https://phys.org/earth-news/environment/ en-us The latest news on the environment, environmental issues, earth science and space exploration. Scientists have discovered the best evidence yet to show that West Antarctica's most vulnerable ice streams—including its giant Thwaites Glacier—repeatedly collapsed and retreated far inland during natural warm periods of the last 800,000 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-seafloor-clay-reveals-ice-loss.html Earth Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2026 17:40:12 EST news713539202 Researchers have analyzed water samples collected during two expeditions aboard the research icebreaker Polarstern to investigate how life and changing conditions on the Antarctic continental shelf affect carbon carried into the deep ocean. Published in Nature Communications, the study reveals a surprising finding: Despite intense biological activity and major changes in the water masses, the amount and make-up of dissolved organic matter remain almost unchanged. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-antarctic-analysis-reveals-unexpected-stability.html Earth Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2026 16:50:01 EST news713545382 The collective memory of floods and droughts influences where people settle, how they build and how they prepare for the next climatic extreme. Over decades, that memory can fade, and communities may return to places that once proved dangerous. How such memory decayed over centuries is hard to observe because the climate past societies experienced is usually known only from their own records. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-archives-reveal-climate-memories-reset.html Environment Tue, 10 Nov 2026 15:20:23 EST news713534461 Permafrost in many of Earth's northern regions is thawing, a process that unlocks greenhouse gases, threatens infrastructure, and could alter landscapes and ecosystems. The Arctic and subarctic are vast, and gaining a comprehensive picture of permafrost distribution is difficult, as it requires seeing under the ground. Now, with a new method that can map permafrost from the air, researchers may get a much more spatially cohesive view of permafrost thickness and distribution. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-airborne-imaging-explores-mosaic-permafrost.html Earth Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2026 14:40:09 EST news713533022 Once regarded as potential safe havens for corals in a warming climate, deep reefs, which lie at depths between 90 and 150 meters (295 and 490 feet), are no longer sheltered from increasingly intense marine heat waves, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-deep-reefs-corals-refuge-extreme.html Earth Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2026 14:20:16 EST news713532901 About a century ago, the Anaconda Copper Mine complex near Butte, Montana, was emitting vast amounts of air pollution into the atmosphere. As small particles of arsenic and other heavy metals were carried by winds over the Arctic, storms eventually helped pull them to the ground, where they joined layers of history embedded in the ice. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-ice-core-uncover-widespread-air.html Earth Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2026 05:00:06 EST news713436062 Regions worldwide may have already experienced around 90%–94% of the warming expected when the global average reaches 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, and 65%–76% of that expected at 2°C of warming. The findings, published in Nature Climate Change, suggest that regional warming in 2025 was statistically indistinguishable from the levels expected in a 1.5°C warmer world, underlining the immediate need for adaptation across all regions. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-regions-15c-warmer-world.html Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2026 17:50:01 EST news713464922 About 50 million years ago, Earth experienced its warmest climate since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Global temperatures were more than 10°C higher than today, and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations reached around 1,600 parts per million. But what kept CO₂ levels so extraordinarily high for millions of years? An international research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry has identified an important piece of the puzzle: the Southern Ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-southern-ocean-fuel-earth-warmest.html Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:20:04 EST news713447461 Satellite technology can increasingly track vessels across the world's oceans and has the ability to detect industrial fishing inside marine protected areas (MPAs). But new research has suggested that regulations governing these often vulnerable parts of our planet could be preventing global authorities from turning satellite detection into effective enforcement. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-satellite-world-oceans-restricted-legal.html Earth Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:20:16 EST news713443501 Researchers at the University of Tokyo have used a new type of radiocarbon analysis to study a sediment core taken from the Kumano Sea off the coast of Japan. This has revealed multiple "hidden" traces of previously unknown earthquakes in the Nankai Trough, where the country's next megaquake is expected to occur. Reconstructing a more accurate picture of the past will help predict future geophysical events and prepare for potential disasters. The work is published in Radiocarbon. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-radiocarbon-analysis-uncovers-hidden-earthquakes.html Earth Sciences Sun, 08 Nov 2026 20:00:01 EST news713116921 Glaciers are often thought of as unyielding blocks of ice that slowly carve out the landscape as they move downhill by gravity. But sometimes their slow crawl becomes a surge that sees them move orders of magnitude faster than their usual speed. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-heavy-glacier-alaska.html Earth Sciences Sat, 07 Nov 2026 10:40:05 EST news712840857 Meteorologists said Friday they were observing an unprecedented early disruption of the polar vortex, raising the risk of cold snaps across the Northern Hemisphere, though there remains significant uncertainty. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-polar-vortex-faltering-weeks-earlier.html Environment Sat, 07 Nov 2026 06:20:04 EST news713254093 Microplastics have been found in our bodies and the food we eat—and even in remote environments around the world, including seawater and ice in the Arctic. Despite their prevalence, little is known about how they move through the atmosphere. New CIRES-led research, which demonstrates a new method for sampling microplastics in the atmosphere using an uncrewed aerial system (UAS), aims to change that. The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-method-microplastics-air-uncrewed-aerial.html Environment Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:20:04 EST news713194742 The extreme heat waves we have seen over the last few years may only serve as a preview of what is to come as a result of climate change. A new study led by researcher Philipp Aglas-Leitner from Freie Universität Berlin, published in Nature Communications, finds that future heat waves could last longer, impact larger areas, and be much more severe. