https://phys.org/earth-news/ en-us Earth science research, climate change, and global warming. The latest news and updates from Phys.org Researchers at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have released LandScan Mosaic, a next-generation global population distribution dataset that estimates where people are by modeling how buildings are used and occupied throughout the day. Built on the foundation of ORNL's widely used LandScan Global, one of the world's most accurate population distribution datasets, Mosaic's enhancements will improve disaster response, humanitarian assistance, infrastructure planning and national security missions worldwide. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-global-population-dataset-reveal-people.html Environment Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:00:02 EDT news708875744 Between 2006 and 2017, North Korea conducted six underground nuclear tests at its vast testing site at Mount Mantap in North Hamgyong province. Typically, underground explosions trigger an intense burst of minor earthquakes that die down once testing stops. But geologists have detected far more seismic activity after the final detonation, and it has persisted for years. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-north-korea-nuclear-triggered-hundreds.html Earth Sciences Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news708952587 Each summer, researchers from Hokkaido University returned to the Qaanaaq Ice Cap in northwestern Greenland to measure changes in the ice surface using aluminum poles drilled into the ice. Their 13-year record shows how the ice cap changed from 2012 to 2025. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-greenland-qaanaaq-ice-cap-lost.html Earth Sciences Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:20:15 EDT news708949261 Nitrogen is a key nutrient because it fuels the growth of plankton, which forms the basis of the marine food web. Two opposing processes determine the global nitrogen cycle: nitrogen fixation and denitrification. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fossil-plankton-shells-reveal-nitrogen.html Earth Sciences Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:00:05 EDT news708870798 Understanding how wind changes in response to global warming is necessary for accurately modeling climate and weather, identifying risks to infrastructure, and assessing global wind power capacity. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-global-energy-stay-steady-storm.html Earth Sciences Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:00:01 EDT news708870781 How deep is the deepest ocean—and how precisely can we actually measure it? A Japanese research team led by the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), SOKENDAI, the University of Tokyo and other Japanese institutions has mapped the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench using the EM124 multibeam echosounder aboard the research vessel Hakuho-maru. Their study is published in the journal Scientific Data. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-accurately-ocean-deepest.html Earth Sciences Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:50:01 EDT news708880382 As the 2026 El Niño intensifies across the Amazon, new research highlights the urgent need to better protect the region's remaining forests from disturbances. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-amazonian-effective-ways-biodiversity-carbon.html Earth Sciences Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:00:07 EDT news708863192 Mysterious trenches stretching for kilometers across southern Australia's Nullarbor Plain have been revealed as the surface footprints of deep, hidden ancient cave systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nullarbor-reveals-surface-deep-hidden.html Earth Sciences Thu, 17 Sep 2026 13:20:27 EDT news708857883 Atmospheric desert dust has long swirled around the globe, but a new UCLA study presents the strongest evidence yet that global dust is mysteriously decreasing. Because atmospheric dust has a slight overall cooling effect on the climate, the researchers say its decrease may have contributed modestly to recent climate warming. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-earth-atmosphere-dusty-adding-global.html Earth Sciences Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:40:04 EDT news708853981 Frequently located on hillsides and in canyons surrounded by wildlands, wealthy neighborhoods are more likely to catch fire. However, a UC Riverside study shows they are also likely to recover faster than lower-income areas. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-rich-neighborhoods.html Environment Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:20:10 EDT news708841021 Arctic sea ice moves and spreads in ways that wind alone cannot explain. A new UC Riverside-led study finds that collisions between individual pieces of ice provide a surprisingly simple explanation for these movements, potentially offering scientists a better way to predict where sea ice will travel as the Arctic warms. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-puzzle-arctic-sea-ice-movement.html Earth Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:40:04 EDT news708781442 It's no secret that plastic and other human trash are a problem for marine life, but our understanding has long focused on the ocean's surface. As described in a study published in PLOS One, a more complete picture is coming into focus, revealing that even some of our planet's greatest depths have become home to our debris. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-deep-ocean-familiar-trash-plastic.html Environment Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:00:11 EDT news708680581 By evaluating the health of waterways across the U.S., researchers have identified a network encompassing about one-third of rivers and streams that, if conserved and restored, could sustain the nation's freshwater biodiversity in the face of habitat degradation and climate change. Mark Anderson of The Nature Conservancy, U.S., led the new study, published Sept. 16, 2026, in the journal PLOS One. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nation-waterways-sustain-freshwater-biodiversity.html Environment Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:00:07 EDT news708611161 As the climate warms, people are more exposed to heat stress, which depresses productivity and the global economy. A study from the University of California, Davis, quantifies the cost of heat stress on global labor. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-lost-labor-emerges-major-carbon.html Environment Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:26:42 EDT news708776761 At just an inch (2.5 centimeters) long, the sand hoppers skipping across California's Isla Vista Beach at dawn don't exactly look like a force of nature. But a new study reveals that these shrimp-like creatures might be doing more to shape the landscape in which they live than any other animal on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-beach-burrowing-beasties-shovel-sand.html Earth Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:10 EDT news708700861 Across its basins and thousands of meters down, the Mediterranean Sea is getting warmer and saltier. Now, a new study finds it is also doing so at an increasingly rapid pace. The speedup is largest in the central and eastern Mediterranean and strongest of all in the Adriatic, where it reaches all the way to the sea floor. