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Publication date: Available online 6 May 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research

Author(s): Hailiao Wang, Guangyou Geng, Jizhong Liu, Ming Xu, Xiaoyi Wang

Publication date: Available online 6 May 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research

Author(s): T.K. Ramkumar, M.G. Keerthana, G.K. Prashant, Suparba Goswami, Keerthana Ramesh, Shravani Ahire

For years, scientists have warned that melting Antarctic ice could push sea levels dangerously higher by the end of this century. But a new study led by University of Maryland scientist Madeleine Youngs suggests those warnings may still be too conservative because they leave out a crucial factor: the ocean's own complex circulatory system.

As tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most destructive natural hazards worldwide, understanding how TCs change under climate warming is of critical importance. While substantial progress has been made in projecting changes in TC intensity and precipitation, much less is known about how their vertical structure will respond to a warmer climate.

Earthquakes can visibly and permanently crack the ground apart in dramatic and unpredictable surface fault rupture, but new research led by University of Michigan Engineering revealed that soil density strongly influences how and where they occur. The paper is published in the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.

Scientists, including those working with the Earth Commission, are calling for a fundamental rethink of how the world imagines its future, arguing that today's dominant climate and biodiversity models are too narrow to deal with the scale and complexity of the crises ahead.

University of Delaware geologist Jessica Warren has contributed to research that brings us one step closer to better understanding how earthquakes operate. Situated along a stretch of the equator in the Pacific Ocean, between Indonesia and Central America, the Gofar transform fault is one of the fastest moving faults on Earth—cruising along the seafloor at about 140 millimeters per year. This is over four times faster than the San Andreas fault is moving in California.

Central Mongolia’s Hangay Mountains have long posed a conundrum. Rising 4 kilometers above sea level, the dome-shaped range plays a key role in shaping the region’s climate. But it couldn’t have formed in the same way as most equally tall mountain ranges.

“These mountains in central Mongolia are very far from any plate boundary, about 5,000 kilometers away from the Pacific margin,” said Pengfei Li, a geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry. “It’s very hard to understand why we have such a mountain range so far from the plate boundary.”

Li recently led research finding that geochemical evidence supports a compelling explanation of how these oddball mountains formed. The researchers proposed that at the site of the future mountains, a U-shaped bend in a tectonic plate led to an extra-thick lithosphere. A chunk of that heavy lithosphere eventually broke off and sunk into the mantle. Free of the extra weight, the crust then rebounded upward as the Hangay Mountains.

Bend and Snap

“It’s the first discovery of volcanism for this period.”

Tectonic plates are far from rigid. As they move above, below, and against each other, sections of the plates far from the boundary can develop curves and folds like a scrunched up tablecloth. Curved sections, called oroclines, are common around the world. At about 6,000 kilometers long, the Mongolian orocline is one of the longest, and the Hangay Mountains sit right at the curviest part of the orocline’s U shape.

Li and his colleagues suspected that the Hangays’ location along the orocline is no coincidence. During multiple field expeditions from 2018 through 2026, the researchers collected rock samples from several sites in the Hangay Mountains that showed signs of ancient volcanic activity. Uranium-lead dating of zircons within those samples showed that the area experienced volcanic activity in the early Cretaceous period 124–114 million years ago.

“When I saw the age, I was surprised,” Li said. “120 million years—no one had ever reported volcanoes [in Mongolia] during this period.…It’s the first discovery of volcanism for this period.”

The team also analyzed the samples for major and trace elements to determine the depth at which the rocks formed. Their geochemical analysis revealed that the rocks formed in the lithosphere 80 kilometers below the surface. They published these results in Geology in April.

It’s pretty odd that the rocks originated so deep, Li said, because the modern-day lithosphere is only 70 kilometers thick.

The team proposed that when the continental plate folded and created the Mongolian orocline 200 million years ago, the lithosphere bunched up and became thicker in the curve of the U shape. That thicker section of lithosphere, a root at least 80 kilometers thick, would have been unstable in the long term, Li explained.