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-future-events-outdo-extreme.html Earth Sciences Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:00:01 EST news713194621 Forest areas can act both as carbon sinks and as vital habitats for thousands of species—but not necessarily at the same time. This has important implications for how Europe should manage its forests, says a University of Copenhagen researcher. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-european-forests-crises-necessarily.html Earth Sciences Fri, 06 Nov 2026 15:00:01 EST news713194021 A new study has found that a self-reinforcing interaction between temperature, soil moisture and atmospheric pressure is being triggered at high temperatures, making extreme heat waves 10% hotter than they would otherwise be. The study was published in Science Advances and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). https://phys.org/news/2026-11-mega-interaction-soil-moisture-atmospheric.html Earth Sciences Fri, 06 Nov 2026 14:00:08 EST news713024521 Our oceans have effectively become trash dumps where massive quantities of plastic end up. So much so, in fact, that the largest offshore plastic accumulation zone has been labeled the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-microplastic-pollution-pacific-ocean.html Environment Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:20:01 EST news713180421 Technetium-99 is a long-lived radioactive byproduct of nuclear fuel production and reprocessing. In many environments, it forms a highly mobile chemical species that can move readily through water and soil, making it a priority contaminant at legacy nuclear sites including Sellafield in the U.K. and Hanford in the United States. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-mineral-method-radioactive-technetium-liquid.html Environment Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:00:05 EST news713181103 The risk of relying on uncertain carbon removal projects can now be quantified using a new standardized metric that can be applied across all such schemes, irrespective of the technology used. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-forests-underground-storage-metric-carbon.html Environment Fri, 06 Nov 2026 05:00:13 EST news713029261 Ancient Maya communities made extensive use of liquid mercury and a red, mercury-containing pigment called cinnabar to decorate buildings, pottery and burial sites. Unsurprisingly, as previous research has shown, this led to mercury contamination of soils and reservoirs at some Maya sites. And that pollution may have spread even farther into their territory and caused the collapse of two lake ecosystems, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-ancient-maya-mercury-severe-environmental.html Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:20:08 EST news713108145 New high-resolution speleothem records from China and India, together with isotope-enabled climate models, show that abrupt glacial ocean circulation recoveries took centuries, not decades—a finding with important implications for how we assess future Atlantic circulation change. The work is published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-ice-age-abrupt-climate-shifts.html Earth Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:00:34 EST news713094361 Mount Kilimanjaro is warming in some places and cooling in others, according to a new study by the University of Portsmouth, published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-term-temperature-reveal-picture-climate.html Earth Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2026 13:20:11 EST news713015521 A new study published in Environmental Research Letters has found little evidence that hyperscale data centers cause significant heating of surrounding land. While a previous study suggested data centers heat surrounding land by about 2 °C on average (up to 9 °C), reaching 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away, 13 years of satellite data reveal that server waste heat causes minimal nighttime surface warming, while building materials actually cool ground temperatures during the day. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-satellite-analysis-evidence-centers-widespread.html Environment Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:40:11 EST news713012221 Climate observers have long tied the strength of a major ocean current to water temperatures in the so-called "cold blob" in the North Atlantic Ocean. The 965,000-square-mile (2.5 million square kilometers) area south and southeast of Greenland cooled by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century as other ocean waters warmed. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-north-atlantic-cold-blob-climate.html Earth Sciences Tue, 03 Nov 2026 19:40:06 EST news712949161 The Southern Ocean may seem far removed from the North Pacific or the Gulf of Maine, but its waters are linked to all the world's major ocean basins through a vast circulation system. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-southern-ocean-reveal-distinct-nutrient.html Earth Sciences Tue, 03 Nov 2026 18:50:01 EST news712950481 Waste dumped into the Tijuana River can travel seven times farther than expected before becoming airborne and affecting San Diego's air, at least 20 miles (32 kilometers) from its source, according to new UC Riverside research. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-tijuana-river-pollution-doesnt-stay.html Environment Tue, 03 Nov 2026 18:30:01 EST news712950001 There have been decades of regulations to make vehicles greener and improve air quality in London and Beijing, as well as a popular shift toward less polluting road transport. Now, total emissions of harmful air pollutants from vehicle exhausts are lower than those from cooking in the centers of these two megacities, a study has found. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-cooking-bigger-source-air-particles.html Environment Tue, 03 Nov 2026 18:20:02 EST news712933921 Removing harmful chemicals from contaminated water is only one step toward their elimination. Once collected in filtration materials, these chemicals must still be destroyed and detoxified to prevent contamination from moving into another waste stream. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-pfas-temperature-destruction-method.html Environment Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:00:07 EST news712929841 Fires in the U.S. are getting faster, larger and more dangerous, but people continue to develop and move into fire-prone regions. New research from the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) shows that if we don't act on climate change, which fuels fires, manage vegetation or transform how we build and adapt to fire, the risk to structures in the U.S. will almost triple by midcentury. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-losses-triple.html Environment Tue, 03 Nov 2026 05:00:08 EST news712834042 For roughly five centuries from about 1300, Europe experienced periods of unusually cold weather and extreme conditions collectively known as the Little Ice Age. Transylvania, a historical region in modern-day Romania, was also affected, but information about just how severe things were had been scattered in old town records, church logs, travelogs and administrative and monastic diaries. https://phys.org/news/2026-11-historical-reveal-bitter-truth-17th.html Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2026 15:17:08 EST news712854985