https://phys.org/earth-news/earth-sciences en-us The latest news on earth sciences and the environment Getting climate models to mimic real-time observations when it comes to warming is critical—small discrepancies can lead to misunderstandings about the rate of global warming as the climate changes. A new study from North Carolina State University and Duke University finds that when modeling warming trends in the Pacific Ocean, there is still a missing piece to the modeling puzzle: the effect of wind on ocean currents in the equatorial Pacific. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-equator-key-accurate-future-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:27:03 EST news628961221 Eighty-five percent of the Earth's air resides in the lowest layer of its atmosphere, or troposphere. Yet, major gaps remain in our understanding of the atmospheric chemistry that drives changes in the troposphere's composition. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-unprecedented-view-aerosol-formation-earth.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:15:53 EST news628946148 One in 50 people living in two dozen coastal cities in the United States could experience significant flooding by 2050, according to Virginia Tech-led research. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-thousands-coastal-residents.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:00:01 EST news628942548 Changes in human activity may have led to atmospheric CO2 levels declining in the 16th century, due to large-scale land use changes in the Americas during New World-Old World contact between 1450 and 1700 CE, suggests a Nature Communications paper. The findings are based on data from an Antarctic ice core, dated up to about 500 years old. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-ice-cores-16th-century-pandemics.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 06 Mar 2024 10:59:10 EST news628945149 Take a deep breath. Pay attention to how air moves from your nose to your throat before filling your lungs with oxygen. As you exhale your breath, a mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide leaves your nose and mouth. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-river-global-carbon.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:35:04 EST news628875301 Will ice floating in the Arctic Ocean move faster or slower over the coming decades? The answer to this question will tell us whether marine transportation can be expected to get more or less hazardous. It might also have important implications for the rate of ice cover loss, which is hugely consequential for Northern Indigenous communities, ecosystems, and the global climate system. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-decades-arctic-sea-ice-faster.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:20:03 EST news628874401 Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently combined satellite data, field observations, and sophisticated numerical modeling to paint a picture of how 22.45 million square kilometers of the Arctic will change over the next 80 years. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-arctic-river-environment.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:00:04 EST news628866001 The Arctic could see summer days with practically no sea ice as early as the next couple of years, according to a new study out of the University of Colorado Boulder. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-arctic-ice-free-decade-scientists.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:00:01 EST news628851621 The water cycle looks simple in theory—but human impacts, climate change, and complicated geography mean that in practice, floods and droughts remain hard to predict. To model water on Earth, you need incredibly high-resolution data across an immense expanse, and you need modeling sophisticated enough to account for everything from snowcaps on mountains to soil moisture in valleys. Now, scientists have made a tremendous step forward by building the most detailed models created to date. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-digital-twin-earth-technology-based.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 05 Mar 2024 05:00:08 EST news628837205 If you've driven the mostly flat stretch of I-25 in Colorado from Pueblo to Trinidad, you've seen them: the Spanish Peaks, twin mountains that soar into the sky out of nowhere, reaching altitudes of 13,628 and 12,701 feet above sea level. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-geologists-explore-hidden-history-colorado.html Earth Sciences Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:51:04 EST news628797062 An increase in pockets of open water in Antarctica's sea ice (polynyas) may mean coastal plants and animals could one day establish on the continent, University of Otago-led research suggests. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-antarctica-coasts-icy.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:00:01 EST news628764602 A new analysis of freshwater resources across the globe shows that the updated planetary boundary for freshwater change was surpassed by the mid-twentieth century. In other words, for the past century, humans have been pushing the Earth's freshwater system far beyond the stable conditions that prevailed before industrialization. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-analysis-global-freshwater-shifted-pre.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 04 Mar 2024 09:52:03 EST news628768321 Continental drift is a concept familiar to many, referencing the movement of Earth's continents due to shifting tectonic plates over millions of years, splitting one globe-spanning supercontinent into the configuration we see today. Alongside this there have been smaller land mass movements that have opened seaways, affecting ocean circulation patterns and climate. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-mantle-convection-linked-seaway-closure.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 04 Mar 2024 09:30:01 EST news628766254 Scientists have solved the mysterious absence of star-shaped dunes from Earth's geological history for the first time, dating one back thousands of years. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-hidden-star-sand-dune-mystery.html Earth Sciences Mon, 04 Mar 2024 08:49:09 EST news628764535 New research suggests that sunlight-blocking particles from an extreme eruption would not cool surface temperatures on Earth as severely as previously estimated. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-volcanic-super-eruptions-major-cooling.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 04 Mar 2024 08:47:35 EST news628764440 Glacier-fed streams are undergoing a process of profound change, according to EPFL and Charles University scientists in a paper appearing in Nature Geoscience today. This conclusion is based on the expeditions to the world's major mountain ranges by members of the Vanishing Glaciers project. