter the air via soil or water, then be redeposited in soil or water in a new location, Saibu explained. These particles can be inhaled by humans, potentially exposing them to antibiotic-resistant microorganisms or ARGs.

Increased air temperatures also make it easier for bacteria to horizontally transfer genes, she added.

Here, E. coli is seen during the process of bacterial conjugation, a form of horizontal gene transfer. The thin appendages labeled “F-pilus” are conduits the microbes use to share DNA. Credit: Jonasz Patkowski/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

“When the temperature is warm, it enables transmission of antibiotic-resistant genes from one community to another community, from one bacterial population to another bacterial population,” Saibu said. “There’s no barrier, no barrier at all.”

But climate change is more than just higher temperatures. Cascading effects can lead to increased risk of disasters such as flooding, drought, and wildfires. Wildfires can worsen respiratory conditions, leading to increased hospital visits and antibiotic use.

A less studied link between wildfire smoke and AMR, Adler Tavella explained, is smoke’s potential ability to aerosolize resistant microbes and genes.

“Wildfire smoke should not be viewed only as chemical air pollution,” he said. “Fires can aerosolize microorganisms from soils, vegetation, and burned biomass, and smoke plumes can transport bacteria, fungi, spores, and other biological particles.”

Breathing is, of course, unavoidable, and taking stronger antibiotics to combat increasingly resistant bacteria contributes to a vicious cycle. Though antibiotics can pay off for shorter-term illnesses like Chavan’s bout of drug-resistant tuberculosis, AMR can leave patients with chronic illnesses, like Balasa, with few options. Though the bacteriophage treatment she began in 2020 has been beneficial, in the past few years, she’s been getting sick more frequently again.

“You can’t fully get rid of resistant pathogenic bacteria, at least not in the cystic fibrosis lung microbiome. They can’t be eradicated, and they are incessant and very resilient,” she said.

Drug-resistant pathogens can travel vast distances when aerosolized. This satellite video shows aerosols visible from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System model. Blue represents sea salt aerosols, pink is dust aerosols, orange/red is smoke from fires, and green is sulfates from pollution and volcanoes. Credit: NASA’s Global Modeling Assimilation Office (GMAO) and NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) The One Health Approach

With a wealth of studies documenting the inequitable effects of climate change, it may come as no surprise that the highest number of drug-resistant infections occur in low- and middle-income countries, where health systems are the weakest. It’s another example of a dangerous feedback loop: With infections more common and high-quality diagnostics less common, people in these countries are more likely to get sick and less likely to receive the appropriate treatment.

“It’s a global issue, and we need to fight it together.”

A lack of treatment access, inappropriate or unregulated use of antimicrobials, and a dearth of resources that could prevent infection, such as clean water and immunization programs, make for a dangerous combination, said Paulin-Deschenaux. “That coming all together really is a melting pot for antimicrobial resistance.”

Researchers are largely united in viewing AMR as a problem requiring a multidisciplinary, global effort, or what WHO often calls a “One Health” approach. The approach recognizes that the health of humans, animals, plants, and the wider environment are linked. Therefore, the prevention, detection, and treatment of disease require collaboration between scientists, physicians, public health specialists, governments, industry, and even patients.

“Everybody must be informed about antibiotic resistance and about the environment, how we should take care of the environment for the next generation to come,” Saibu said. “It’s a global issue, and we need to fight it together.”‘

Across the globe, geoscientists are stepping up to the challenge.

• In China, soil scientists are comparing soil resistomes across the country to learn more about how agricultural practices are contributing to AMR’s spread, while environmental engineers are developing methods to degrade antibiotic contaminants in water and slow their transport through soil.
• In the United States, environmental scientists are studying the presence of ARGs in urban karst aquifer systems and how different soil management strategies affect the resistome.
• In Brazil, environmental scientists like Adler Tavella are investigating the links between catastrophic floods and AMR, while others are researching the use of bacteriophages as antibiotic alternatives.
• In South Africa, researchers are studying the role of extracellular DNA in transporting ARGs from wastewater treatment plants to rivers.

