https://phys.org/earth-news/earth-sciences/ en-us The latest news on earth sciences and the environment New research involving the University of Liverpool has provided comprehensive insights into the largest flood event in Europe over the past millennium—the flood traditionally known as "St. Mary Magdalene's Flood" of 1342. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-europe-worst-medieval-highlights-successive.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:50:04 EDT news705769501 A team of paleontologists from China University of Geosciences (Beijing) studying penguin fossils from Seymour Island off the Antarctic Peninsula have demonstrated how ancient bird bones can act as chemical archives of past climate change. The researchers used nondestructive X-ray mapping to examine the elemental composition of penguin remains spanning millions of years. They uncovered key insights into how Antarctica shifted from a warm, humid environment to a cooler world. The work is published in the journal Fossil Record. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ancient-penguin-fossils-window-antarctica.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:20:03 EDT news705759482 Before tropical cyclones can significantly strengthen, they generally must first become vertically aligned, with their rotating centers stacked through the atmosphere. New research using nearly three decades of NOAA Hurricane Hunter observations identifies four features that can help a tilted storm become aligned and more capable of intensifying. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-hurricane-hunter-reveal-early-tropical.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:20:05 EDT news705746009 In the Arctic, weather plays a key role in determining how much ice covers the ocean. Arctic cyclones are one weather phenomenon with a significant influence, causing unusually warm and stormy conditions that typically lead to significant ice loss. These conditions last particularly long when several cyclones rapidly follow one another. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-arctic-cyclone-clusters-batter-sea.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:00:06 EDT news705743702 On a perfect, crisp fall day with blue skies, scientists in yellow safety coats gather in the sprawling desert north of Reno. They watch as flames consume a burning bush and quickly spread through the surrounding grass. The fire is completely controlled and monitored by dozens of sensors as three enormous drones buzz directly overhead, following the curl of smoke as it dances in the light breeze. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-wildfire-ecosystems-term-recovery.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:50:01 EDT news705729818 With extreme weather increasing around the world, scientists are working to help critical infrastructure, such as water management systems, adapt. On the U.S. West Coast, where both periods of prolonged drought and intense atmospheric river storms are common, effective water management can be particularly tricky. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-framework-potential-reservoir-watersheds.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:30:01 EDT news705729758 Emergency workers attempting to rescue survivors after a recent earthquake in Kyushu, Japan, also had to cope with extreme summer heat. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-japan-earthquake-extreme-disaster.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:20:01 EDT news705678641 After a heavy rain, rivers often turn brown with sediment, sand, silt and soil washed from the landscape that play a vital role in shaping rivers. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-rivers-sediment-intense-worrisome-pattern.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:00:01 EDT news705679501 Researchers say a spike in temperatures during an ice age 304 million years ago could inform what climate scientists are learning about rapidly changing conditions today. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-late-paleozoic-ice-age-event.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Aug 2026 18:00:01 EDT news705672841 Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are alternately inundated and exposed by tides. These marshes, like other coastal ecosystems, are hotspots of carbon cycling. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-radar-creeks-carbon-salt-marshes.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:00:05 EDT news705668881 Locals and officials in Colombia have begun a massive search and rescue effort to find survivors of a powerful earthquake that struck near San José del Palmar in Chocó, with major damage observed in the cities of Cali, Manizales and Pereira. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-colombia-earthquake-destructive.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:00:05 EDT news705661862 Prediction is the goal and test of all science, one might argue. Meteorologists have been curious about the inherent limits of weather forecasting ever since the dawn of numerical weather prediction in the late 1950s. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-weather-theoretical-day-ceiling.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Aug 2026 02:32:13 EDT news705634316 Every monsoon, India's rivers turn brown. To most of us, that color simply means muddy water. But hidden within it is the material that builds fertile floodplains, creates river islands, nourishes deltas and even shapes coastlines: sediment. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-sediment-story-journey-impacts-india.html Earth Sciences Mon, 10 Aug 2026 18:00:03 EDT news705594643 A study led by Professor Jimmy Jiujiu Jiao from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Professor Meng Li from Shenzhen University has identified microbial fermentation as the likely main pathway for ammonium production in sediments beneath the Pearl River Delta, helping to explain the region's exceptionally high natural groundwater ammonium levels. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-fermentation-emerges-key-pathway-ammonium.html Earth Sciences Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:20:01 EDT news705593281 El Niños and La Niñas are the third-most dominant influences on Earth's climate, after the sun and the greenhouse effect. But they haven't been easy to decipher or to predict in terms of when they will happen and what exact effects they will have on the global climate. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-impact-super-el-nios-sea.html Earth Sciences Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:00:08 EDT news705585565 Roughly 2.5–2 billion years ago, Earth's surface experienced the biggest chemical change in its history when oxygen became abundant in the atmosphere, eventually leading to the evolution of complex life forms such as plants and animals that emerged half a billion years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-gases-ancient-global-explanation-billion.html Earth Sciences Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news705581821 This summer, millions of people across the country have been digging out sunscreen to protect themselves from a record-breaking series of heat waves. