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Jess Phoenix’s career as a volcanologist and science consultant has taken her around the world. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and a master’s in geology from California State University, Los Angeles.

“I was definitely a latecomer to the geo-party, but I dove in wholeheartedly,” Phoenix said.

She moved to Australia seeking a geology doctorate from Queensland University of Technology, but she fell out with her adviser and left without finishing her dissertation.

Leaving the program for which she had uprooted her family was terrifying, she said. But she soon realized that doctor or not, her geology education had provided her with a very marketable set of skills. (It was also around that time that she got the first of her many tattoos.)

“Geology is literally everywhere,” she said. “With the skill set you gain, even if you haven’t done the most terminal degree possible, you still have a very solid core of skill sets—pun intended.” Whether it’s making a detailed rock description (important in many industries), analyzing macro- and microscale problems, writing reports, or understanding the scientific method, “those are, fundamentally, extremely valuable skills,” she said. “Once you have them, no one can take them away from you.”

“As long as you maintain that curiosity, that flexibility, that willingness to interrogate your own assumptions and beliefs, you’re going to be OK.”

Phoenix’s wide-ranging career has taken her from the depths of the sea to fields of flowing lava. She wrote a memoir, consults on TV shows and documentaries, and appears as a subject matter expert on international news networks. She cofounded the environmental nonprofit Blueprint Earth, is a fellow of The Explorers Club, and ran for U.S. Congress in 2018.

“By allowing my curiosity to be pretty much unfettered, it’s given me a lot of opportunities to just try things and say yes,” Phoenix said. “You’ve got to be willing to take in new information and update your worldview constantly with your own career as well as your scientific interest. As long as you maintain that curiosity, that flexibility, that willingness to interrogate your own assumptions and beliefs, you’re going to be OK.”

Phoenix also emphasized how crucial staying connected with other scientists has been in her career. “Support their work and be their cheerleaders, and they’ll do the same for you.”

She was an ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists for 2 years and has recently returned to freelance science consulting, leading field research expeditions, and personally advocating for science.

“I’m in my own period of shifting and change,” Phoenix said, “but the rocks are always solid beneath my feet.”

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

This profile is part of a special series in our August 2025 issue on science careers.

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2025), Jess Phoenix: Curiosity unfettered, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250259. Published on 28 July 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

A ski racer by the age of six, Jeff Massey has been searching for snow nearly his whole life. “I was tracking snowstorms and nor’easters much more than a first grader should,” he said. When he was in elementary school, his mother took him to visit a local TV meteorologist, who explained how weather forecasting worked.

“After that, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” Massey said.

As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Massey studied atmospheric science, then went on to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Utah, studying the impacts of dust events on snow and completing a dissertation focused on weather modeling. He helped other researchers with projects related to snow, too.

After graduate school, Massey mulled over whether he should stay in academia or work in industry. He chose a role supporting a weather data platform for farmers run by the Climate Corporation, an agricultural technology company. He was pleased to find that what he loved about academia—the opportunity to produce original, unique research—was part of the job there, too, with the added benefit that his research had a direct application to farmers’ operations.

“I’ve done agriculture, I’ve done drone delivery, and now I’m doing finance. It’s interesting how related it all is.”

Massey then moved into roles at Amazon, where he used his weather modeling expertise to inform the company’s supply chain operations and, later, to build a new weather modeling infrastructure for Amazon’s drone delivery service.

Now he wields his atmospheric science skills to project how weather might affect certain energy and commodity markets for Squarepoint Capital, an investment firm.

“I’ve done agriculture, I’ve done drone delivery, and now I’m doing finance,” he said. “It’s interesting how related it all is—it’s all just different applications of weather data, machine learning, and programming.”

Businesses will need more weather expertise as climate change progresses and the economic impacts of extreme weather add up, he added. “Weather is still one of those variables you can’t control.”

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

This profile is part of a special series in our August 2025 issue on science careers.

