https://phys.org/earth-news/earth-sciences en-us The latest news on earth sciences and the environment A technology that combines satellite data and numerical model data for forest fire detection has been developed, offering a more comprehensive and adaptable approach to monitor and respond to wildfires. This innovative solution, developed by Professor Jungho Im and his team in the Department of Civil, Urban, Earth, and Environmental Engineering at UNIST, has the potential to significantly minimize the damage caused by medium and large forest fires. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-unveils-breakthrough-forest-environmental.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 20 Oct 2023 13:18:02 EDT news617026681 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 Why do we feel stuck in our efforts to solve the great sustainability crises of the 21st century? Between the dire need to successfully mitigate climate change while making progress on human-focused Sustainable Development Goals, the challenges of the Anthropocene—the era in which we now live—can appear insurmountable. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-minutes-daily-pollution.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 20 Oct 2023 11:48:03 EDT news617021281 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 A University of Oklahoma-led article published in Geophysical Research Letters highlights newly measured extremes recorded during the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere field project. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-documents-extremes-stratospheric-vapor.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 17:04:02 EDT news616953841 During the Early-Middle Devonian period, a large landmass called Gondwana—which included parts of today's Africa, South America, and Antarctica—was located near the South Pole. Unlike today's icy conditions, the climate was warmer, and the sea levels were higher, flooding most of the land. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-sea-levels-climate-marine-ecosystems-south.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 16:55:38 EDT news616953335 Satellites and on-the-ground sensors are helping Kenya, Ghana and Zambia tackle inundation risks and farmers cope with drought. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-africa-advance-eu-expertise.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 14:13:04 EDT news616943581 Text messages began to circulate about five minutes after an earthquake warning sounded for celebrants at St. James' Episcopal Church in South Pasadena on Sunday morning. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-churches-key-quake-survival-expert.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 19 Oct 2023 13:21:03 EDT news616940461 Deep geological disposal is a globally recognized and safe method for long-term management of high-level radioactive waste (HLW). However, over extended periods of nuclear waste storage, there is the potential for the waste canister to experience leaks due to corrosion or alterations in the geological environment. This could lead to the eventual release of radionuclides into the surrounding fractured rock, posing a risk of migration into the biosphere. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-geotechnical-centrifuge-simulating-long-term-radionuclide.html Earth Sciences Thu, 19 Oct 2023 12:57:03 EDT news616939021 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 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 As climate change warms the planet and droughts are anticipated to become more frequent and extreme, a new study reveals how reduced water flows and rising atmospheric temperatures are set to heat our rivers—creating major challenges for aquatic life, ecosystems, and society. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-drought-conditions-expose-rivers-hotter.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 16:57:03 EDT news616867021 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 A new study on weevils led by biologists Harald Letsch from the University of Vienna and Alexander Riedel from the State Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe brings new cross-disciplinary findings. Based on the evolution of the weevils there, conclusions can be drawn about the geological development of Indonesia and the Western Pacific. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-geological-history-indonesia-beetle-evolution.html Earth Sciences Wed, 18 Oct 2023 13:33:03 EDT news616854782 More than 200 scientists from 19 countries will release the first comprehensive assessment of trends in Southern Ocean ecosystems on 18 October, in a reportmade available on Zenodo and written specifically for policy makers. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-sea-blueprint-southern-ocean-survival.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 13:19:21 EDT news616853959 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 The drought plaguing the Amazon is a worrying portrait of the climate challenges facing the world. The combination of the El Niño phenomenon and anthropogenic climate change has played a significant role in accentuating this extreme weather event. The Amazon region, known for its lush rainforest and flowing rivers, is facing a critical situation due to a lack of rainfall and rising temperatures. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-drought-amazon-action-biome.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:04:08 EDT news616849446 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 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 In 2020, the Pantanal, the largest tropical freshwater wetland in the world and a biodiversity hotspot, was swept by high-intensity fires that destroyed native vegetation in an area totaling 44,998 square kilometers, or about 30% of the Brazilian portion of the biome, which spans some 150,000 km2. The estimate is presented in an article published in Fire. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-pantanal-cinders-wildfires.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:34:57 EDT news616779293 Continuing the temperature trend from this summer, September 2023 was the hottest September on record, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The month also set the record for the highest temperature anomaly—the largest difference from the long-term average. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-nasa-september-temperature.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:10:05 EDT news616777802 Extreme weather events have been making headlines worldwide due to their increasing frequency and severity, often attributed to ongoing global-scale warming. The year 2022 was no exception, with record-breaking heat waves and droughts of highly unusual spatial extent, duration, and intensity. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-code-unprecedented-droughts.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 15:59:03 EDT news616777141 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 Scientists measured microplastic concentrations in the highly productive Barents Sea and suggest that ocean circulation, ice melt, tourism, inadequate waste management, shipping and fishing are all likely contributors. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-ocean-circulation-ice-tourism-contributing.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 15:28:03 EDT news616775281 Earthworms, the hardworking invertebrates that grace the upper layers of soil, have long been considered helpful in our home gardens. Earthworms are prolific munchers, grinding up organic material and sediment grains that make up soils. Although they are very different animals, worms, like many poultry, have gizzards. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-earthworm-effect-unraveling-soil-weathering.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 17 Oct 2023 15:20:03 EDT news616774802