In May 2026, WHO adopted an updated global action plan on antimicrobial resistance that outlined priorities, including raising awareness, enhancing surveillance systems and laboratory networks, improving infection prevention to reduce the need for antimicrobials, ensuring equitable access to and appropriate use of the drugs, and accelerating research into AMR. The report notes the growing importance of tackling the problem, suggesting that AMR could reduce global life expectancy by 1.8 years within a decade and cause up to 39 million deaths by 2050.

“Solving AMR will require much broader collaboration than we traditionally imagine,” said Lianping Yang, a public health scientist at Sun Yat-sen University who researches AMR and climate change. “If we want to protect antibiotics for future generations, we need to think beyond prescribing practices. We need a healthy environment, a healthy planet, a stronger health system, and better preparation for a changing climate.”

Moreover, Yang said, “sustainable development strategies are important for helping the global, especially the low- and middle-income countries to address the dual threats of climate change and AMR.”

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

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), Antimicrobial resistance is killing millions. Climate change is making it worse., Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260274. Published on 1 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.

Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

“Mysterious”, “a black box”, “I’m really not sure…”—these are phrases many early career researchers might use when discussing the editorial process of peer-reviewed scientific journals. Peer-review is esoteric as it is, and while most scientists become familiar with peer review as authors and, eventually, reviewers, very few receive formal training in how editorial decisions are made or how to evaluate manuscripts from the broader perspective of an editor (Gradoville and Deemer, 2022). The Early Career Editorial Fellows (ECEF) program, launched in 2024 in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (JGR: Biogeosciences) and GeoHealth, offers an opportunity to glimpse behind the veil of journal editing and gain that perspective. The program aims to cultivate the next generation of scientific editors by providing early-career researchers with hands-on editorial experience, mentorship, and exposure to the decision-making process (Xenopoulos and Nguyen, 2024). Through mentorship from experienced editors, fellows learn to evaluate research beyond their own areas of expertise, contribute to the broader scientific community, and develop the skills needed to become both capable reviewers and future editors. As the first cohort to complete the program in JGR: Biogeosciences, we wanted to share our experiences in the hope that more AGU journal editorial boards will  consider offering this opportunity.

We’ve learned the ropes of scientific publishing and journal editing from reviewer recruitment through synthesizing feedback and issuing editorial recommendations.

Over the past two years, we’ve learned the ropes of scientific publishing and journal editing from reviewer recruitment through synthesizing feedback and issuing editorial recommendations. Upon joining the editorial team, our role was primarily that of a reviewer as we familiarized ourselves with the editorial process under the guidance of mentors and demonstrated our ability to provide and recognize a useful peer review. Following this onboarding period, we transitioned into an associate editor (AE) role, actively handling manuscripts from start to finish. The workload was typically sporadic, with concentrated time spent reading incoming manuscripts, searching for and contacting reviewers, synthesizing feedback, and drafting recommendations for the handling editor. When revisions were recommended, we were typically looped back in upon resubmission to assess whether concerns were sufficiently addressed and if an additional review cycle was warranted.

Recruiting reviewers frequently emerged as the most time-consuming component of the overall process, consistent with recent trends in scientific publishing (Gradoville and Deemer, 2022). Compiling a qualified list required balancing topical expertise, career stage, geographic and gender diversity, and avoiding conflicts of interest,  then cycling through and appending the list as invitees declined, went silent, or failed to deliver promised reviews could stretch across several weeks. Once reviews were in, reconciling conflicting assessments was often the most mentally demanding task, requiring us to conduct an independent read of the manuscript to make a fair recommendation, particularly when the topic touched on areas outside our own expertise. Beyond handling manuscripts, we attended quarterly editorial board meetings and had opportunities to write ‘Editor’s Highlights’ for Eos, which challenged us to distill a paper’s core message and engage the broader scientific community to promote noteworthy new publications.

Within JGR: Biogeosciences, we worked one-on-one with mentors who were in the same or similar scientific fields, some of whom we may not have necessarily connected with otherwise. This mentorship was focused on expanding skills related to reviewing, evaluating reviews, and making editorial recommendations, which are skills that early career scientists do not often have dedicated time or mentorship to practice and learn, especially from mentors with differing perspectives on the editorial process.