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Jeff Massey: Atmospheric science meets the private sector, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250258. Published on 28 July 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

When Hermínio Ismael de Araújo Jr. started his undergraduate degree in biology in 2006, the culture at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, in northeastern Brazil, was that students got involved in research as early as possible. So at the end of Araújo’s first semester, he joined an animal physiology project and studied how local plants affected diabetic mice.

“But I’ve always liked paleontology better,” he said, so much so that his lab adviser introduced him to paleontologist Kleberson Porpino.

“We talked a lot, and I realized paleontology was really what I wanted to do,” Araújo recalled. From that moment on, he thought his professional path was clear: After graduation, he would get his master’s and doctorate at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), just as Porpino had done not long before.

Araújo was interested in taphonomy, or the study of how bones become fossils. Being a taphonomist is like doing forensics, Araújo said. “We can understand how an animal died, how it got buried, the [geological] processes that happened after that…until the moment we find it.”

The most interesting thing about paleontology “is to be able to give life to something that will never have life again.”

The most interesting thing about paleontology “is to be able to give life to something that will never have life again,” he said.

Halfway to finishing his bachelor’s degree, Araújo looked closely at the selection requirements for a master’s degree in geology at UFRJ. In Brazil, students can enroll in a master’s only after coursework for a bachelor’s degree is completed and their diploma has been conferred, which can take some time after their final semester.

“I didn’t want to wait a year after graduation to start my master’s,” he said.

So he finished his last year of courses a semester early so he could squeeze in a thesis defense and an enrollment in the master’s program in the same year.

Years later, as Araújo was pursuing his Ph.D., a faculty position opened at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Deciding to go for it, he again fast-tracked his degree work, defending his thesis a semester earlier than the official deadline so that he could assume the teaching position he currently holds.

“I’ve been working to help open more space for women and other minoritized groups at the university.”

Araújo said these sharp planning skills were inspired by his parents, who could not access higher education themselves but always encouraged their children to study. “My father is really organized—he does nothing without prior planning,” Araújo said. “My parents are so methodic that up to this day they still go to the supermarket [every week] at the same day and time,” he said, chuckling.

Araújo is currently president of the Brazilian Society of Paleontology and the graduate coordinator of the geosciences program at UERJ. In these positions, he engages in education programs against harassment and discrimination. “I’ve been working to help open more space for women and other minoritized groups at the university,” he said. “It is something I really like and am very proud of.”

—Meghie Rodrigues (@meghier.bsky.social), Science Writer

This profile is part of a special series in our August 2025 issue on science careers.

Citation: Rodrigues, M. (2025), Hermínio Ismael de Araújo Júnior: Savvy planning can get you far, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250257. Published on 28 July 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Cassius Spears Jr.’s lifelong partnership with the living soil is rooted in the Narragansett Indian Tribe’s cultural ties to the land and subsistence way of life.

Spears grew up on his family’s ancestral land in what is now Rhode Island, hunting, foraging, and learning the traditional place knowledge of his ancestors. As a teenager, he attended community meetings in which Narragansett people discussed concerns about degradation across important landscapes and waters and how it affected harvesting practices and ways of life.

“Witnessing that firsthand concern, as well as witnessing my family’s traditional knowledge of place and what that looks like within landscapes and waterways, inspired me to go down the road of conservation,” he said.

Spears studied environmental conservation at the University of Rhode Island in South Kingstown and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. In school, he frequently encountered scientific concepts that clashed with what his people’s ecological knowledge holds true.

“Early in my education, I was taught to think about soil in physical, taxonomical, or inert ways, which ran [in] conflict with traditional knowledge of soil as living or life-giving,” he said.

“When you live with the land, you inherently build a relationship.”

On soil and many ecological concepts, Spears said that he has seen a greater acceptance in scientific understanding. “Now soil health concepts have aligned with Traditional Ecological Knowledge and perceive soil as a vital living ecosystem,” he said.

In his career as a soil conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Rhode Island, Spears has worked to deepen the understanding between these sources of ecological knowledge. He said that local farmers and other land stewards have been especially receptive to incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge into their practices.

