Beneath the cold, dark depths of the Arctic ocean sit vast reserves of methane. These stores rest in a delicate balance, stable as a solid called methane hydrates, at very specific pressures and temperatures. If that balance gets tipped,...
Two new studies investigate activity at Hawaii’s Kīlauea leading up to and following the 2018 eruption to better understand the volcano’s plumbing and behavior.
Kīlauea in Hawaii is the best-monitored volcano in the world. The 2018 eruption was the largest...
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The Greenland ice sheet contains the mass equivalent to raising global sea level by 7 meters. Research data revealed that a part of the Central-Western Greenland ice sheet has reached a critical threshold due to the last 100 years...
New research shows that naturally occurring climate variations help to explain a long-standing difference between climate models and satellite observations of global warming.
Satellite measurements of global-scale changes in atmospheric temperature began in late 1978 and continue to the present....
The construction of a major railway through Kenya will have long-term environmental impacts on the area, suggesting more work needs to be done to limit the damage on future infrastructure projects, a major study reveals.
The biggest impact of the...
Every late winter and early spring, huge dust storms swirled across the bare and frozen landscapes of Europe during the coldest periods of the latest ice age. These paleo-tempests, which are seldom matched in our modern climate frequently covered...
Researchers from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology have identified how bacteria can adapt to toxic metals released from hydrothermal vents. The study focused on Nitratiruptor sp. SB155-2, a species of...
The high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's mantle forge carbon-rich minerals known as carbonates into diamond. But less is known about the fate of carbonates that travel even deeper underground—depths from which no sample has ever been recovered.
Now,...
In a newly published paper, Virginia Tech geoscientists have found that shallow wastewater injection -- not deep wastewater injections -- can drive widespread deep earthquake activity in unconventional oil and gas production fields.
Brine is a toxic wastewater byproduct of...
Warming temperatures will potentially alter the climate in Alaska so profoundly later this century that the number of thunderstorms will triple, increasing the risks of widespread flash flooding, landslides, and lightning-induced wildfires, new research finds.
In a pair of new...