In addition to hands-on editorial experience, the ECEF program also provided opportunities to network with scientists from a variety of fields, as well as with the broader AGU journals community. As ECEFs, we were invited to attend official and unofficial events at the AGU Annual Meeting. The Editors’ Dinner was an opportunity to reunite with editors we had worked with previously or seen at quarterly board meetings, as well as connect with editors from other AGU journals that we had never met. Being invited to be a part of the broader AGU journals community was an impactful experience, which highlighted the importance of having a community of scientists and journal staff that make our science visible. We were also invited to meetups with the other JGR: Biogeosciences editors to discuss matters relating to the journal and network in a more casual setting. These events allowed for more in-depth, personal conservations that seemed more productive than typical passing interactions at conferences.

Participating in the ECEF program fundamentally changed how we review manuscripts, write papers, and interact with journals.

Participating in the ECEF program fundamentally changed how we review manuscripts, write papers, and interact with journals. Viewing peer review from an editor’s perspective emphasized that the most valuable reviews are not those that identify the greatest number of minor issues, but those that assess a manuscript’s overall scientific contribution, clearly identify its key strengths and weaknesses, and provide constructive suggestions for improvement. It also helped us recognize that reviewers do not need to evaluate every aspect of a multidisciplinary study; instead, they can focus on making meaningful contributions within their own areas of expertise. Furthermore, the program changed how we view editorial decisions. Previously, we often regarded an editor’s decision as the final word. As one ECEF participant reflected, “Now, if I were in this situation again [of having a paper rejected despite positive reviews], I would email the AE and ask for additional clarification on their decision/make the case for why their decision should be revisited.”

As the inaugural fellowship concludes, one question naturally follows: Should other journals adopt similar programs? Our answer is simple: yes. High-quality scientific publishing depends on knowledgeable editors who can manage peer review fairly, efficiently, and transparently. Yet many editorial boards are under increasing pressure from rising submission rates, reviewer fatigue, and the growing complexity of modern publishing (AGU Editorial Network, 2024; Gradoville and Deemer, 2022). Editorial fellowships provide a structured pathway to develop future editors while strengthening journals today.

The benefits extend far beyond the fellows themselves. First, fellowships create a sustainable pipeline of well-trained editors, reducing reliance on a small pool of overburdened senior researchers. Second, they improve the quality of peer review by giving fellows a deeper understanding of editorial decision-making, publication ethics, and constructive reviewing. These skills extend into their own research, improving the manuscripts they write, the reviews they provide, and the guidance they offer colleagues and students. Third, fellowships diversify editorial leadership by bringing early-career researchers—and often individuals from underrepresented groups—into editorial decision-making, broadening perspectives, and strengthening the scientific community.

The journals themselves also benefit directly. Fellows contribute fresh perspectives on submission systems, reviewer guidance, and editorial workflows while expanding subject expertise and editorial capacity. Although mentoring fellows requires an initial investment from senior editors, our experience suggests that this is quickly offset as fellows become independent and begin sharing editorial responsibilities. Careful selection of participants, structured mentoring, and regular interaction among fellows can further maximize the effectiveness of these programs. The need for such initiatives has never been greater. Scientific publishing is adapting to the rapid rise of AI and large language models (LLMs), increasing concerns over publication ethics, reviewer fatigue, paper mills, and the continued growth of predatory publishing (AGU Editorial Network, 2024; Van Noorden, 2023). These challenges place increasing demands on editors to safeguard the integrity and credibility of the scientific peer review process.

Investing in the next generation of editors is ultimately an investment in the quality, credibility, and resilience of science itself.

Programs like the Early Career Editorial Fellowship offer a practical and much needed forward-looking solution. By training future editors through structured mentoring and real editorial experience, they strengthen peer review, build editorial capacity, and foster a culture of scientific integrity. Investing in the next generation of editors is ultimately an investment in the quality, credibility, and resilience of science itself. If journals are serious about protecting research integrity and strengthening peer review (Bohrer et al., 2026), they must invest not only in today’s editors, but also in training tomorrows.