“When you live with the land, you inherently build a relationship,” Spears said. “Many farmers understand this; connecting with natural processes every season creates a tangible bond with the land and a sense of responsibility to manage it in a good way.”

Spears takes great pride in the relationships his team has developed with local communities, partnering on projects that improve agricultural soil conservation, restore habitats, and fix riparian forest buffers. He said that having trust and patience, as well as immersing yourself in a community, is the key to building long-lasting and successful collaborations.

“Change doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s essential to listen to and engage with community members genuinely,” he said. “Seeing our local communities lead conservation work inspires me and fills me with hope for future generations.”

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

This profile is part of a special series in our August 2025 issue on science careers.

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2025), Cassius Spears Jr.: Conserving the living soil, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250256. Published on 28 July 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Alex Teachey didn’t take a single science class in college. At least, not the first time.

A few years after getting a theater degree, Teachey started a casual blog surrounding his interest in astronomy. It gained a surprising number of followers, enough for him to consider being a science teacher. So he went back to school for physics and worked as a research assistant in astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

“That’s where I just got hooked,” he said.

Teachey now has a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics but still considers his theater background an influential part of his career. He contributed regularly to the Weekly Space Hangout podcast and for years cohosted Astronomy on Tap in New York City.

“Communication is a huge part of our field. If you don’t get the word out, it might as well not have happened.”

“Communication is a huge part of our field,” Teachey said. Like a tree falling in the woods, “if you don’t get the word out, it might as well not have happened.”

As a grad student, Teachey led work on the first possible detection of an exomoon. The project netted significant media coverage, and his background in the performing arts prepared him to speak with the press.

He continued prioritizing science communication while searching for exomoons as a postdoc at Academica Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. He launched the Taiwan chapter of Astronomy on Tap and led popular sessions on performance techniques for scientists.

Teachey launched an Astronomy on Tap satellite location in Taipei after cohosting the event in New York City for several years. Credit: Alex Teachey

Having moved across the world for his postdoc, Teachey now plans to shift careers again to stay in Taipei. He might work in coding. Or maybe science communication. But he’ll always be an astronomer, he said, just like he’ll always be an actor.

—J. Besl (@J_Besl), Science Writer

This profile is part of a special series in our August 2025 issue on science careers.

Citation: Besl, J. (2025), Alex Teachey: Elevating astronomy with the arts, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250255. Published on 28 July 2025. Text © 2025. 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.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

The explosive submarine Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption of January 2022 is famous for its large volcanic plume that lifted nearly 60 kilometers into the mesosphere and for its tsunami that caused fatalities as far away as Peru. The eruption’s boom was heard even as far as Alaska (10,000 kilometers away), and the barometric pressure disturbances of this boom were tracked globally as it continued to circle the earth.

Using records from a large number of barometric and water well monitoring stations across China (see figure above), He et al. [2025] demonstrate a strong correlation between the boom’s pressure pulse and ground water levels. High permeability reservoirs displayed an immediate response. The responses in low permeability aquifers were, however, more muted. This work is notable in that it highlights a clear coupling between strong atmospheric pressure events to pressures within confined aquifers.

Citation: He, A., Liu, Y., Zhang, F., Zhang, H., Singh, R. P., & Wang, Y. (2025). Large-scale groundwater system characterization using pressure responses to barometric perturbations caused by the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 130, e2025JB031616. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JB031616

—Douglas R. Schmitt, Editor, JGR: Solid Earth

Text © 2025. 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): S. Chintalwad and David J. Stark

We investigate the generation of kilotesla-level magnetic fields in laser-irradiated hollow conical targets through particle-in-cell simulations. This configuration proves effective in producing magnetic fields tens of kiloteslas in strength that persist on a picosecond timescale. Moreover, the holl…

