Earth Sciences

Scientists at the University of Melbourne have uncovered for the first time how Australia’s iconic Twelve Apostles were formed, finding tectonic plate movements over millions of years lifted and tilted the giant structures out of […]

Eastern Africa’s Turkana Rift is both a hotbed for fossil discoveries of our earliest ancestors and a literal hotbed of volcanic activity caused by shifting tectonic plates. Now researchers have found that Earth’s underlying crust […]

Too much stress can make even a rock crack. But before rocks reach their breaking point, they “sigh” a chemical warning by releasing nuclides, a type of atom defined by the number of neutrons as […]

For more than 100,000 years, the Methana volcano in Greece appeared dormant. No lava, no explosions, no ash clouds. It appeared extinct, like many other volcanoes today. An international research team led by ETH Zurich […]

Lakes are often described as “hotspots” in the global carbon cycle, yet quantifying their “breath”—the exchange of carbon dioxide (CO2) between water and the atmosphere—has long been notoriously difficult due to extreme variability across time […]

Mud-rich coastlines could face a greater tsunami risk, at least that may have been the case for the 2011 Tōhoku-oki tsunami that killed more than 19,000 people and led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. […]

Geoengineering could protect the Amazon rainforest from climate change, new research shows. Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) aims to artificially cool Earth by increasing the reflection of incoming solar radiation, thereby offsetting warming caused by anthropogenic […]

New climate stripes for cities and countries all over the world have been launched to mark Earth Day (April 22). The updated graphics, which now include an additional stripe to represent temperatures from 2025, show […]

Soil biologist Eric Slessarev has some advice for conservationists, landscapers, and farmers with fallow fields: Go touch deep-rooted grass. Or better yet, go plant some. Slessarev, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in […]

For decades, scientists have worked to improve predictions of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate powerhouse that can cause droughts, flooding, marine heat waves, and more around the world. Researchers from the University of Hawai’i […]