—Bailey A. Murphy (murphyba@ornl.gov, 0000-0002-0399-5221), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, United States; Ceara J. Talbot (ctalbot@ucdavis.edu, 0000-0002-6227-6868), University of California, Davis, United States; Hongyan Bao (baohy@xmu.edu.cn, 0000-0002-9632-1487), Xiamen University, Xiamen, China; Kyle S. Boodoo (kyle.boodoo@univie.ac.at, 0000-0001-7063-5042), Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria; and Kendalynn A. Morris (kendalynn.morris@pnnl.gov, 0000-0002-0388-6965), Pacific Northwest National Lab, United States

Citation: Murphy, B. A., C. J. Talbot, H. Bao, K. S. Boodoo, and K. A. Morris (2026), Behind the veil of journal editing, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265034. Published on 1 September 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.

Author(s): Romain Pioch, Marie-Alix Sagnimorte, Benjamin Esteves, and Cyril Drag

A laser induced fluorescence (LIF) scheme is investigated to probe singly ionized iodine ions (I+) in electric propulsion devices. The transition 6sS2o5→6pP35 at 516.261 nm is considered and the theoretical computation of the weights and positions of the hyperfine structure is carried out. First, th…

[Phys. Rev. E 114, 035201] Published Tue Sep 01, 2026

SummaryDeep learning methods such as neural networks offer a rapid alternative to geophysical inversion and are increasingly applied to airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data for a range of earth science problems. Such networks rely on both the network architecture as well as suitable training datasets to produce realistic earth resistivity models. Here we develop a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to invert AEM data and pay particular attention to the characteristics of the training dataset. As well as covering a realistic range of subsurface property distributions, the training data must emulate the noise and data gap characteristics of the target survey data. We find neural networks trained on noise free data, while performing very well on validation data, perform poorly on real world data, often inducing geologically unrealistic artifacts in the resistivity model. Conversely, training data conditioned with noise and data gap characteristics appropriate for the survey of interest, fit the validation data less well, but produce fewer artifacts when applied to survey data. Choice of loss function metric and data normalisation method is important and may vary between surveys. Despite strong advances in neural network design, developing training data with broad enough characteristics to be generalised across many surveys and data acquisition platforms remains an important challenge.

SummaryAccurate separation of the Earth’s internal and external geomagnetic fields requires robust modeling, especially during the geomagnetic storms. Because the comprehensive CHAOS model is primarily designed to represent the Earth’s magnetic field under geomagnetically quiet periods, residuals of satellite observations relative to the CHAOS model during storms exhibit systematic dependencies on magnetic local time (MLT) and the disturbance levels, highlighting limitations in its representation of external field morphology. To address this limitation, we developed an empirical correction for the CHAOS model that specifically targets the magnetic signatures of the residual ring current at low and mid-latitudes. Using the high-quality scalar magnetic data from Swarm A/B and the Macau Science Satellite-1 (MSS-1) at nighttime hours, between November 2023 and September 2025, we modeled the systematic perturbations remaining after CHAOS background removal. Our separable parameterization explicitly resolves MLT structure while incorporating dependencies on geomagnetic disturbance levels. Event analyses demonstrate that our correction model can successfully capture the pronounced dawn-dusk MLT asymmetries of the external field during storms main and recovery phases. Statistically, the empirical model robustly captures residual ring current signals across all evaluated nighttime sectors, yielding the greatest improvements at dusk. Ultimately, the proposed correction effectively mitigates the activity-dependent biases in the CHAOS model’s external field, yielding a more reliable representation for the accurate interpretation of storm-time magnetic residuals.

Data from many sources, including NASA, have shown a significant decrease in Arctic sea ice since 1979. However, the processes driving the melting and freezing of sea ice are complex, and fluctuations occur throughout the year. Short-term variations in temperature, winds, ocean convection and water salinity within a certain region can also affect how much ice can reform or melt.

Whakaari/White Island's sudden eruption in December 2019, which killed 22 people and severely injured 25 others, was New Zealand's deadliest volcanic disaster in recent history.

New research is dismantling the longstanding myth of the "pristine" Amazon. A reconstruction of 10,000 years of Amazonian pyrogeography, based on 1,361 radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates across 303 sites—including soil charcoal and burned archaeological material—shows that fire in the rainforest is almost exclusively a human-driven phenomenon, not a natural one.

