https://phys.org/earth-news/ en-us Earth science research, climate change, and global warming. The latest news and updates from Phys.org Almost 200 kilometers off the coast of Nova Scotia sits a slender, crescent-shaped spit of land known for mythic wild horses that roam its dunes, seals that dot its low-slung shores and hundreds of shipwrecks still populating its watery depths. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-sable-island-shifting-landscape-insights.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:08:03 EDT news617022481 A large team of atmospheric specialists has found that when the Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai volcano erupted last year, it took part of the ozone layer with it. Their findings are published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-hunga-tonga-hunga-haapai-eruption-depleted-ozone.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 20 Oct 2023 11:30:01 EDT news617015778 Doubling food production, saving water, and increasing carbon storage capacity—this may sound paradoxical, but would be theoretically feasible considering the biophysical potential of the Earth. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-food-carbon.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 20 Oct 2023 09:46:02 EDT news617013953 A combined team of geochemists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and California Institute of Technology has found evidence of high levels of helium-3 in rocks on Baffin Island—possible evidence that the Earth's core is leaking. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of helium-3 and helium-4 on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-evidence-earth-core-leaking-baffin.html Earth Sciences Fri, 20 Oct 2023 09:18:38 EDT news617012313 Atlantic hurricanes may now be more than twice as likely to strengthen from a weak Category 1 hurricane to a major Category 3 or stronger hurricane in a 24-hour period than they were between 1970 and 1990, suggests a paper published in Scientific Reports. The paper also suggests that hurricanes are now more likely to strengthen more rapidly along the east coast of the U.S. than they were between 1970 and 1990. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-atlantic-hurricanes-weak-major-intensity.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 11:00:02 EDT news616926165 Global coastal adaptations are "incremental in scale," short-sighted and inadequate to address the root causes of vulnerability to climate change, according to an international team of researchers. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-urgent-action-climate-threats-coastal.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 11:00:01 EDT news616926345 Biodegradable plastics may not be the solution to plastic pollution many hoped for, with a University of Otago study showing they are still harmful to fish. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-biodegradable-plastics-fish.html Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:21:28 EDT news616929685 Many aquifers in California and around the world are being drained of their groundwater because of the combined impacts of excess pumping, shifts in land use, and climate change. However, a new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, published on Oct. 18 in Nature Water, may offer a solution. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-rebates-solutions-california-groundwater-woes.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:07:03 EDT news616928821 Two recent scientific studies led by Dr. Paul Wilcox from the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck provide new insights into Earth's climate dynamics, with a particular focus on the El Niño phenomenon. The results show how El Niño responds to natural factors over extended periods, while highlighting the increasing role of human activities in shaping this climatic phenomenon in the modern era. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-el-nio-patterns-human-natural.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 09:53:03 EDT news616927981 Since the 1980s, researchers have observed significant periods of unrest in a region of California's Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains characterized by swarms of earthquakes as well as the ground inflating and rising by almost half an inch per year during these periods. The activity is concerning because the area, called the Long Valley Caldera, sits atop a massive dormant supervolcano. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-california-supervolcano-cooling-quakes.html Earth Sciences Wed, 18 Oct 2023 14:56:03 EDT news616859761 The analysis of ancient, superdeep diamonds dug up from mines in Brazil and Western Africa, has exposed new processes of how continents evolved and moved during the early evolution of complex life on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-ancient-diamonds-evolution-earth.html Earth Sciences Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:48:13 EDT news616852090 When the researchers came upon the Ruki River, they were quite taken aback. The water in this river, a tributary of the mighty Congo River, is so dark that you literally can't see your hand in front of your face. "We were struck by the color of the river," says ETH Zurich researcher Travis Drake, who has just published a study in the journal Limnology and Oceanography on the Ruki together with colleagues from the Sustainable Agroecosystems Group, led by Johan Six, as well as from other universities. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-world-darkest-rivers.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:42:04 EDT news616851721 Greenland is the second largest permanently ice-covered surface on the Earth; only Antarctica is larger. The Greenland ice sheet is drastically impacted by the effects of climate change. If the ice sheet melts completely it would cause a sea level rise of more than seven meters—a catastrophe for coastal regions worldwide and for the people who live there. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-climate-greenland-ice-sheet.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:01:03 EDT news616849261 Deforestation for rubber cultivation has been "substantially underestimated", and is two to three times higher than generally assumed, a new study said Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-deforestation-rubber-vastly-underestimated.html Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 11:10:08 EDT news616846197 Forests play a critical part in mitigating climate change due to their ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. However, many European forests removed less CO2 from the atmosphere during the extremely hot and dry summer of 2022, according to a new European study. The findings suggest that plans to compensate for CO2 emissions through forests may have to be amended. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-drought-imperils-carbon-sequestration-european.