The lithospheric root would have been too heavy to remain attached to the crust above for long, and a chunk of it would have eventually snapped off. When it sunk, or foundered, into the deep mantle, it would have melted and generated the volcanic activity recorded in the rocks the team studied. Free from the weight of that lithospheric root, the crust above would have rebounded into the dome-shaped mountain range visible today.

Complicated Yet Compelling

“Their story, though complicated, makes a great deal of sense and in a way provides affirmation of a prediction made some time ago regarding oroclines.”

“The story that [the researchers] have put together to explain the massive Hangay topographic ‘dome’ of central west Mongolia is a compelling one that spans more than the past 200 million years of Earth history,” said Stephen Johnston, a tectonics researcher at the University of Alberta in Canada who was not involved with this research. Past research into the Iberian orocline suggested that oroclines might lead to lithospheric thickening, and this explanation of the Hangay Mountains fits that narrative.

“Their story, though complicated, makes a great deal of sense and in a way provides affirmation of a prediction made some time ago regarding oroclines,” Johnston added.

Johnston said that the new explanation of how the Hangay Mountains formed makes him wonder why it took so long—80 million years—between when the orocline formed and when the lithospheric root sank.

“This seems a long time for a gravitationally unstable mantle root to have remained attached to the overlying crust,” he said. He hopes that future work can help determine whether this process has taken place at other oroclines around the world and has simply been overlooked or whether there is something special about the Mongolian orocline.

Li and his team have turned their attention to how the formation of the Hangay Mountains shaped the region’s ancient climate. Today, the towering mountain range prevents moist air from northern Mongolia from reaching the parched Gobi Desert in the south. They hope to connect how a process deep underground, like lithospheric foundering, affected the paleoclimate and, consequently, the region’s habitability.

“It’s very new to try to understand the Earth’s habitability from a deeper sense,” Li said.

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

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Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2026), Mongolian mountains rose when the crust bounced back, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260153. Published on 15 May 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.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, global sea level has risen by about 20 centimeters (roughly 8 inches) [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021]. As a result, coastal and island communities around the world are experiencing more frequent high-tide flooding, worsening storm surges, and increasing damage to homes and infrastructure. In the United States, for example, human-caused sea level rise alone increased damages from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy by about $8 billion [Strauss et al., 2021].

The United States has long been a key member of the global climate research community. However, that role is now threatened.

Scientific understanding of the magnitudes and rates of sea level rise, of how they vary around the planet, and of why the ocean is rising is based on a body of rigorous research that, for decades, has tracked past and present sea levels and projected future rise.

The United States has long been a key member of the global climate research community, including in producing the wealth of sea level research that has informed countries, states, and communities of what lies ahead for their shorelines. However, that role is now threatened by the Trump administration’s attacks on the country’s scientific research enterprise broadly and on climate research especially.

Analysis of the evolution of sea level rise projection science [Garner et al., 2018] underscores both the country’s prominent past role in the field and how the ongoing attacks may undermine progress in our understanding of sea level change. It also points to the urgency of acting across multiple fronts to preserve scientific knowledge and prevent further harm to the capacity to measure and project how much and how fast rising seas will affect global coastlines.

Four Decades of Advancing Sea Level Science

By the late 1970s, scientists around the world had begun to recognize the growing threat that climate change posed to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the danger their melting presented to coastal regions [Mercer, 1978]. The first global mean sea level (GMSL) projections were published in 1982 [Gornitz et al., 1982], and the first planning-oriented sea level scenarios were published just a few years later [e.g., National Research Council, 1987].

