Earth Sciences

The 2025 Eaton fire’s smoke did more than darken the sky: It generated a carbon monoxide and particulate matter surge that far exceeded Los Angeles County’s average daily human-caused emissions, according to a new study […]

The Miocene, beginning approximately 23 million years ago, represents a canonical “warm-Earth” interval characterized by elevated atmospheric CO2 and a warmer global climate. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as a leading mode of interannual climate […]

The episode of extreme rainfall that affected the east of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of October 2024 left a devastating mark on the province of Valencia. In some areas, such as Turís, more […]

Ice cores taken from glaciers reveal the air pollution of the past, using atmospheric particles incorporated in snow that fell on the glacier and became ice. Now, scientists have extracted a record of thousands of […]

Climate change is lengthening our days because rising sea levels slow Earth’s rotation. Researchers from the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich now show that the current increase in day length—1.33 milliseconds per century—is unprecedented […]

Thanks to upstream diversions and climate change, Utah’s Great Salt Lake has shrunk by 70% since 1989, exposing about 800 square miles of playa and mudflats—along with numerous curiosities. While a potential environmental catastrophe, the […]

The Amazon rainforest is famous for storing massive amounts of carbon in its trees and soils, helping regulate the global climate. Yet a paper published in New Phytologist shows that one of South America’s largest […]

Before rain begins to fall, scientists and engineers can predict where a storm might cause flooding thanks to advanced modeling and digital simulations that help guide billion-dollar decisions involving infrastructure design, emergency response, land-use planning, […]

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming weather prediction, enabling forecasts that once required hours of supercomputing time to run in just minutes. But as AI tools play an expanding role in high-stakes hazard modeling, researchers at […]

Two new studies conclude that stabilizing long-term climate risks will require sustained net-negative carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for centuries. Approaching the problem from distinct perspectives—legal and technological feasibility on the one hand, and economic optimization […]