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-glacier-shrinkage-green-transition.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 01 Mar 2024 08:07:03 EST news628502821 Over the last four decades, warming climate and ocean temperatures have rapidly altered the Greenland Ice Sheet, creating concern for marine ecosystems and weather patterns worldwide. The environment has challenged scientists in their attempts to measure how water moves around and melts the ice sheet because equipment can be destroyed by icebergs floating near the glaciers. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-gps-tracked-icebergs-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 01 Mar 2024 06:59:03 EST news628498741 Massive volcanic events in Earth's history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions. A new method to estimate how much and how rapidly carbon was released by the volcanoes could improve our understanding of the climate response, according to an international team led by researchers from Penn State and the University of Oxford. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-mercury-ancient-volcanoes-environmental-impact.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:56:07 EST news628444559 Climate change is disrupting the seasonal flow of rivers in the far northern latitudes of America, Russia and Europe and is posing a threat to water security and ecosystems, according to research published in Science. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-climate-disrupts-seasonal-rivers.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:00:01 EST news628421280 Several areas of the globe—including the Bay of Bengal, the Philippines, and the Caribbean Sea—are likely to experience record-breaking average surface air temperatures in the year period up to June 2024 as a result of the ongoing El Niño phenomenon. The modeling results, published in Scientific Reports, also suggest that there is an estimated 90% chance of record-breaking global mean surface temperatures occurring over the same period under a moderate or strong El Niño scenario. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-el-nio-average-temperatures-areas.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 29 Feb 2024 11:00:01 EST news628421291 Government scientists have cooked up a new concept for how to potentially cool an overheating Earth: Fiddle with the upper atmosphere to make it a bit drier. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-scientists-idea-hack-planet-drying.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:40:59 EST news628404053 There's enough water frozen in Greenland and Antarctic glaciers that if they melted, global seas would rise by many feet. What will happen to these glaciers over the coming decades is the biggest unknown in the future of rising seas, partly because glacier fracture physics is not yet fully understood. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-mph-glacier-fracture-reveal-physics.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 28 Feb 2024 15:27:35 EST news628356453 It's been a warm day, maybe even a little humid, and the tall clouds in the distance remind you of cauliflower. You hear a sharp crack, like the sound of a batter hitting a home run, or a low rumble reminiscent of a truck driving down the highway. A distant thunderstorm, alive with lightning, is making itself known. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-lightning-million-yearly-ground-unprecedented.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 28 Feb 2024 11:53:01 EST news628343577 Scientists have produced the first detailed estimates of how much sediment is transported onto the shores of coral reef islands, and how that might enable them to withstand the future threats posed by climate change. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-scientists-sediment-coral-islands-reef.html Earth Sciences Wed, 28 Feb 2024 06:53:04 EST news628325581 Hundreds of millions of years ago, an earthquake sent a series of massive waves across the ancient sea that covered part of Western Canada and the northern United States. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-tsunami-plains-sea-swept-canadian.html Earth Sciences Tue, 27 Feb 2024 15:29:03 EST news628270141 A team of environmentalists, geographers and ecologists affiliated with several institutions in Europe has found that microplastics have migrated into multiple sediment layers in three lakes in Latvia. In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group drilled core samples from three lakes in Latvia and analyzed their contents for microplastics. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-lake-bottom-plastics-migrating-sediment.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:50:01 EST news628249458 A team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst that specializes in accounting for the carbon dioxide release by streams, rivers and lakes has recently demonstrated that the chemical process known as "carbonate buffering" can account for the majority of emissions in highly alkaline waters. Furthermore, carbonate buffering distorts the most commonly used method of tracking the origins of CO2 in streams. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-scientists-method-tracking-elusive-co8322.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:03:03 EST news628185782 Among the vast expanse of Antarctica lies the Thwaites Glacier, the world's widest glacier measuring about 80 miles on the western edge of the continent. Despite its size, the massive landform is losing about 50 billion tons of ice more than it is receiving in snowfall, which places it in a precarious position in respect to its stability. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-discovery-significant-glacial-retreat-west.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:00:02 EST news628159493 University of Calgary researchers have found a link between radon exposure in rural homes based on how close they are to drilled groundwater wells. The transdisciplinary team was investigating why homes in rural communities often have a much higher concentration of radon compared with homes in urban areas. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-rural-communities-greater-radon-exposure.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 26 Feb 2024 13:23:58 EST news628176234 Earthquake effects are often thought of in terms of the human impact, be that fatalities or destruction to homes and infrastructure. However, the environmental toll can also be damaging, and new research, published in Nature Geoscience, suggests the forest recovery may take even longer than rebuilding an urban zone's infrastructure, on the scale of decades. For example, after the 1950 Zayu-Medog, Tibet, earthquake it took 45 years for the forests to fully recover. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-earthquakes-impact-forest-resilience-decades.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 26 Feb 2024 10:00:01 EST news628161109