An international team of scientists has discovered that plants are not responding to global warming in the way researchers long assumed. Scientists have expected that ecosystems would keep pace with warming by rising the temperature at which photosynthesis works best.

El Niño is a recurring climate event with impacts across the globe. It has three phases: one cold (known as La Niña), one neutral, and one warm (El Niño).

Off the southern coast of Japan, the Philippine Sea Plate lies underneath the Japanese mainland. The locked tectonic plates threaten to unleash a catastrophic megathrust earthquake, likely within the next few decades. Given the potential devastation a large quake could evoke, constant developments in predictive technology must be sought. However, predicting the unpredictable movement of the seafloor requires innovative thought.

The Hadley circulation, a key atmospheric conveyor belt transporting heat and moisture from the tropics to the subtropics, directly influences subtropical aridity, the positions of tropical rainfall belts, and extreme weather risks. However, climate models have long shown inconsistencies in simulating its upper-level intensity (UP-HCI), undermining the reliability of future projections.

Many rivers flow into the Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle—including the Lena in Siberia and the Mackenzie River in Canada. The deltas of these large and small rivers store large amounts of carbon, which is bound there in frozen soils and sediments. Climate change, however, is destabilizing the deltas from the ocean and land side and also from the air.

An international team of researchers including our Department of Geography has discovered a vast geological structure hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A new study in Nature Communications finds a critical climate tipping point in Tibetan permafrost ecosystems. Warming of 2–4 degrees Celsius triggers a self-reinforcing cycle of carbon release that could significantly accelerate climate change, according to the work.

Florida State University research published in Science Advances demonstrates a new framework for predicting the motion of kilometer-scale underwater waves that complicate satellite readings of the ocean.

Scientists know that manganese, in its various oxide forms, plays a significant role in Earth's geochemical cycles. However, the exact forms of manganese, their abundance and the mechanisms behind these cycles that occur in Earth's deep, high-pressure interior are not well understood. But, a recent study, published in Physical Review B, reports on a newly discovered manganese rich compound that might help shed light on manganese's behavior in Earth's interior and explain why seismic waves slow down in certain regions.

Mangroves could store less carbon—and even begin releasing it—as sea levels rise, suggests new research in Earth's Future. Mangroves are made up of salt-tolerant plants that grow in coastal areas. They cover less than 1% of Earth's surface but store about 15% of all ocean carbon, most of it in their soils. This ability to store carbon makes them important in efforts to limit climate change. Previous research has suggested rising seas could increase carbon storage in mangroves, but the new study challenges this.

When China banned plastic waste imports in 2018, countries like the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, and Japan didn't stop exporting plastic waste—they diverted their shipments to countries in Southeast Asia.

Diminishing periods of snow cover in northern forests, shortened by climate change, are poised to disrupt a delicate balance in some of the planet's most climate-sensitive regions—according to new research from McMaster University, VU Amsterdam, and the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are long, narrow bands of intense water vapor transport that move large amounts of moisture from low to midlatitudes, resembling giant rivers in the sky. They are gaining widespread attention because of their potential to trigger flooding across the Japanese archipelago. Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have discovered that, influenced by global warming and the strengthening of the North Pacific Subtropical High, the intensity of water vapor transport in ARs has increased by about 8% over the past 42 years, from 1981 to 2022. The findings are published in the journal Climate Dynamics.

Atmospheric rivers act like "rivers in the sky," shuttling intense bands of warm, heavy moisture from lower to higher latitudes. When an atmospheric river encounters cold air or mountainous terrain, the moisture it carries condenses and falls as heavy rain or snow. In Antarctica, the arrival of an atmospheric river can help build surface ice mass. Much of Antarctica is very dry; an atmospheric river can bring the moisture needed to potentially offset some ice loss.

The Amazon rainforest responded to the most severe drought ever recorded in the basin with an unexpected defense mechanism. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, found that during and after the intense 2023–2024 El Niño cycle, the most intense drought ever recorded in the region, vegetation significantly changed its chemical emissions to cope with environmental stress. The study was published in Communications Earth & Environment.

When you think of Antarctica, you might imagine a stark, otherworldly continent of endless, white ice, with the only sound being the wind punctuated by the crack of a glacier calving in the distance.

The Euphrates River is the longest river in Western Asia and runs through the eastern side of the Fertile Crescent. Flowing over 1,700 miles from Turkey through Syria and Iraq, the river played a crucial role in sustaining the region known as the "Cradle of Civilization." Yet, researchers aren't sure about the river's origins or how tectonic activity might have shaped its evolution. A new study, published in Nature Geoscience, suggests that two ancient rivers, diverted by shifting plate tectonics, merged to form this vital river.

Scientists have identified the two biggest reasons that once-pristine rivers across the Arctic are growing cloudy with toxic orange iron particles that smother insects and suffocate fish.

Researchers have uncovered a key mechanism behind Japan's extreme winter weather, revealing how distant climate patterns interact to intensify cold waves and heavy snowfall.

A collaborative study with the University of Cologne, recently published in Nature Communications, provides compelling evidence that the extreme aridity in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert began over 40 million years ago—significantly earlier than previously assumed. The findings require a reconsideration of how deserts form and offer a new perspective on the long-term evolution of Earth's most extreme environments. Researchers from SUERC Centre for the Isotope Sciences are co-authors of a study which casts new light on the history of Earth's driest region, the Atacama Desert in Chile.