Europe is no stranger to powerful windstorms, but some storms capable of causing serious damage have an unusual origin. Tropical cyclones can occasionally travel north from lower latitudes and reach Europe, where they can bring damaging winds and heavy rain even after losing some of their tropical characteristics.

Source: Community Science

Resources such as sea level rise viewers, heat maps, and flood prediction services are crucial tools in a changing climate. NASA Earth Observations (NASA EO) datasets provide important information on these and other natural hazards, but many communities who may benefit from these tools face barriers to accessing them.

La Margarita, a community along Puerto Rico’s southern coast, faces hazards including flooding, storm exposure, crumbling infrastructure, and inadequate government investment. Residents of this historically underserved community contend with pollution from nearby power plants and an industrial sterilization facility. Hurricane Fiona exposed many of the region’s vulnerabilities in 2022, after 30 inches of rain destroyed homes in low-lying areas and left residents without basic services.

Raub et al. worked with La Margarita residents to learn about their environmental concerns and preferred solutions and to assess ways NASA EO datasets might be able to address those concerns in a three-phase project over 9 months.

In phase 1, one-on-one bilingual interviews with 16 local leaders and residents helped researchers determine participants’ environmental justice concerns as well as familiarity with EO tools and the possible barriers to using them. In phase 2, a NASA representative showed community members how EO tools could be used, such as to show patterns of power outages and to project rates of sea level rise. For phase 3, researchers created a bilingual English-Spanish report to summarize the study participants’ concerns and the available NASA EO resources. La Margarita community members were invited to provide feedback to ensure that the report accurately reflected their needs and concerns.

Key concerns that study participants identified were flooding (56%), land misuse from illegal development (63%), and air quality and accompanying health conditions (50%). Government inaction was participants’ biggest concern (69%). Participants initially had little awareness of the EO tools but felt that flood mapping and air quality monitoring systems would be useful, especially if they were paired with support for how to use the tools. Barriers to EO tools included spotty internet access, unfamiliarity with the technology, previous experiences with unhelpful authorities, and the language barrier.

Study participants did not want solutions imposed on them by outside experts—they wanted collaboration with researchers and agencies who would listen to their concerns and work toward community-led decisionmaking. The study authors suggest that environmental justice means more than providing data: Building trusting relationships between scientists, communities, and agencies like NASA can ensure that important tools reach and are used by the people who need them most, the authors say. (Community Science, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025CSJ000157, 2026)

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2026), Communities affected by climate change need more than data, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260277. Published on 31 August 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’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

As environmental conditions change, it is increasingly important to understand the structure and properties of the Earth’s critical zone, the layer where rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms meet and interact. While several geophysical methods provide images of the subsurface, they do not directly measure rock properties, such as porosity and water saturation.

A new article in Reviews of Geophysics explores rock physics models, which help bridge the gap between these geophysical methods and rock properties. Here, we asked the lead author to give an overview of the critical zone, the different types of rock physics models, and some of the remaining challenges for researchers.

In simple terms, what is the critical zone?

The critical zone is Earth’s thin outer layer that stretches from the tops of the trees down to the base of weathered bedrock.

The critical zone is Earth’s thin outer layer that stretches from the tops of the trees down to the base of weathered bedrock. Within it, physical, chemical, and biological weathering slowly transforms intact rock into a porous material that stores and transmits the water and nutrients ecosystems depend on. It is called “critical” because these near-surface processes sustain life, regulate water supplies, and shape landscapes over long timescales. Indeed, the critical zone controls how much water is available to plants, how groundwater is recharged, and how landscapes evolve over time.

What is the subsurface critical zone comprised of, and why is it important to study?

Below the soil, the subsurface critical zone grades downward from chemically altered and physically weakened rock (called “saprolite”), to fractured and partially weathered bedrock, and finally to fresh bedrock at the base. These layers are not sharply separated; they blend gradually, and their thicknesses vary with rock type, climate, topography, and tectonic history. This complex architecture governs how water infiltrates, how much is stored, and how it moves toward streams and plant roots. It matters because it controls water availability, groundwater recharge, nutrient cycling, and landscape evolution. Since it is hidden from direct view beneath our feet, we rely on indirect methods to map it across entire hillslopes.