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-mediterranean-warmer-saltier-faster-pace.html Earth Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:03 EDT news708611761 "Sediment and fossil records are a major pillar of our understanding of how the climate works—but climate scientists have gotten something wrong about Australia's ice age," says Dr. Alex F. Wall, lead author of a new research paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-australia-ancient-rainfall-patterns-complex.html Earth Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 07:20:11 EDT news708757321 The longest satellite record ever assembled shows that Greenland and Antarctica have lost 11.3 trillion metric tons of ice since the 1970s, raising global sea level by more than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches)—and that most of the loss has come from glaciers flowing faster into the ocean, not from melting at the surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-glaciers-century-polar-ice-loss.html Earth Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 05:00:02 EDT news708681002 Laser scanning, often referred to as lidar, has rapidly transformed how tropical forest regions are studied, monitored and understood across academic disciplines. The technology enables researchers to peer through dense forest canopies, rapidly providing high-resolution scans of the landscape below. This growing observational power is central to the scientific value of remote sensing technologies but also brings into focus the conditions, interests and power structures under which they are used. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-local-remote-ethics-laser-scanning.html Environment Wed, 16 Sep 2026 05:00:01 EDT news708695924 Heat stress is a leading cause of weather-related deaths and can be especially dangerous in cities, where phenomena like urban heat islands drive temperatures higher than in surrounding rural areas. Now, a new dataset developed by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) aims to provide city governments and health officials with information that could minimize heat impacts on residents. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-high-resolution-weather-neighborhoods-greatest.html Environment Tue, 15 Sep 2026 19:20:01 EDT news708705782 Weather forecasts inform countless everyday decisions—from farmers deciding when to sow crops and energy companies anticipating demand to public authorities preparing for heat waves. But how useful those forecasts are depends considerably on where people live. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-weather-significantly-accurate-poorer-countries.html Environment Tue, 15 Sep 2026 18:20:07 EDT news708703854 No, President Joe Biden did not engineer Hurricane Milton. No, the ice crystal contrails left behind by high-altitude aircraft are not "chemtrails" sprayed by governments to control the weather or manipulate populations. No, state-run cloud seeding did not cause the record floods in Dubai. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-artificially-dim-sun-scientists-theyre.html Environment Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:40:01 EDT news708702685 The same amount of rain falling on the same landscape at different times can send very different amounts of water into its rivers, according to a new study in Nature Water. The research offers a global picture of how catchments behave—not where rivers are or how much water they carry, but how consistently landscapes turn rainfall into river flow. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-rivers-dont-storms.html Earth Sciences Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:40:06 EDT news708695968 From a mountainside overlooking Utah's Great Salt Lake, a time traveler turning back the clock 20,000 years would watch a dramatic transformation of the landscape. The shallow, salty lake below would swell into an immense body of fresh water, at one point reaching nearly 1,000 feet (305 meters) deep and covering more than 10 times the lake's modern area. Mountain ranges would become islands, and the new shoreline would move far beyond its current boundary. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-great-salt-lake-ancient-reveals.html Earth Sciences Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:20:06 EDT news708693121 For more than a decade, it was thought that the world's most plastic-polluted birds couldn't get any more contaminated by the man-made material. But then, from 2023–2026, the record was broken every single year. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-plastic-seabirds-pieces-bird.html Environment Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:30:02 EDT news708698272 Irrigating U.S. crops prevents higher greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding land conversion, new research by Colorado State University shows. Agricultural irrigation allows the United States to grow more food on less land. If irrigation were suddenly shut off, the land-use change required to make up for lost yields would produce significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than irrigation emits—363 times more. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-greenhouse-gas-benefits-agricultural-irrigation.html Earth Sciences Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:20:01 EDT news708691982 Environmental sustainability researchers at NUS found that widely used environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings often fail to reflect companies' actual exposure to deforestation, highlighting the need to integrate satellite-based environmental data into sustainable investing frameworks. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-satellite-reveal-esg-scores-track.html Environment Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:20:07 EDT news708690961 Emotional mechanisms are frequently used to inspire good environmental behavior. But how effective are they at inspiring actual sustainable change? Perhaps not as much as previously believed, according to a new study that challenged participants to put their money where their mouths are. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-anger-compassion-spur-climate-donations.html Environment Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:40:01 EDT news708619502 Explosive volcanic eruptions can be as destructive as they are difficult to predict, launching pyroclasts—the fragments of magma and rock blasted from a volcano—into the air and surrounding areas. These particles can have wide-ranging impacts, as seen during this summer's eruption of Mount Etna in Italy, when ash fell over the nearby city of Catania and closed its international airport for weeks. The size of erupted pyroclasts helps determine how far they travel and the hazards they pose. However, exactly how and where they form has remained poorly understood. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-magma-eruptions-microscopic-evidence.html Earth Sciences Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:10:02 EDT news708622021 Methane emissions from the New York City metropolitan area are largely driven by natural gas use, according to a new study published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by researchers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Columbia Climate School. The findings may offer cities an overlooked pathway for reducing methane emissions while potentially saving consumers millions of dollars lost to wasted natural gas. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-unused-natural-gas-nyc-million.html Environment Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:40:06 EDT news708609640