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 11:04:03 EDT news616845841 The American residential lawn is, for many, an iconic landscape and about half of homeowners in the U.S. use fertilizer to keep their yards green and lush. Some proportion of the nitrogen in this fertilizer enters the broader environment, with negative consequences including algal blooms and deoxygenated waters. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-dark-side-american-lawn.html Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 09:46:03 EDT news616841162 One of the biggest challenges for earthquake early warning systems (EEW) is the lack of seismic stations located offshore of heavily populated coastlines, where some of the world's most seismically active regions are located. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-seafloor-fiber-optic-cable-earthquake.html Earth Sciences Tue, 17 Oct 2023 15:49:04 EDT news616776542 The last glacial period began around 115,000 years ago, and was punctuated by cold and warmer cycles, resulting in the advance and retreat of glaciers that shaped the landscape of the European Alps and their surroundings, carving out valleys. A new computer model makes it possible to reconstruct this evolution with unprecedented precision. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-simulation-visualize-evolution-alpine-ice.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 14:29:15 EDT news616771752 Filtration systems are designed to capture multiple harmful substances from water or air simultaneously, but pollutants in soil can only be tackled individually or a few at a time—at least for now. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-decontamination-method-zaps-pollutants-soil.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:37:22 EDT news616761439 U.S. Climate policies can offer options for putting climate change efforts into place that solve environmental problems like excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere created by greenhouse gas emissions. Research led by the University of New Hampshire took a closer look at what would happen to agriculture if there was an extra cost, or so-called social cost, added to fossil fuels, which are essential for making fertilizer used in farming. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-quality-gulf-mexico-adding-social.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:33:04 EDT news616761181 Global emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide are expected to rise around one percent to reach a new all-time high in 2023, the climate scientist behind the preliminary research said Tuesday. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-carbon-dioxide-pollution.html Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:19:28 EDT news616760347 Climate change and the rapid increase in frequency of extreme weather events around the globe—such as wildfires and floods—reinforces the reality that these events are not only not random but, rather, interconnected. Interlinked climate behavior, or teleconnections, isn't a well understood field but will be necessary to fully comprehend how our climate system works. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-climate-network-analysis-regions-higher.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:00:01 EDT news616756088 Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have been monitoring groundwater quality in wells across the country for more than three decades, looking for harmful chemicals or residual substances that may cause harm to ecosystems or humans. In all, they have measured up to 500 chemical constituents, including major ions, metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, fertilizers, and radionuclides. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-groundwater-saltierwhat-infrastructure-ecosystems-human.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 10:37:50 EDT news616757754 Surface ice in Greenland has been melting at an increasing rate in recent decades, while the trend in Antarctica has moved in the opposite direction, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Utrecht University in the Netherlands. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-ice-sheet-surface-greenland-antarctica.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:30:03 EDT news616692601 A new study that examines both the physical and socioeconomic effects of sea-level rise on Florida's Miami-Dade County area finds that in coming decades, four out of five residents may face disruption or displacement, whether they live in flood zones or not. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-seas-tighten-vise-miami-people.html Environment Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:42:04 EDT news616689721 Despite steps toward decreasing deforestation, uncontrolled wildfires are threatening environmental gains in Brazilian Amazonia, one of the world's most critical carbon sinks and a region of high biological and cultural diversity. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-wildfires-threaten-environmental-gains-climate-crucial.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 16 Oct 2023 11:00:01 EDT news616665790 Four dozen Antarctic ice shelves have shrunk by at least 30% since 1997 and 28 of those have lost more than half of their ice in that time, reports a new study that surveyed these crucial "gatekeepers'' between the frozen continent's massive glaciers and open ocean. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientists-huge-antarctic-ice-shelves.html Environment Sun, 15 Oct 2023 10:20:01 EDT news616389315 Phytoplankton, tiny photosynthetic organisms in the ocean, play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and influence Earth's climate. A new study reveals how variations in the physiology of phytoplankton, particularly regarding nutrient uptake, can impact the chemical composition of the ocean and even the atmosphere. This suggests that changes in marine phytoplankton physiology can affect global climate. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-phytoplankton-physiology-global-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 13 Oct 2023 14:39:04 EDT news616426741 Newly published research on indoor air quality from Colorado State University shows wildfire smoke may linger in homes long after the initial blaze has been put out or winds have shifted. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-wildfire-linger-homes-blaze.html Environment Fri, 13 Oct 2023 14:00:02 EDT news616404379 The strength of the wind has an important influence on ocean circulation. This is particularly true for extreme events such as storm fronts, tropical storms and cyclones. These weather patterns, which last from a few days to a few weeks, will change in the future due to climate change. In particular, the average energy input into the ocean from mid-latitude storms is expected to decrease, while equatorial regions will become more active. Scientists call these different weather patterns "Atmospheric Synoptic Variability" (ASV). https://phys.org/news/2023-10-impact-extreme-weather-events-ocean.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 13 Oct 2023 11:56:03 EDT news616416961