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Earth Sciences news
Global soil erosion outpaces natural recovery, report warns
Isaac Larsen, an associate professor in the College of Natural Sciences' Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, is a lead author of "Status of the World's Soil Resources 2026," a new report produced by the ...
Earth Sciences
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Long-term logging experiment reveals how protecting the forest floor helps preserve soil carbon
Forest soils store an estimated 40% of the world's terrestrial carbon, but estimates suggest that around 15–30% of that soil carbon is lost when a forest is harvested. Tracking such losses can be tricky: wildfires, insects, ...
Earth Sciences
3 hours ago
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Why Great Plains rivers depend on wetlands as well as climate
When a prairie river carries more water in one year than another, the obvious place to look for an explanation is the sky. A year with more snow and rain should have more water in rivers. That was also how I initially thought ...
'Flying rivers' above South America form drainage networks resembling those on land
Water does not flow only through rivers on the ground. Vast quantities of water also move through the atmosphere, carried by winds from oceans and land before eventually falling as precipitation hundreds or even thousands ...
Earth Sciences
8 hours ago
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Kauri dieback threatens more than trees—it could change how much carbon forests store
Kauri are among Aotearoa New Zealand's tallest and longest-lived trees—and their place in our cultural landscape looms equally large.
Earth Sciences
10 hours ago
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A climate threat may lurk beneath Antarctica's last great unknown
A region of Antarctica with some of the greatest potential to reshape the natural world and human society is also the least scientifically understood and explored.
Earth Sciences
Oct 4, 2026
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Today's emissions choices could limit Antarctic ice loss and sea-level rise for coastal communities
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions now may limit how much ice Antarctica loses this century and reduce the sea-level rise facing coastal communities, according to findings from a new study.
Earth Sciences
Oct 3, 2026
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When the atmosphere slows the Earth: Uncovering a subtle signal of climate change
Atmospheric circulation governs weather and climate, but it also carries angular momentum. When winds shift or mass redistributes, the atmosphere can exchange momentum with the solid Earth, slightly altering the planet's ...
Scientists zero in on tiny particles to improve weather and air quality forecasts
Aerosols are small particles suspended in our atmosphere. They come in many flavors: Wildfire smoke, pollen, desert dust, sea salt lofted by powerful storms, volcanic sulfates and emissions from engines and industrial processes ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 2, 2026
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Ancient sea levels reveal when the Earth's poles went wandering
Earth's poles do not always stay in the same place. For example, a region once near the North Pole can end up near the equator, and an area near the equator can shift up toward the pole. This is known as true polar wander ...
How much are the world's oceans warming? New method reveals double-digit percentage gaps from climate models
The world's oceans behave like a thermometer: As the water warms, it expands and sea levels rise. Geodesy researchers at the University of Bonn are able to measure this and determine how much the oceans are warming. For individual ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 2, 2026
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Two active magma reservoirs may lie beneath Masaya volcano, near 2 million people
Masaya volcano in Nicaragua sits within 13 miles (21 kilometers) of 2 million people and is a popular tourist destination due to its lava lake. Penn State researchers recently found evidence of two new magma sources under ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 2, 2026
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Cosmic-ray particles help probe powerful electric fields inside thunderstorms
An instrument built to study cosmic rays has turned out to be a powerful tool for investigating thunderstorms. Earlier observations with the GRAPES-3 muon telescope revealed that thunderclouds can develop electrical potential ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 2, 2026
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Metal-organic interactions identified as a key factor in carbon cycling, improving predictions under climate change
The global annual amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) released through the microbial decomposition of soil organic carbon is estimated to be approximately five times greater than anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, highlighting the importance ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 1, 2026
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The 2025 Kamchatka tsunami kept the Pacific ringing for more than ten hours. Its rhythm could help tsunami warnings
On July 29, 2025, at 23:24 Universal Time, a long stretch of seafloor off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula was thrust upward. The magnitude 8.8 earthquake was the largest on Earth since the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, according ...
EarthCARE's view of volcanic plume boosts air safety
Anak Krakatau, which means Child of Krakatoa, has been active sporadically since it emerged from the sea at the beginning of the last century in the caldera formed after the 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatoa.
Earth Sciences
Oct 1, 2026
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In Alaska, soil in permafrost regions is warming the fastest
Soils are warming quickly and at considerable depth across Alaska, with temperatures rising fastest in the state's permafrost region, a trend that could accelerate climate change and undermine the stability of roads, buildings ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 1, 2026
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Devastating year for Switzerland's glaciers after extreme heat and low snow
Switzerland's glaciers lost more than 5% of their ice volume in 2026. Although melt rates did not quite reach the record levels of 2022, glacier thickness decreased by an average of 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 13 feet) this year, ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 30, 2026
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Digging deep, researchers find high-altitude glacier endured last ice age
Ice cores recovered from an ice cap in northwestern Tibet appear to preserve fragments of ancient ice from the last ice age, extending Earth's glacial record by more than 100,000 years and making them the oldest ice cores ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 30, 2026
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Classifying groundwater systems by their ability to recover from drought
A few days of rain do not change low groundwater levels after a long drought. To better determine how groundwater systems recover after a drought and which groundwater reserves are most vulnerable, hydrologist Sandra Hauswirth ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 30, 2026
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More news
How the moon and sun may trigger slow earthquakes on Earth
Warming weakens Asian monsoon's reach into the Mediterranean
Other news
New saber-toothed predator from Argentina suggests its lineage survived longer than believed
A novel path to fusion ignition: Heat first, then add fuel
Quantum systems never quite forget where they came from
Atomic motion could help push solar cells beyond conventional limits
Rare insect discovery reveals a new species from the dinosaur age
Earth's deep secret: Why your day isn't quite 24 hours
Scientists find a carbon cycle hiding in desert minerals
Arctic Sea ice reaches 2026 annual minimum extent