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-people-unaware-environmental-effects-sunscreen.html Earth Sciences Sun, 09 Aug 2026 11:20:01 EDT news705309951 How much ice is stored in the world's glaciers? And where exactly is it located? A new study led by Ca' Foscari University of Venice, in collaboration with the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISP), provides an updated global map of glacier ice volume. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-reveals-volume-world-glaciers.html Earth Sciences Fri, 07 Aug 2026 18:40:01 EDT news705329281 The initiation of rain in clouds without ice remains one of the largest unsolved mysteries in atmospheric science. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-hidden-anatomy-clouds-reveals-ice.html Earth Sciences Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:40:02 EDT news705325862 Zooming from her office, Michigan State University researcher Kelly Kapsar showed satellite images from across the United States. In some, different colors revealed the precise heights of the forested ridges in the Sierra Nevada or the craggy peaks of the Rockies and the valleys between them. Others showed the pine flatwoods of southern Florida or the smooth, rolling grasslands of the Kansas prairie. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mountain-peaks-microclimates-satellite-big.html Earth Sciences Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:40:03 EDT news705315421 Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Europe's cartographers traded on their reputation for accuracy and detail at a time of huge societal change. But as demand grew for increasingly detailed maps of the world to support industrialization at home and colonization overseas, they didn't always get it right. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-adding-ai-tool-google-earth.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:40:05 EDT news705243747 Stanford researchers have shown that instruments primarily used to understand earthquakes can capture key details about hurricanes, helping meteorologists better predict how storms will evolve and intensify. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-earthquake-sensors-hurricanes.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:00:17 EDT news705225421 The Arctic is warming at an accelerating pace. As permafrost thaws across vast areas and wildfires become more frequent, large amounts of methane (CH4) are being released. Together, these changes are reshaping the region's greenhouse gas emissions and further intensifying climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-siberia-methane-threat-offset-global.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:00:09 EDT news705155881 The images of the major forest fires in Spain and France, with fire clouds near Bordeaux, have shocked many people. There have been numerous reports of the formation of a pyrocumulonimbus cloud—a fire-driven thundercloud—and the possible transport of smoke particles to Central Europe. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-european-wildfire-high-upper-troposphere.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:40:03 EDT news705231505 During the most recent ice age, much of North America disappeared beneath ice sheets several kilometers thick. These frozen giants covered most of present-day Canada and parts of the northern United States, while smaller ones spread across northern Europe. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-giant-ice-mountains-side-earth.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:40:01 EDT news705228542 Typhoons pose significant threats, with sudden, dangerous waves that endanger ships, offshore platforms and coastal infrastructure in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Current typhoon forecasting methods sometimes underestimate the largest waves during typhoons, but researchers in China have designed a new model that may offer improvements. Their new study, published in Ocean Engineering, describes how the model combines physics guidance with data-driven learning to improve typhoon forecasting. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-coupled-ai-physics-typhoon-height.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:40:08 EDT news705148156 Storm conditions capable of causing major coastal erosion at New Jersey's North Beach on Sandy Hook are occurring about twice as often as they did in 1979, according to Rutgers researchers. The finding offers new evidence that storm impacts are becoming more frequent along the Mid-Atlantic coast. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-coastal-storm-conditions-frequent-jersey.html Earth Sciences Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:00:03 EDT news705160561 Fires in the Arctic are not solely a regional issue, as shown by the hazy skies in Switzerland last summer despite otherwise sunny weather. Smoke from major fires in northern Canada crossed the Atlantic and reached Europe. Until now, large-scale studies of Arctic tundra fires have focused primarily on rising temperatures and drought as the main drivers. The role of human activity has received much less attention, even as industrial development, settlements, roads and other infrastructure expand rapidly in parts of the Arctic, particularly in connection with extractive industries such as oil and gas production and mining. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-human-arctic-occurrence-satellite-analysis.html Earth Sciences Wed, 05 Aug 2026 11:20:05 EDT news705142981 Can a crack be supersonic? Can the fracture that triggers an avalanche propagate faster than the limiting velocity predicted by classical fracture mechanics? The question remains the subject of debate within the scientific community. While some numerical and experimental studies suggest that avalanche cracks may propagate at supersonic speeds, others offer a different interpretation. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-avalanche-globally-supersonic-locally-subsonic.html Earth Sciences Wed, 05 Aug 2026 11:00:13 EDT news705066841 The effects of climate change extend far beyond rising temperatures. As forests and other vegetation respond to a warming world, they also change the amount of biogenic emissions released into the atmosphere, influencing the formation of ozone (O3) and fine particulate pollution. Yet many atmospheric chemistry models still estimate these emissions using vegetation data from 2003, despite major ecological changes across East Asia over the past two decades. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-climate-driven-greening-reshaping-east.html Earth Sciences Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:10:01 EDT news705136941