Since 1982, 103 studies have produced GMSL projections [Garner et al., 2018]. About one third of the studies (33 in total), including the first five, were published by teams led by scientists at U.S. institutions (Figure 1). Thirty-three studies (some, but not all, of which were also led by U.S.-based scientists) have also benefited from U.S. federal funding, sometimes from multiple agencies (Figure 2), including the National Science Foundation (NSF; 16 studies), NASA (10 studies), NOAA (8 studies), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE; 6 studies), the U.S. Department of Defense (3 studies), the U.S. Geological Survey (2 studies), and the EPA (2 studies).

Fig. 1. This time series shows the total number of sea level rise projection studies published each year from 1982 to 2025 (gray bars) and the number of studies each year that were led by scientists based at U.S. institutions (purple bars). The text at top left tabulates the total number of studies led by authors in each country or region listed. Fig. 2. The total number of sea level rise projection studies published each year from 1982 to 2025 is shown again here (gray bars), this time beside the number of studies each year that were supported by funding from various U.S. federal science agencies (stacked colored bars). Note that some studies were supported by more than one U.S. federal agency.

U.S. scientists have further played critical roles in developing GMSL projections for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. For example, chapters producing sea level projections for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report [Church et al., 2013], the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [Oppenheimer et al., 2019], and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021] were all coled by U.S.-based scientists.

Meanwhile, U.S. funding has been essential to the IPCC, constituting more than 25% of the nearly $207 million invested globally in the organization from 1989 to 2024 [IPCC, 2025]. NASA also played a key role in making IPCC AR6 sea level projections more accessible and usable through the NASA/IPCC Sea Level Projection Tool [Kopp et al., 2023; Fox-Kemper et al., 2021; Garner et al., 2021], which supports local assessments of sea level change around the world and has about 400,000 users annually.

U.S. institutions have been vital in developing, hosting, and maintaining critical sea level datasets.

Beyond direct contributions of U.S. scientists and federal funding to the global scientific community’s sea level projection research, U.S. institutions have been vital in developing, hosting, and maintaining critical sea level datasets. For example, the University of Hawai‘i Sea Level Center is a crucial part of the Global Sea Level Observing System, operating a network of more than 90 tide gauge stations and supporting global real-time oceanographic operations and long-term climate studies. NASA satellite missions, including TOPEX/Poseidon and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE and GRACE-FO), have been instrumental in helping to measure changes in GMSL and ice sheets, providing new ways to assess the accuracy of global sea level projections [Törnqvist et al., 2025]. And the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado has consistently processed such datasets, providing critical data access for the broader research community.

Pushed to a Precipice

Since January 2025, climate and sea level science in the United States has come under an unprecedented attack. Scientists have seen congressionally approved research funding revoked or frozen. Agencies like NASA, NOAA, and NSF have been stripped of physical resources, talented scientific experts, and independent advisory and governing boards. The Trump administration, in its fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget, sought debilitating funding cuts for federal scientific agencies, including proposed budget reductions of 24% for NASA, 27% for NOAA, 57% for NSF, and 55% for EPA. Although the scale of these cuts was reduced in the enacted FY2026 budget, the administration is pushing for similarly steep cuts in its FY2027 budget request.

In May 2025, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which produced the first global sea level projections [Gornitz et al., 1982], was evicted from its 49-year home, and efforts to undermine the institute have continued into 2026. Since December, the administration has advanced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which developed and maintains a host of climate datasets and resources, including the Community Earth System Model that is widely used to help generate GMSL projections. And in January 2026, the government announced it would withdraw from more than 60 international bodies, including the IPCC, as part of a broader move to pull back from international scientific cooperation.

Efforts to apply climate science in U.S. policy have been hindered not only by political polarization and proposed funding cuts but also by deliberate suppression of data and research.

Efforts to apply climate science in U.S. policy have been hindered not only by political polarization and proposed funding cuts but also by deliberate suppression of data and research. Broadly, the current U.S. administration has removed more than 2,000 datasets from federal platforms, and more specifically, it has systematically scrubbed climate-related content from agency websites. Such erasures disrupt public access to critical information and undermine scientific transparency.