Why is rock physics important for understanding the critical zone?

Rock physics supplies the missing bridge: it is the set of quantitative relationships that translate these geophysical signals into meaningful properties.

Geophysical surveys can image the subsurface over large areas, but they can’t measure the properties that critical zone scientists care about, such as porosity or water content. Instead, they record how signals (e.g., seismic waves, electrical currents, radar, or magnetic responses) move through the ground. Rock physics supplies the missing bridge: it is the set of quantitative relationships that translate these geophysical signals into meaningful properties such as porosity, water saturation, and permeability.

Without rock physics, a seismic velocity map is just a picture of how fast waves travel; however, that same picture becomes an estimate of how much water the subsurface can hold when rock physics is applied. This transforms qualitative images into quantitative characterization, letting us test ideas about weathering, water storage, and how the critical zone responds to climate and environmental change.

What are the most common geophysical methods that scientists use to study the critical zone?

Several complementary methods are used in critical zone studies. Seismic refraction and surface-wave techniques measure how fast elastic waves travel, revealing subsurface layering, weathering profiles, and depth to bedrock. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) injects current into the ground to map resistivity, which is sensitive to porosity, water content, and the presence of clay. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) uses radio-frequency waves to produce detailed images of subsurface contrasts in dielectric permittivity due to boundaries in porosity, composition, and water content. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) directly detects hydrogen in water, providing quantitative water content and pore-size information. Because each method senses a different physical property, combining them yields a fuller and less ambiguous picture of water and structure in the critical zone.

An example modeling workflow for characterizing the critical zone using rock physics. Geophysical measurements are first converted through geophysical inversion into maps of seismic velocity, resistivity, and other geophysical properties. Rock physics models then translate those into estimates of porosity and water saturation. Credit: Grana et al. [2026], Figure 1

Why do scientists use rock physics models?

Geophysical images are inherently non-unique: different combinations of porosity, water, mineralogy, and structure can produce the same measured response. Rock physics models resolve this ambiguity by encoding the physical relationships between what we measure and the underlying rock and fluid properties. Some are empirical, derived from laboratory and field observations, while others are physics-based, built from first principles describing how grains, pores, and fluids behave. Combined with mathematical inversion, these models convert geophysical property fields into quantitative estimates of porosity, saturation, and permeability, as well as into estimates of the uncertainty in those values. This is what allows geophysical data to be integrated into hydrological and geochemical models of the critical zone.

What types of rock physics models are explored in your review article?

We review models grouped by the geophysical property they address. Elastic models link seismic velocities to porosity and saturation, using granular-media theories for loose, weathered material, inclusion models for fractured bedrock, and Gassmann’s equations to account for pore fluids. Electrical and electromagnetic models relate resistivity to porosity and water content. Dielectric mixing models connect GPR measurements to water content. NMR models tie relaxation signals to pore size, water content, and permeability. We also discuss soil physics effects, like matric suction, that become important in the shallow, unsaturated near surface where standard rock physics assumptions begin to break down.

Examples of rock physics models: an elastic model estimates P-wave velocity from porosity and water saturation, while an electrical model estimates resistivity from the same properties using Archie’s equation. Credit: Grana et al. [2026], Figure 2 (left panel) and 3

What are some of the remaining challenges where additional research efforts are needed?

Several challenges remain. Weathered materials are far more heterogeneous than the sedimentary rocks most rock physics models were originally built for, so relationships are often site-specific and don’t transfer easily between locations. Calibrating and validating models requires direct measurements from cores or boreholes but this is expensive, coverage is sparse, and the process can alter the properties of the very material being sampled. Additionally, some properties are difficult to constrain from surface data alone. For example, permeability and fracture connectivity are critical for predicting water flow but are notoriously difficult to measure in the field. Relying instead on data from the lab has its own problems: laboratory samples are centimeters wide, while geophysical surveys average over meters. Promising directions include systematic laboratory measurements of critical zone materials, inversion methods that explicitly quantify uncertainty, physics-guided machine learning, and emerging monitoring technologies such as distributed acoustic sensing that can track subsurface changes continuously over time.

