Where oceanic crust subducts beneath continental crust, belts of volcanoes known as continental arcs can form. Located around the world, these arcs may undergo episodic magma flare-ups—dramatic surges in the flow of magma into the continental crust at rates up to 20 times higher than normal. However, what triggers…
Europe's meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, has released the first image from the Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) on board Meteosat Third Generation Imager 2 (MTG-I2), just over two months after the satellite's launch on Aug. 27, 2026. The satellite will provide forecasters with high-resolution observations of…
A new study has found that a self-reinforcing interaction between temperature, soil moisture and atmospheric pressure is being triggered at high temperatures, making extreme heat waves 10% hotter than they would otherwise be. The study was published in Science Advances and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate…
This year may be seen as a turning point in the climate crisis. The U.N. has accepted that global warming is going to exceed 1.5°C, while climate scientists have concluded that the rate of warming has effectively doubled over the past decade.
Our oceans have effectively become trash dumps where massive quantities of plastic end up. So much so, in fact, that the largest offshore plastic accumulation zone has been labeled the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Technetium-99 is a long-lived radioactive byproduct of nuclear fuel production and reprocessing. In many environments, it forms a highly mobile chemical species that can move readily through water and soil, making it a priority contaminant at legacy nuclear sites including Sellafield in the U.K. and Hanford in the…
The world is on track for 2026 to be the second-hottest year on record as an exceptionally strong El Niño weather pattern turbocharges human-driven global warming, the EU's climate monitor said Friday.
As offshore wind development expands along the U.S. Atlantic Coast, understanding its potential effects on marine ecosystems is increasingly important.
Ancient Maya communities made extensive use of liquid mercury and a red, mercury-containing pigment called cinnabar to decorate buildings, pottery and burial sites. Unsurprisingly, as previous research has shown, this led to mercury contamination of soils and reservoirs at some Maya sites. And that pollution may have…
New high-resolution speleothem records from China and India, together with isotope-enabled climate models, show that abrupt glacial ocean circulation recoveries took centuries, not decades—a finding with important implications for how we assess future Atlantic circulation change. The work is published in the journal…
As sea levels creep higher in the Pacific, salt leaches into the soil and reduces the land available to grow food. Ocean warming is damaging coral reefs, reducing fish stocks, and salinity has tainted freshwater supplies.