Furthermore, the DOE published a report that without conducting any statistical analysis, denied the scientific evidence for sea level acceleration. It similarly claimed, without any analysis of the numerous sea level projection studies documented here, that sea level is “rising at a lower rate than predicted.” The EPA went further, falsely claiming that “aggregate sea level rise has been minimal.” In fact, the most recent IPCC sea level projections are in good agreement with observations [Törnqvist et al., 2025; Dessler and Kopp, 2025].

The U.S. scientific community now stands at a precipice. Efforts to dismantle federal scientific agencies and diminish research are eroding the United States’ foundational contributions to our knowledge of global change and sea level rise.

The Path to Preserving Critical Science

As we plummet toward a loss of data, expertise, and innovation, we face a future that would not only further damage the United States’ reputation for scientific excellence and transparency but also cripple the global sea level research community at a time when the risks from sea level rise are rapidly increasing [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021].

While some U.S.-based sea level scientists could move to countries more committed to climate science, there are not enough positions in the world nor enough mobility for the vast majority to relocate. Grassroots archiving efforts have helped preserve some critical datasets, but this is a temporary and often insufficient stopgap. An urgent need remains for resilient and transparent scientific infrastructure, so that U.S. taxpayer–funded research findings and datasets are, and remain, publicly accessible.

Historically, federally funded scientific initiatives have enjoyed strong support across the political spectrum in the United States.

Historically, federally funded scientific initiatives have enjoyed strong support across the political spectrum in the United States. However, the unprecedented hostility facing science in the country today has revealed that new institutional safeguards and legal protections to prevent political interference are critically needed.

Expanding collaborations between U.S. universities and private foundations and donors provides one potential route to providing some protection and improving long-term stability for sea level science data and initiatives. Climate Central’s Surging Seas project offers one model to emulate. However, philanthropic efforts are far from sufficient to preserve the U.S. scientific enterprise.

Another avenue to protect federally funded science from political pressure is through bipartisan legislation. Bills such as the Scientific Integrity Act (which aims to ensure that scientific findings are not influenced or altered by political pressure) and the Protect America’s Workforce Act (which aims to restore collective bargaining rights for unionized federal employees) represent such opportunities.

Yet the effectiveness of such legislative efforts hinges on the critical caveat that the people holding authority in government recognize and abide by enacted legislation. Under an executive who does not abide by the rule of law, such legislative efforts, even if they are passed successfully, will offer little actual protection. The path to preserving U.S. climate and sea level science, therefore, cannot be separated from the path to restoring the rule of law within the U.S. government.

Progressing on this front requires the scientific community to advocate for its priorities more vocally and to build coalitions that include both academics and the stakeholders who benefit from scientific climate projections. It also requires making use of tools and levers that many scientists are unaccustomed to, such as the court system. AGU and other institutions have modeled this approach over the past year, joining legal efforts to protect federal workers, for example, and speaking up against the dismantling of valued science agencies.

Restoring the rule of law also requires electoral organizing to reestablish Congress as an independent and coequal branch of government that wields, rather than abdicates, lawful oversight of administration officials and federal agencies.

Scientific understanding of sea level processes and projections of future changes inform local, national, and international decisionmaking and provide a pathway to resilience against the risks of rising coastal waters. Safeguarding the long-standing leadership, integrity, and continuity of U.S. climate and sea level science is both a national and global imperative—one that many scientists are already stepping up to support. Now we need the rest of the scientific community—and its allies in academia, philanthropy, industry, and the public—to join in.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Amy Appollina and Jessica Slotter for their assistance in curating a database of global sea level rise projections.

References

Church, J. A., et al. (2013), Sea level change, in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by T. F. Stocker et al., pp. 1,137–1,216, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.026.

Dessler, A., and R. E. Kopp (2025), Climate experts’ review of the DOE Climate Working Group Report, ESS Open Archive, https://doi.org/10.22541/ESSOAR.175745244.41950365/V2.

