https://phys.org/earth-news/earth-sciences en-us The latest news on earth sciences and the environment The carbon stored globally by plants is shorter-lived and more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-carbon-shorter-periods-thought.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:00:02 EDT news638092682 A team of Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists plan to use artificial intelligence modeling to forecast, and better understand, a growing threat to water caused by toxic algal blooms. Fueled by climate change and rising water temperatures, these harmful algal blooms, or HABs, have grown in intensity and frequency. They have now been reported in all 50 U.S. states. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-ai-toxic-blue-green-tides.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:15:48 EDT news638104544 Our planet was born around 4.5 billion years ago. To understand this mind-bendingly long history, we need to study rocks and the minerals they are made of. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-groundbreaking-discovery-remnants-earth-primordial.html Earth Sciences Thu, 20 Jun 2024 10:47:55 EDT news638099270 At approximately 4:10 p.m. on January 1, 2024, the Noto region of Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan was hit by a large earthquake with a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.5. This earthquake, known as the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake, registered a maximum seismic intensity of 7 on the Japanese scale and caused widespread damage, including numerous casualties. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-noto-peninsula-earthquake-quiet-rupture.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 20 Jun 2024 09:41:00 EDT news638095259 In the late 2000s, Scott Saleska noticed something strange going on in the Amazon rainforest. In 2005, a massive drought struck the region. Two years later, Saleska—a University of Arizona professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology—published surprising research that used satellite images to find that the drought resulted in more green growth in large swaths of the Amazon. On the other hand, field researchers saw plants turn brown and some die in response to the drought. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-drought-amazon-vulnerable-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 19 Jun 2024 11:00:01 EDT news637947509 Roughly one in four U.S. households have soil exceeding the new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's lead screening levels of 200 parts per million (ppm), halved from the previous level of 400 ppm, a new study found. For households with exposure from multiple sources, the EPA lowered the guidance to 100 ppm; nearly 40% of households exceed that level, the study also found. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-residential-yards-exceeds-epa-soil.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 18 Jun 2024 16:37:40 EDT news637947458 Europe experienced its coldest winter in 600 years during 1739–1740, ~4 °C cooler than the present average, also coinciding with negative temperature anomalies across North America and Eurasia. Indeed, for northern midlatitudes (35–70 °N) as a whole, it may have been the coldest season in the last 300 years. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-year-coldest-central-europe-years.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 18 Jun 2024 06:40:01 EDT news637846554 A new UC Riverside study shows soot from large wildfires in California traps sunlight, making days warmer and drier than they ought to be. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-large-wildfires-weather-favors.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 18 Jun 2024 06:29:55 EDT news637910981 Record snowfall in recent years has not been enough to offset long-term drying conditions and increasing groundwater demands in the U.S. Southwest, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-satellites-didnt-offset-southwestern-groundwater.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 17 Jun 2024 15:15:04 EDT news637856101 Detecting marine debris from space is now a reality, according to a new study led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) and the University of Cadiz recently published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-proof-concept-satellites-marine-debris.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 17 Jun 2024 11:57:04 EDT news637844221 A team of researchers from the University of Exeter have shone fresh light on the causes of Oceanic Anoxic Event 2—which saw severe global warming and ocean acidification across the Earth around 94 million years ago. The study is published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-scientists-significant-climate-catastrophes.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 17 Jun 2024 10:27:53 EDT news637838871 A major earthquake 2,500 years ago caused one of the largest rivers on Earth to abruptly change course, according to a new study. The previously undocumented quake rerouted the main channel of the Ganges River in what is now densely populated Bangladesh, which remains vulnerable to big quakes. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-earthquake-ganges.html Earth Sciences Mon, 17 Jun 2024 05:00:01 EDT news637572398 Barrier islands dot the landscape along Virginia's Eastern Shore, protecting the coastline from direct impacts of storms and sea-level rise. Made of sand, they are created and changed by environmental factors. But with climate change and human development, these natural processes can be disrupted. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-qa-barrier-islands-dunes-coastlines.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 14 Jun 2024 13:01:42 EDT news637588899 The important role of the Southern Ocean in global biological processes and the carbon cycle has been confirmed anew by a study published in Science that, for the first time based on field evidence, reveals the underappreciated role of inorganic zinc (Zn) particles in these cycles. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-scientists-unravel-drivers-global-zinc.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 13 Jun 2024 14:00:02 EDT news637488961 Video footage of Iceland's 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption is providing researchers from the University of Cambridge with rare, up-close observations of volcanic ash clouds—information that could help better forecast how far explosive eruptions disperse their hazardous ash particles. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-video-analysis-iceland-eruption-volcanic.