[Phys. Rev. E 112, 015212] Published Mon Jul 28, 2025

И.М. Арбеков, С.Н. Молотков

Квантовая криптография — квантовое распределение ключей (КРК) — одно из первых направлений квантовой теории информации, которое достигло зрелого научного уровня и было доведено до коммерческих систем в области защищённой квантовой связи. Проблема распределения ключей является центральной проблемой симметричной криптографии. Квантовая криптография решает эту проблему, причём решение базируется на фундаментальных законах Природы — законах квантовой механики. Квантовое распределение ключей, по сути, представляет собой согласование двух независимых случайных последовательностей на передающей и приёмной сторонах посредством посылки квантовых состояний. Кроме квантового канала необходим ещё аутентичный классический канал связи. Оба канала связи являются открытыми и доступными для вторжения нарушителя. Для обеспечения аутентичности классического канала при первом запуске системы необходим стартовый ключ, используемый для обеспечения теоретико-информационной аутентификации. По сути, системы квантовой криптографии являются системами расширения этого стартового ключа. В последующих сеансах возникает квантовый ключ, часть которого используется для аутентификации, а другая часть — для других криптографических целей, например шифрования. Принципиальный для квантовой криптографии вопрос — сколько сеансов квантового распределения ключей с момента первого запуска системы можно проводить до нового перезапуска системы, когда криптографические свойства квантовых ключей достигнут критического уровня, после которого их уже нельзя будет использовать для криптографических целей и потребуется новый перезапуск системы. Несмотря на существующий ряд обзоров по тематике квантовой криптографии, данный вопрос детально не обсуждался. Показано, что для реальных, достижимых на сегодняшний день параметров систем квантовой криптографии, возможна практически сколь угодно долгая работа системы КРК до следующего перезапуска. Это означает, что системы КРК могут обеспечить реализацию "одноразового блокнота" — множества одноразовых ключей, используя только один стартовый ключ. Представлен также краткий исторический экскурс, в котором излагаются отдельные факты, мало известные широкой аудитории. Обзор ориентирован на широкую аудиторию, доступен студентам старших курсов и аспирантам, прослушавшим университетские лекционные курсы по квантовой информатике, и, как надеются авторы, его содержание позволит глубже понять "криптографическую начинку" современных систем квантового распределения ключей.

SUMMARYIn recent years, machine learning (ML) techniques have emerged as a powerful tool in seismology, enabling the detection of small-magnitude seismic events that typically go unnoticed by traditional methods. Here, we apply ML-based methods to improve the characterization of normal fault systems and aftershock activity in the Central Apennines, using data from the 2009 L'Aquila seismic sequence. By processing data from both permanent and temporary seismic stations, we identified approximately 191 000 events—with a local magnitude range of -1.83 and 5.96, recorded during January-December 2009—nearly ten times more than the standard catalog maintained by INGV. These events were relocated using a combination of absolute and relative location techniques, resulting in a high-resolution catalog of 148 000 earthquakes. This catalog is distinguished by an increased number of S-wave pickings, which significantly reduces localization errors and enhances the accuracy of fault geometry reconstruction. Compared to an existing semi-automatic catalog, we observe a full recovery of seismic events, and a significant improvement of new events identified and well-located by the ML-approach, with a marked increase in the quality and quantity of P- and S-wave arrivals. The refined seismic catalog not only provides a more detailed and accurate definition of the fault architecture but also offers new insights into the distribution of aftershocks, unrolling the complex pattern of faulting that normally remains masked during standard analyses. This work highlights the potential of ML methods in advancing our understanding of complex fault systems and seismic sequences.

New findings from studying over two decades of satellite observations reveal that Earth's continents have experienced unprecedented freshwater loss since 2002, driven by climate change, unsustainable groundwater use and extreme droughts. The study, led by Arizona State University and published today in Science Advances, highlights the emergence of four continental-scale "mega-drying" regions, all located in the northern hemisphere, and warns of severe consequences for water security, agriculture, sea level rise and global stability.

Heat waves aren't just getting worse on land, the majority of the world's oceans are experiencing record-breaking temperatures too. These marine heat waves are getting longer, more intense and reaching farther than ever before. In particular, 2023's marine heat waves (MHWs) exhibited the longest duration, widest extents, and highest intensities on record—and 2024 wasn't any better.

