https://phys.org/earth-news/environment/ en-us The latest news on the environment, environmental issues, earth science and space exploration. Ozone pollution caused by Amazon wildfires is significantly reducing the rainforest's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, new research reveals. Ground-level ozone is formed when pollutants from sources such as wildfires react in the presence of sunlight. This harms human health and interferes with plants' ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-amazon-wildfires-generating-ozone-weakens.html Earth Sciences Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:00:01 EDT news710524502 The European Union is under pressure to ban "forever chemicals," but a battle is heating up in Brussels over the toxic substances known as PFAS, with industry groups seeking as many exemptions as possible. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fierce-lobbying-eu-chemicals.html Environment Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:28:50 EDT news710558864 A new study shows that the world's oyster reefs are a precious resource that's vastly underestimated and underutilized. The authors set out to calculate the reefs' potential gross ecosystem product (GEP), the ecological counterpart of the gross economic product, and arrived at trillions of dollars in ecosystem goods and services delivered each year to different aspects of planetary health, including human well-being. But for their full potential to be realized, oyster reefs around the world will need to be restored and protected. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-world-oyster-reefs-trillion-planetary.html Earth Sciences Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:01 EDT news710524261 Scientists have produced a first-of-its-kind assessment showing which coastal regions of Europe they believe are at greatest risk from harmful light pollution. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-highlights-european-greatest-pollution.html Environment Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:00:01 EDT news710510401 Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is commonly associated with both health concerns and poor visibility. However, these two effects do not necessarily improve or worsen at the same time. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-clearer-air-potential-particle-pollution.html Environment Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:20:01 EDT news710517482 "Is there enough water? What's happening with climate change? How do I operate my hydro plant? In a world of water problems, there are problems that we need a good model to solve," says Colin Gleason, a hydrologist in the Riccio College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But the models are only as good as the math that they're based on, and short of measuring every river in the world, there is no way to check this on a global scale. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-newly-satellite-flawed-river.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:40:01 EDT news710508841 A flash flood can devastate a community for years in a matter of minutes. These disasters account for roughly 85% of floods and cause thousands of deaths annually worldwide, with water levels capable of shooting up 30 feet (9 meters) and receding to normal levels in the span of a single, unpredictable day, according to the National Weather Service. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ai-techniques-image-creation-river.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:30:01 EDT news710525041 Many outdoor enthusiasts have spent hours in front of a computer, racing to reserve a campsite, backpacking permit or national park entrance ticket. A recent study suggests that the way these reservation systems are designed can favor higher-income visitors. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-richer-people-edge-national.html Environment Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:10:01 EDT news710520661 In January 2013, Lake Michigan reached its lowest water level on record. Seven years later, in the summer of 2020, it broke the opposite record with widespread flooding, eroded shorelines and closed lakeside roads. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ai-great-lakes.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:10:01 EDT news710515621 El Niño and warming in the tropical Atlantic could help provide advance warning of extreme heat in the Amazon, with some signals appearing as much as seven months earlier, new research has found. Researchers from the ARC Center of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and the National Institute of Space Research in Brazil studied how major patterns of natural climate variability influence temperature and rainfall extremes across the Amazon Basin. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-el-nio-tropical-atlantic-early.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:00:06 EDT news710503141 This summer broke records around the U.K. for maximum temperatures and dry weather. According to the U.K.'s Met Office, while it was rare to hit 35°C (95°F) in the 20th century, that temperature has been surpassed in six out of the past 10 years. And temperatures are only expected to get higher. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-hot-summer-people-climate.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:00:24 EDT news710502181 The weather over the North Atlantic affects hundreds of millions of people. From winter storms over Europe to cold spells in eastern North America, many of these impacts are shaped by large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns that recur. Climate scientists refer to these preferred patterns as atmospheric regimes. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-anthropogenic-north-atlantic-atmospheric-circulation.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:40:06 EDT news710499169 It's often the sight of heavy digging machinery that makes us question how our taxes and property taxes are being spent. As a new project begins, we may wonder why money is being spent on that and not on other things. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-purpose-reveal-overlooked-benefits-bike.html Environment Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:00:10 EDT news710491682 In the humid tropics of Southeast Asia, afternoon thunderstorms roll through almost every day. Daytime heat causes towering, fluffy cumulonimbus clouds to form and swell before unleashing torrential rain on cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok. In these places, drainage systems are designed to cope with short, heavy downpours. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-planet-cities-bangkok-inundated-deadly.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:00:08 EDT news710487782 A new global review of observed climate change impacts on plant communities reveals major gaps in where and how we monitor some of the world's most climate-vulnerable ecosystems. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-global-reveals-major-climate-impacts.html Environment Mon, 05 Oct 2026 21:40:01 EDT news710433302 More than half of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been marked for oil drilling, overlapping with Indigenous territories and areas of high biodiversity. The ecological and cultural impacts of oil extraction are well documented and have fueled some of Latin America's most prominent environmental movements. Yet at the local level, extraction is not always met with resistance. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-indigenous-communities-dont-resist-oil.html Environment Mon, 05 Oct 2026 21:00:01 EDT news710431922 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 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that draws on recent scientific literature and contributions from hundreds of experts around the world. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-global-soil-erosion-outpaces-natural.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Oct 2026 20:40:02 EDT news710431141 A new study finds that coastal forest loss in North Carolina's Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula began accelerating after 2010 and may still be speeding up. The study also found that North Carolina lost more than 20% of its coastal forest between 1985 and 2021. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-forests-dying-north-carolina-coast.html Environment Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:00:10 EDT news710438881 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, disease and past forest management can all affect forest soil carbon stores, and tree type, climate and harvesting method can all affect how much carbon is lost. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-term-reveals-forest-floor-soil.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:20:15 EDT news710429701 If you're reading this, your body probably contains forever chemicals. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-chemicals-yeast-ai.html Environment Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:00:10 EDT news710415842 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 about year-to-year changes in river flow. But while studying the Prairie Pothole Region, I learned that this is only part of the story. What happens after water reaches the ground can be just as important as how much falls from the sky. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-great-plains-rivers-wetlands-climate.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:00:01 EDT news710416727 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 of kilometers away. These persistent pathways of atmospheric moisture are often referred to as "aerial rivers" or "flying rivers." https://phys.org/news/2026-10-flying-rivers-south-america-drainage.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:01 EDT news710416741 Kauri are among Aotearoa New Zealand's tallest and longest-lived trees—and their place in our cultural landscape looms equally large. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-kauri-dieback-threatens-trees-carbon.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:20:01 EDT news710407142 Extreme heat is putting pregnant mothers and their newborns at increasing risk, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell will warn on Monday. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-extreme-pregnant-women-newborns-climate.html Environment Mon, 05 Oct 2026 03:30:01 EDT news710386759 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. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-climate-threat-lurk-beneath-antarctica.html Earth Sciences Sun, 04 Oct 2026 19:00:01 EDT news709985866 As Ted Schuur stepped along the edges of Smith Lake, a bubble surfaced from the muck underfoot. And then another. They're bubbles of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas made from decomposing plants and animals that had once been stuck in Alaska's frigid permafrost. But that frozen ground is thawing because the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe. For thousands of years that frozen ground stored dead plants and animals, but the accelerating thaw is allowing them to decay into methane and carbon dioxide. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gas-frozen-arctic-ground-slowly.html Environment Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:20:01 EDT news710069106 Working from before dawn until midnight, farmers Nikoletta Pajsan Nagy and Laszlo Pajsan fought Europe's driest summer ever to save their red pepper harvest in Hungary. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-hungary-dwindling-paprika-signature-spice.html Environment Sun, 04 Oct 2026 07:20:07 EDT news710316081 The picturesque Lac des Brenets between France and Switzerland has dried up after a record-breaking hot summer, leaving locals crying out for help to save the lake. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-cry-french-swiss-lake-dries.html Environment Sun, 04 Oct 2026 07:01:39 EDT news710316057 The Pacific Ocean is warming unusually quickly, and this year's El Niño has already surpassed previous records. Forecasters expect it to strengthen even further before approaching its usual peak around December. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-el-nio-drought-world.html Environment Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:00:01 EDT news709904740 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. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-today-emissions-choices-limit-antarctic.html Earth Sciences Sat, 03 Oct 2026 16:00:01 EDT news710166079