—Dario Grana (dgrana@uwyo.edu; 0000-0003-4220-053X), University of Wyoming, United States; Brady A. Flinchum (brady.flinchum@newcastle.edu.au; 0000-0003-0395-0450), University of Newcastle, Australia; Denys Grombacher (denys.grombacher@geo.au.dk; 0000-0003-2447-0085), University of Aarhus, Denmark; Andrew D. Parsekian (aparseki@uwyo.edu; 0000-0001-5072-9818), University of Wyoming, United States; Clifford S. Riebe (criebe@uwyo.edu; 0000-0002-8744-8208), University of Wyoming, United States; and W. Steven Holbrook (wstevenh@vt.edu, 0000-0003-0065-8841), Virginia Tech, United States

Editor’s Note: It is the policy of AGU Publications to invite the authors of articles published in Reviews of Geophysics to write a summary for Eos Editors’ Vox.

Citation: Grana, D., B. A. Flinchum, D. Grombacher, A. D. Parsekian, C. S. Riebe, and W. S. Holbrook (2026), Decoding rocks to reveal what the critical zone hides, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265033. Published on 31 August 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.

SummaryGeophysical joint inversion offers a robust approach for integrating diverse geophysical datasets, leveraging their complementary information to mitigate the nonuniqueness inherent in individual data inversion. This approach thereby enhances model consistency and improves subsurface characterization. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of three-dimensional (3D) joint inversion of gravity, magnetic and magnetotelluric (MT) data for deep geothermal exploration. We first implemented a reweighting optimization strategy for gravity and magnetic data to increase the vertical resolution of jointly inverted models of potential data. Subsequently, we integrated the optimized gravity and magnetic inversion scheme with MT data using a cross-gradient constraint for comprehensive joint inversion. Synthetic experiments validated the effectiveness of our developed reweighting optimization strategy and joint inversion scheme, demonstrating improved structural resolution and model reliability compared to separate inversions. Finally, we applied the methodology to the Yanggao geothermal field in northern Datong Basin, China, to assess its applicability for deep geothermal exploration. The joint inversion approach, offering an advantage over separate inversions, provides enhanced subsurface characterization by more accurately delineating hydrothermal pathways and potential geothermal reservoirs of the geothermal system within the investigated area.

SummaryLocal seismic topographic amplification of rock slopes is a primary cause of earthquake-induced damage in mountainous engineering. To resolve the scattering of plane SH waves by individual rock slopes, this study introduces an analytical model derived from the Uniform Theory of Diffraction. Conventional wave function expansion methods (WFEM) often struggle with non-closed free boundary conditions across varying elevations and tend to suffer from series divergence under high-frequency incidence. This approach precisely partitions the slope into two semi-infinite ideal wedge domains sharing a common face, reconstructing the generalized geometric wave field through rigorous global ray tracing. Second-order coupled diffraction terms with a slope-diffraction correction are introduced to describe the two-way interaction between the slope crest and toe, while the UTD transition functions ensure continuity of the wavefield across shadow boundaries. Systematic numerical evaluations in both frequency and time domains reveal a frequency-selective interference mechanism with distinct spatial variability. Under horizontal grazing incidence, energy is strongly focused on the leeward face, while the back-slope forms a high-frequency seismic shadow zone due to intense destructive interference between direct and secondary diffracted waves. At certain oblique incidence angles, repeated scattering of broadband waves between the slope crest and toe leads to strong local resonance in the slope region. Findings indicate that the location of maximum dynamic response shifts sensitively with the incident wavefront inclination. The results show that the maximum amplification does not always occur at the slope crest, highlighting the importance of incidence angle in seismic microzonation and site planning for mountainous areas.

When high or low tide occurs, the water does not necessarily rise and fall uniformly along the entire coastline. In fact, the height of the tide in a bay can vary by up to one meter (3 feet) from one location to another just a few kilometers away.

A new study suggests that El Ninos—the natural climatic chaos agent that pops up periodically and spikes global temperatures—are getting stronger because of human-caused climate change.

body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news that impacts science and scientists today.