The soil in high-elevation, cooler, drier tropical forests in the Colombian Andes stores more carbon from fires than lower, warmer regions, new research shows.

Penn State Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jacob Holland-Lulewicz is among a group of archaeologists who have spent years conducting research on the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia. The islands have changed shape and even numbers over the centuries, with Hurricane Irma splitting one into two distinct masses in 2018 and potential changes on the horizon now that the current hurricane season is underway.

Northwestern University and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) scientists have developed a new process-based framework that provides a more accurate and dynamic approach to landslide prediction over large areas.

Deep below the surface of the ocean, unseen waves roil and churn the water. These internal waves, traveling between water layers of different temperatures and densities, draw cold, nutrient-rich water up from the depths and play a major role in oceanic circulation. Understanding and modeling their behavior is critical for developing more accurate simulations of an increasingly unpredictable climate.

The Pacific Northwest boasts an extensive network of more than 600 seismic monitoring stations that help researchers track tectonic and volcanic phenomena, including earthquakes.

Driven by high temperatures in the Gulf, Hurricane Ian rapidly intensified from a Category 3 to Category 5 before making landfall in Southwest Florida on September 28, 2022. The deadly storm caught many by surprise and became the costliest hurricane in state history.

AbstractProgressively denser mapping of ocean-floor magnetization has led to detailed reconstructions of past plate motions in the Cenozoic. These reconstructions often reveal rapid kinematic changes that provide crucial information for identifying geodynamic mechanisms that may have caused them, and for quantifying force budgets upon plates. In parallel to these advances, the notion of thin, low-viscosity asthenosphere beneath tectonic plates that facilitates their motions has emerged and consolidated. This weak, mobile layer promotes the formation of the pressure-driven Poiseuille flow that, in turn, generates basal shearing upon plates. In addition, it can be linked to dynamic topography variations due to pulsing plume activity. In this study, we use publicly available finite-rotation compilations of the North American plate (NA) to investigate its kinematic history since Oligocene time. After removing data that are possibly impacted by significant noise, we find that NA experienced a westward speedup near 27 Ma. Next, we explore the role that asthenospheric Poiseuille-type flow caused by increased Canary plume activity may have had in generating this kinematic change. Such plume activity is inferred from the combination of anomalously shallow residual bathymetry and records of past ocean-floor magmatism offshore northwestern Africa. We compare estimates of torque variation upon NA that are (i) required to explain the reconstructed kinematic change, and (ii) predicted by the Poiseuille-type flow associated with the Canary plume activity. Our results indicate that these two torque-variations estimates are in agreement with each other, both in terms of direction and magnitude. This inference suggests that the increased Canary plume activity is a geodynamically-plausible process to explain the Oligocene plate-motion change of NA.

SummarySeismic traveltime tomography represents a popular and useful tool for unravelling the structure of the subsurface across the scales. In this work we address the case where the forward model is represented by the eikonal equation and derive a formalism to solve the inverse problem where gradients are calculated efficiently using the discrete adjoint state method. Our approach provides gradients with respect to both velocity structure and source locations, allowing us to perform a consistent joint inversion. The forward problem is solved using a second-order fast-marching method, which provides a strategy to efficiently solve the adjoint problem. We allow for arbitrary positions of both sources and receivers and for a refined grid around the source region to reduce errors in computed traveltimes. We show how gradients computed using the discrete adjoint method can be employed to perform either deterministic inversion, i.e., solving an optimization problem, or for a probabilistic (Bayesian) approach, i.e., obtaining a posterior probability density function. We show applications of our methodology on a set of synthetic examples both in 2D and 3D using the L-BFGS algorithm for the deterministic case and the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm for the probabilistic case.

For decades, medium-range weather forecasting—predicting conditions 1 to 5 days ahead—has relied heavily on traditional numerical models. However, this approach often struggles when applied to specific regions with limited historical data.