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 13 Jun 2024 12:10:30 EDT news637499426 When it comes to the ocean's response to global warming, we're not in entirely uncharted waters. A UC Riverside study shows that episodes of extreme heat in Earth's past caused the exchange of waters from the surface to the deep ocean to decline. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-ancient-ocean-slowdown-future-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 13 Jun 2024 10:14:36 EDT news637492473 During a 2017 research field trip to the Ichinokawa Mine (Ehime prefecture), which is famous for beautiful, sword-shaped stibnite crystals, Noriyoshi Tsuchiya found something unexpected. Although most would be entranced by the glittering crystals, it was a sedimentary rock bundle called breccia that caught his eye. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-energy-earthquakes-brecciation-fault-zone.html Earth Sciences Thu, 13 Jun 2024 09:29:03 EDT news637489742 Climate changes, but not always for the same reason. Today's rapid climate change is due entirely to man. The Holocene—the last 12,000 years—has been seen as having a stable climate, with a lack of chaos that allowed humans to settle down, develop agriculture, build civilizations and thrive. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-uncovering-prolonged-cooling-events-holocene.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 13 Jun 2024 08:00:01 EDT news637408553 Earthquakes may betray their impending presence much earlier than previously thought through a variety of anomalies present in the ground, atmosphere and ionosphere that can be detected using satellites, a recent study in the Journal of Applied Geodesy suggests. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-satellite-reveal-electromagnetic-anomalies-days.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Jun 2024 16:59:03 EDT news637430342 University of Southern California scientists have proven that the Earth's inner core is backtracking—slowing down—in relation to the planet's surface, as shown in new research published in Nature. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-rotation-earth-core.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Jun 2024 15:19:03 EDT news637424341 When old satellites fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up, they leave behind tiny particles of aluminum oxide, which eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer. A new study finds that these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022 and will continue to accumulate as the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites skyrockets. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-satellite-megaconstellations-jeopardize-recovery-ozone.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 12 Jun 2024 14:21:04 EDT news637420861 Deposits of deep-pink sand washing up on South Australian shores shed new light on when the Australian tectonic plate began to subduct beneath the Pacific plate, as well as the presence of previously unknown ancient Antarctic mountains. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-mountainous-mystery-uncovered-south-australia.html Earth Sciences Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:03:03 EDT news637416181 About 2.5 billion years ago, free oxygen, or O2, first started to accumulate to meaningful levels in Earth's atmosphere, setting the stage for the rise of complex life on our evolving planet. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-earth-great-oxidation-event-million.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 12 Jun 2024 11:00:01 EDT news637403221 A key to improving climate prediction is to improve understanding of the impact of aerosol on clouds, commonly known as the aerosol-cloud-interaction, according to a new study led by Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) researchers published in Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-aerosols-affect-climate-previously-thought.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 12 Jun 2024 10:21:49 EDT news637406505 Global warming is an omnipresent issue, with widespread initiatives to draw down emissions and mitigate against the International Panel on Climate Change's worse-case scenario predictions of 3.2°C of warming by 2100 (relative to pre-Industrial levels). Current measurements stand at 1.1°C of warming across Earth, but polar regions are experiencing enhanced surface warming compared to the rest of the planet. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-arctic-global-patterns.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 12 Jun 2024 07:50:01 EDT news637315541 Emissions of nitrous oxide—a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide or methane—continued unabated between 1980 and 2020, a year when more than 10-million metric tons were released into the atmosphere primarily through farming practices, according to a new report by the Global Carbon Project. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-human-nitrous-oxide-emissions-grew.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:00:01 EDT news637323463 Climate models are a key technology in predicting the impacts of climate change. By running simulations of the Earth's climate, scientists and policymakers can estimate conditions like sea level rise, flooding, and rising temperatures, and make decisions about how to appropriately respond. But current climate models struggle to provide this information quickly or affordably enough to be useful on smaller scales, such as the size of a city. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-machine-climate-simulations-finer-resolutions.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:40:04 EDT news637342801 Coastal Alaska communities from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta northward will see more of their buildings exposed to flooding by 2100 if they continue developing at the same location, according to new research. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-coastal-alaska-communities.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:29:04 EDT news637342142 As the world transitions to greener sources of energy, demand for the metals used in these new technologies is increasing. But how do you grow the mining industry while still holding the line on carbon emissions? https://phys.org/news/2024-06-future-sustainable-carbon-sequestration.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 11 Jun 2024 15:50:35 EDT news637339832 Climate change is causing a series of maladies by warming land and sea. A study published online in Limnology and Oceanography Letters demonstrates that one consequence of climate change that has already occurred is the spread and intensification of toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-climate-toxic-algal-blooms-lake.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 11 Jun 2024 09:49:03 EDT news637318141