A new era of space exploration began today with the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Roman is poised to solve one of the fundamental mysteries of the universe: what it’s made of.

“There’s something really fundamental that we don’t understand about the nature of our universe itself, and Roman is purpose-built to address and provide the data that we need to address these questions,” Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist and an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a 27 August interview on NASA’s Curious Universe podcast.

Roman launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. local time on 30 August. The telescope is named after NASA’s first chief of astronomy, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925–2018). Roman was also the first woman to be a NASA executive and is widely considered to be the “Mother of the Hubble Space Telescope” for her work to make that pioneering telescope a reality.

A Universe to Discover

Roman is a NASA mission and received instrumentation and science support from the Centre national d’études spatiales in France, the European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. The telescope has a field of view 100 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope and is capable of capturing much more detail in a single glimpse.

Roman is expected to probe deep into the early universe and study more than a billion galaxies. In doing so, scientists hope to create 3D maps of the evolving universe.

Nancy Grace Roman stands next to a scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope outside the Hubble control center. Credit: NASA

“One of the motivations for Roman was the discovery that our universe is not just expanding, but that expansion is accelerating,” McEnery said. “That was crazy. It’s like if you were to throw a ball in the air, and instead of the ball coming back down, it just keeps shooting away.”

Cosmologists theorize that around 75% of the universe is composed of a mysterious substance called dark energy that is pushing space-time itself apart. One way of measuring the impact of dark energy, and thereby narrowing down just what dark energy might be, is to track the expansion history of the universe. This can be done by mapping the locations and distances of supernovae across the universe and measuring how quickly they are receding from us.

“We can best do that with something that has a huge view because when you’re measuring the property of a large chunk of the sky, you can be reasonably confident you’re understanding how the universe itself is behaving, rather than the vagaries of a particular small group of galaxies in one particular spot,” McEnery said.

Roman will also add to our knowledge of dark matter, which makes up about 20% of the universe and is mostly understood through its invisible gravitational effects on light as it passes near galaxies.

Scientists expect Roman to discover as many as 200,000 exoplanets in the Milky Way.

On the opposite end of the astrophysical paradigm are exoplanets. Roman is designed to find “an awful lot of them,” McEnery said.

The telescope is equipped with three ways to detect exoplanets: by monitoring starlight for dips as an orbiting planet passes in front (transit method), by watching for spikes in starlight as a foreground planet wanders past (microlensing), and by blocking a star’s light to see the glow from the planet itself (direct imaging).

Astronomers currently know of more than 14,000 confirmed and candidate exoplanets. Through these three methods, scientists expect Roman to discover as many as 200,000 exoplanets in the Milky Way.

What’s more, each detection method is best at detecting different subsets of exoplanets, so Roman can help provide a more complete picture of exoplanet populations, which can help astronomers understand how exoplanets form.

After Launch

The telescope’s primary mission is 5 years, with an expected lifetime of 10 years.

Roman scientists will spend the next three months ensuring Roman reaches its distant orbit and testing the telescope’s systems. The team expects the first science images to be released in early 2027. Those images will likely offer stunning views of familiar places of the sky to demonstrate Roman’s capabilities.

 
Related

•  All About the Roman Space Telescope
•  Who was Nancy Grace Roman?
•  More from Roman’s Senior Project Scientist
 

But one of the most anticipated early looks will be Roman’s first deep field survey. Like its predecessors from Hubble, Roman’s deep field will reveal millions of distant galaxies hidden within a seemingly blank patch of the sky. Those surveys will look as far back into the early universe as Hubble’s do, but they will be more than 1,500 times larger. McEnery said it would take more than half a million 4K TVs to fully display Roman’s largest survey.

“It’s the equivalent of covering 45 city blocks,” she said. “You can think about Mount Rushmore, but Mount Rushmore is too small. You would need to fully cover El Capitán with 4K TVs to fully display Roman’s largest survey. I don’t think we should do that, but it gives you a sense of how amazing this survey is going to be.”

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@astrokimcartier.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about science or scientists? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. 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.

Fracking, the injection of high-pressure fluid to fracture rock and release oil or gas, can trigger earthquakes. While some sites generate small tremors beforehand that may provide an early warning, others produce few or none.