Fox-Kemper, B., et al. (2021), Ocean, cryosphere and sea level change, in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by V. Masson-Delmotte et al., pp. 1,211–1,362, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.011.

Garner, A. J., et al. (2018), Evolution of 21st century sea level rise projections, Earth’s Future, 6, 1,603–1,615, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000991.

Garner, G. G., et al. (2021), IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projection Tool, NASA Sea Level Change Portal, sealevel.nasa.gov/data_tools/17.

Gornitz, V., S. Lebedeff, and J. Hansen (1982), Global sea level trend in the past century, Science, 215(4540), 1,611–1,614, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.215.4540.1611.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2025), IPCC Trust Fund Programme and Budget, IPCC-LXII/Doc. 2, rev. 1, IPCC Secr., Geneva, Switzerland, apps.ipcc.ch/eventmanager/documents/88/180220250655-Doc.%202,%20Rev.1%20-%20IPCC%20Programme%20and%20Budget.pdf.

Kopp, R. E., et al. (2023), The Framework for Assessing Changes To Sea-level (FACTS) v1.0: A platform for characterizing parametric and structural uncertainty in future global, relative, and extreme sea-level change, Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 7,461–7,489, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-7461-2023.

Mercer, J. (1978), West Antarctic ice sheet and CO2 greenhouse effect: A threat of disaster, Nature, 271, 321–325, https://doi.org/10.1038/271321a0.

National Research Council (1987), Responding to Changes in Sea Level: Engineering Implications, Natl. Acad. Press, Washington, D.C.

Oppenheimer, M., et al. (2019), Sea level rise and implications for low-lying islands, coasts and communities, in IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, edited by H.-O. Pörtner et al., pp. 321–445, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157964.006.

Strauss, B. H., et al. (2021), Economic damages from Hurricane Sandy attributable to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change, Nat. Commun., 12, 2720, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22838-1.

Törnqvist, T. E., et al. (2025), Evaluating IPCC projections of global sea-level change from the pre-satellite era, Earth’s Future, 13, e2025EF006533, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006533.

Author Information

Andra J. Garner (garnera@rowan.edu), Department of Environmental Science, Rowan University, Glassboro, N.J.; Robert E. Kopp, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; Gregory G. Garner, Glassboro, N.J.; Aimée B. A. Slangen, Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Yerseke; and Benjamin P. Horton, School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong

Citation: Garner, A. J., R. E. Kopp, G. G. Garner, A. B. A. Slangen, and B. P. Horton (2026), The global impact of losing U.S. sea level science, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260156. Published on 15 May 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.

Source: AGU Advances

Across the western United States, wildfires are increasing in size and intensity. As the climate continues to warm, more extreme wildfires will reshape landscapes and pose a growing risk to human health and natural ecosystems throughout the West.

Climate models, used to predict other effects of climate change, are unable to directly simulate wildfires. Instead, researchers link previously burned areas to climate variables such as temperature, precipitation, drought, and evaporation, then apply those relationships to future climate projections.

Many recent studies have connected higher vapor pressure deficit (VPD)—a measure of atmospheric dryness—to more area burned in previous fires. VPD increases as the temperature rises, so models that rely on it generally predict an increase in wildfire activity as the climate warms.

Cheng et al. raise questions about the role VPD plays in modeling wildfire, suggesting that VPD is a poor measure of fuel dryness at larger scales and overestimates potential burned areas under significant warming conditions. Instead, researchers suggest soil moisture could be a more reliable indicator of fuel dryness and lead to more moderate projections of wildfire increases.

The researchers looked at five forested ecoregions in the western states. Using the Western US MTBS-Interagency wildfire dataset from 1984 to 2020 combined with climate data (temperature, VPD, and soil moisture), the researchers analyzed drivers of the area burned from May through October. They connected this information with output from climate models to look at future burn potential.

