A new study has used global storm-resolving simulations and machine learning to create an algorithm that can deal separately with two different scales of cloud organization: those resolved by a climate model, and those that cannot be...
A new study concludes that an extinct volcano off the shore of Portugal could store as much as 1.2-8.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of ~24-125 years of the country's industrial emissions. For context, in 2022 a total of...
Alastair Evans’s documentary details the struggle to preserve Hang Son Doong caves in Vietnam, which were discovered in 1991 “There was quite a substantial breeze coming out. A substantial breeze normally would signify a substantial...
Researchers found that the Hunga-Tonga eruption was associated with the formation of an equatorial plasma bubble in the ionosphere, a phenomenon associated with disruption of satellite-based communications. Their findings also suggest...
Scientists found weak, biologically-rich layers of sediments hundreds of meters beneath the seafloor which crumbled as oceans warmed and ice sheets declined. The landslides were discovered in the eastern Ross Sea in 2017, by an...
A team of physicists has discovered a new role for a specific type of turbulence -- a finding that sheds light on fluid flows ranging from the Earth's liquid core to boiling water.
Approximately 700,000 years ago, a 'warm ice age' permanently changed the climate cycles on Earth. During this exceptionally warm and moist period, the polar glaciers greatly expanded. A research team identified this seemingly...
Eighty-six-minute movie starring 4,000-year-old Cornish stone billed as antithesis to flashy nature shows It is a rock documentary but there is no pounding music, no terrible behaviour, no bombastic characters. Instead, the 86-minute...
A research team, composed of climatologists and an astronomer, have used an improved computer model to reproduce the cycle of ice ages (glacial periods) 1.6 to 1.2 million years ago. The results show that the glacial cycle was driven...
An international team has reconstructed the evolution of groundwater in the Great Basin, USA -- one of the driest regions on Earth -- up to 350,000 years into the past with unprecedented accuracy. The results shed new light on the...
Around 500 million years ago life in the oceans rapidly diversified. In the blink of an eye -- at least in geological terms -- life transformed from simple, soft-bodied creatures to complex multicellular organisms with shells and...
Real-time data will be displayed for Dr Alyssa Schwartz to play at Atlanta conference Move aside Metallica and Led Zeppelin: scientists are planning to make “rock” music by letting seismic activity headline in a live flute performance....
New research deepens the understanding of Earth's crust by testing and ultimately eliminating one popular hypothesis about why continental crust is lower in iron and more oxidized compared to oceanic crust. The iron-poor composition of...
Faults in the Ridgecrest, California area were very sensitive to solid earth tidal stresses in the year and a half before the July 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence.
Using remote sensing, geophysicists have documented the massive Feb. 6 quake that killed more than 50,000 people in Eastern Turkey and toppled more than 100,000 buildings. Alarmingly, researchers found that a section of the fault remains...
Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active subduction zones come into being, however, is...
How did the Andes -- the world's longest mountain range -- reach its enormous size? This is just one of the geological questions that a new method may be able to answer. With unprecedented precision, the method allows researchers to...
Our planet's water could have originated from interactions between the hydrogen-rich atmospheres and magma oceans of the planetary embryos that comprised Earth's formative years.
Can humans endure long-term living in deep space? The answer is a lukewarm maybe, according to a new theory describing the complexity of maintaining gravity and oxygen, obtaining water, developing agriculture and handling waste far from...
Using satellite-obtained data from 2007-21, researchers mapped the entire East Coast to demonstrate how the inclusion of land subsidence reveals many areas to be more vulnerable to floods and erosion than previously thought.
Material left on the seafloor by bronze-age underwater volcanic eruptions is helping researchers better understand the size, hazards and climate impact of their parent eruptions, according to new research.
A lightning strike in New Port Richey, Florida, led to a chemical reaction creating a new material that is transitional between space minerals and minerals found on Earth. High-energy events, such as lightning, can cause unique chemical...
Oceanographers discovered warm, chemically distinct liquid shooting up from the seafloor about 50 miles off Newport. They named the unique underwater spring 'Pythia's Oasis.' Observations suggest the spring is sourced from water 2.5...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts Could rocks be conscious? Why are some things conscious and some...
Researchers used small zircon crystals to unlock information about magmas and plate tectonic activity in early Earth. The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics was most likely occurring more than 4.2 billion years ago...
Most climate models do not yet account for a recent discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth's atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat.
Volcanic relics scattered throughout the Australian landscape are a map of the northward movement of the continent over a 'hotspot' inside the Earth, during the last 35 million years.
Two researchers have used a standard laptop computer and a humble piece of rock -- from the 'waste pile' of a diamond mine -- to solve a long-held geological conundrum about how diamonds formed in the deep roots of the earth's ancient...
Compass readings that do not show the direction of true north and interference with the operations of satellites are a few of the problems caused by peculiarities of the Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field radiates around the...
A new study has?highlighted?how and when?changes to the environment result in?animal-borne disease?thresholds?being breeched, allowing for?a?better understanding and?increased?capacity to?predict?the?risk of?transmissions.
Atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow bands of water vapor, are becoming more intense and frequent with climate change. A new study demonstrates that a recently developed scale for atmospheric river intensity (akin to the hurricane...
Disconnected from the energy of the sun, the permanently ice-covered Arctic deep sea receives miniscule amounts of organic matter that sustains life. Bacteria which can harvest the energy released from submarine hydrothermal sources...
Doublet Pool's regular thumping is more than just an interesting tourist attraction. A new study shows that the interval between episodes of thumping reflects the amount of energy heating the pool at the bottom, as well as in indication...
The Phlegraean volcanic fields just west of Naples, Italy, are among the top eight emitters of volcanic carbon dioxide in the world. Since 2005, the Solfatara crater -- one of many circular depressions in the landscape left by a long...
Mineral particles played a key role in raising oxygen levels in the Earth's atmosphere billions of years ago, with major implications for the way intelligent life later evolved, according to new research.
Scientists reveal new information about the role humans have played in large-scale land loss in the Mississippi River Delta -- crucial information in determining solutions to the crisis.
Previous models of Earth's recent (100 million years) geomorphology have been patchy at best. For the first time a detailed continuous model of the Earth's landscape evolution is presented, with potential for understanding long-term...
With the help of an underwater robot, known as Icefin, a U.S.- New Zealand research team has obtained an unprecedented look inside a crevasse at Kamb Ice Stream -- revealing more than a century of geological processes beneath the...
Helium -- essential for many medical and industrial processes -- is in critically short supply worldwide. Production is also associated with significant carbon emissions, contributing to climate change. This study provides a new concept...
Previous research estimated that it took hundreds of million years for the ancient Earth's magma ocean to solidify, but new research narrows these large uncertainties down to less than just a couple of million years.
By simulating early Earth conditions in the lab, researchers have found that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have known how to evolve into everything alive on the planet today -- including plants, animals, and...
Geologists doing fieldwork in southeastern Utah's Cedar Mountain Formation found carbon isotope evidence that the site, though on land, experienced the same early Cretaceous carbon-cycle change recorded in marine sedimentary rocks in...
Countless meteorites have struck Earth in the past and shaped the history of our planet. It is assumed, for example, that meteorites brought with them a large part of its water. The extinction of the dinosaurs might also have been...
The solid inner core is contained within the liquid outer core, enabling it to rotate differently from the Earth itself Earth’s inner core appears to have stopped spinning faster than its mantle. New measurements suggest that the...