VPD-based wildfire predictions increase sharply under warming conditions. These predictions showed that under 3°C of average global warming, 16 times as much land would burn by the end of the century, compared to historical levels. Under 4°C of warming, up to 66 times more land would burn by the end of the century. This “truly massive” increase, the authors say, would mean fires consuming vegetation almost as soon as it regrows.

Soil moisture, on the other hand, provides a more moderate, though still concerning, picture. Under the same warming scenarios, soil moisture changes would lead to an increase in burned area of only 2–3 times that of the historical period. The researchers argue that projections relying on VPD severely exaggerate wildfire risk. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026AV002350, 2026)

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

Citation: Owen, R. (2026), How much will western wildfires worsen under warming?, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260147. Published on 15 May 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.

For an agricultural nation like New Zealand, severe drought is one of the most ominous consequences of a warming planet.

Author(s): Dipankar Ray, Pralay Kumar Karmakar, Bharati Kakad, and Amar Kakad

The Jeans instability is a fundamental mechanism driving the gravitational collapse and subsequent structure formation in diverse self-gravitating astrophysical environments. We present comprehensive numerical fluid simulations of the Jeans instability in a three component dusty plasma system. The h…

[Phys. Rev. E 113, 055212] Published Fri May 15, 2026

Multi-year La Niña events—so-called "double-dip" or even "triple-dip" La Niñas—are becoming more common. But why do these events persist for multiple years in the first place?

On 19 July 2025, intense, long duration rainfall triggered over 550 landslides in Sancheong, South Korea, killing at least 10 people.

On 19 July 2025, extremely heavy rainfall triggered multiple landslides in Sancheong, South Korea. This event has been described by a new paper (Nguyen et al. 2026) just published in the journal Landslides. The paper is behind a paywall, but this link should give you access at the time of writing.

The core of the affected area is at [35.4333, 127.9111] (as usual, Landslides provides the location in degrees minutes and seconds when digital degrees is so much more useful – a pet frustration of mine!). This is a Planet Labs image of a part of the area, captured before the event. The marker is at the coordinate noted above:-

Planet Labs image of a part of the area affected by landslides during heavy rainfall in Sancheong County, South Korea on 19 July 2025. Image copyright Planet Labs, used with permission. Image dated 10 July 2025.

And this is the same area after 19 July 2025:-

Planet Labs image of a part of the area affected by landslides during heavy rainfall in Sancheong County, South Korea on 19 July 2025. Image copyright Planet Labs, used with permission. Image dated 23 July 2025.

And here is a slider to allow a comparison:-

Images by Planet Labs.

Nguyen et al. (2026) have mapped 568 individual landslides triggered by this rainfall event, triggered by rainfall in the range of 498 – 619 mm over a c. 55 hour period. These landslides killed at least 10 people and caused damage to homes and infrastructure. It is estimated that the restoration costs are in the order of US$800 million.

In common with many other events of this type, the landslides are mainly shallow, translational failures in soil or regolith on steeper slopes. As I have frequently noted, such terrain is very susceptible to unusually intense rainfall events, which often trigger a cluster of landslides in close proximity. These often merge to form channelised debris flows. Nguyen et al. (2026) note however that their modelling indicates that it was a combination of the intensity of the rainfall and its duration that led to these failures.

As rainfall intensities increase due to climate change, we are seeing increasing numbers of these landslide clusters. I greatly welcome studies such as Nguyen et al. (2026) , which allow us to build understanding in each case.

Reference and acknowledgement

Nguyen, H.H.D., Song, C.H. & Kim, Y.T. 2026. Physically based data-driven analysis for large-scale investigation of the July 2025 rainfall-induced landslide in Sancheong, South Korea. Landslides. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-026-02778-x

Planet Team 20246. Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https://www.planet.com/

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.

SummaryReconstructing subsurface structures with high resolution is one of the main goals and potentials of full waveform inversion (FWI). However, FWI is a highly nonlinear and ill-posed problem. Conventional physics-based FWI methods, which rely on gradient-based optimization to minimize the difference between observed and synthetic data face cycle-skipping challenge. Although numerous deep-learning inversion approaches have shown promise, they typically focus on latent representations of time-domain seismic data. This often causes an unstable inversion process due to waveform mismatches. To overcome these limitations, we introduce FFT-InversionGAN, an unsupervised seismic inversion framework that integrates physics-based forward modeling with adversarial learning of the frequency-domain data based on Wasserstein generative adversarial network with gradient penalty (WGAN-GP). Fast Fourier transformer (FFT) is employed to transfer the time and phase information of time-domain seismic data into the spectrum and amplitude distributions to modify the feature space and sensitivity of the adversarial loss to different types of mismatches. By leveraging Wasserstein distance constraints, this method can naturally operate on the spectral distributions of seismic data. Compared with L2 norm, Wasserstein distance is far less sensitive to the linear variations in the phase spectrum. And our proposed method eliminates the need for network pre-training while improving stability and flexibility. FFT-InversionGAN demonstrates enhanced accuracy and resilience in numerical experiments on noise-free, noisy and missing low-frequency benchmarks. This was observed when applied to the Marmousi and overthrust models, where it consistently outperformed conventional FWI and FWIGAN. These findings highlight that FFT-InversionGAN has superior inversion effectiveness.

SummaryThe 2020 MS 5.0 Qiaojia earthquake occurred in a tectonically complex region near the Xiaojiang fault in southwestern China. We investigated the rupture process of this moderate-sized earthquake using a multi-empirical Green’s function (EGF) inversion method that integrated waveforms from multiple EGF events. Synthetic tests demonstrated that the multi-EGF inversion method recovered the input model more robustly than any individual EGF inversion. The resolved spatiotemporal rupture model of this earthquake indicated a compact rupture lasting approximately 2.9 s, dominated by a major asperity near the hypocenter and characterized by predominantly eastward rupture propagation. Bootstrap resampling analyses further confirmed the robustness of the resolved major coseismic slip distribution and the overall moment release pattern. We also observed a spatial complementarity between the coseismic slip and aftershock distributions, with most aftershocks clustering around the periphery of the major asperity. This study not only elucidates the source complexity of the 2020 MS 5.0 Qiaojia earthquake, but also validates the robustness and effectiveness of the multi-EGF inversion method in resolving the rupture processes of moderate-sized earthquakes. Our results provide new insights into the rupture kinematics of moderate-sized earthquakes and the heterogeneity of fault strength and stress within the Xiaojiang fault zone and its surrounding regions.

As densely populated coastal communities struggle to keep up with rising sea levels, new research reveals a way to predict how river deltas build land and protect coastal regions from encroaching oceans. This insight will help engineers and policymakers estimate how much new land can be created or maintained when human intervention is used to redirect river channels, making these efforts more effective for coastal restoration and flood protection.

Can "snow" fall in the ocean and influence the climate of the entire planet? It turns out that it can. Research conducted by scientists from the Faculty of Physics at University of Warsaw, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, helps us understand how microscopic flakes of dead organic matter collide and sink into the deep ocean, transporting vast amounts of carbon and affecting the pace of global warming.

Asia's last tropical glaciers can be found near Puncak Jaya, Papua, the highest peak in Southeast Asia. But it is unlikely that they will survive until the end of this decade. Over the past 44 years, the peak has lost 97% of its ice and four of its glaciers. Its remaining two glaciers, Carstensz and the East Northwall Firn glacier, are expected to disappear by 2030, adding Indonesia (alongside Venezuela and Slovenia) to the list of countries that have lost all of their glaciers.

Viruses play a far more active role in Earth's carbon cycle than previously understood, according to new research that reveals how they infect and control microbes responsible for carbon production in some of the planet's largest, darkest ecosystems. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.