A floating mass of trees and vegetation in British Columbia’s Williston Lake attracted international attention after it was filmed this summer by boaters—and then seemed to disappear.

A Beijing-led consortium has completed the first full flight validation of China's S4000 tethered airborne wind-energy system, lifting a lightweight generator 4,000 meters above the ground to tap stronger, steadier winds.

Beneath the rocky slopes of Mount Timpanogos lies far more ice than anyone walking across the surface might suspect. Researchers used gravity measurements to map the buried glacier in 3D and found it is about 83% ice, with enough frozen water to fill 600 Olympic swimming pools. Their findings suggest rock glaciers form as falling debris buries persistent snow and preserves it for thousands of years. Similar formations around the world may collectively store tens of gigatons of hidden water.

Scientists have uncovered why Antarctica became engulfed by ice millions of years before the Arctic.

The international research, published in Science, helps to solve one of climate science’s longest-standing puzzles: how a vast ice sheet could form when Earth was around 5ºC warmer than today.

Preparing for and adapting to these outcomes—whether by abandoning coastal land, adapting through crop rotation or impoundments, or restoring lost marshes, for example—will require difficult decisions by landowners and planners, as well as financial resources and engineering innovations. A range of policies and institutions, such as conservation programs, that influence these decisions and their consequences can ease or aggravate environmental and social outcomes. An interdisciplinary approach is therefore needed to understand the tandem hazards of saltwater intrusion and sea level rise (SWISLR) and to mitigate the risks they pose.

Toward those ends, a community of natural and social scientists, experts from conservation-focused nongovernmental organizations, representatives from state and federal agencies, extension specialists, and rural NACP stakeholders set out in 2022 to build a connective intellectual network focused on SWISLR. The network sought to expand collective capacity to predict and prepare for SWISLR impacts in rural communities through sharing and synthesis of knowledge about coastal social and environmental change.

Air-sea gas exchange is the movement of gases between the atmosphere and the ocean. Carbon dioxide enters and leaves the ocean through this process, and the global ocean takes up a quarter of human-emitted CO2 through this exchange. The same process regulates the air-sea exchange of oxygen and many other climatically and biologically important gases. Gas exchange is therefore central to understanding climate, marine ecosystems, and the global carbon cycle. However, the ocean surface is not a simple, flat boundary. Wind, waves, turbulence, temperature differences, surface films, rain, and bubbles all influence how rapidly gases cross it.

link to open access paper https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025RG000903

Sometimes, nature reveals its immense power in an instant. On July 25, a colossal iceberg flipped over just off the coast of Ilulissat, Greenland, sending waves rippling toward shore in a dramatic display that was captured on camera. Filmed from the town and by a high-definition livestream operated by AfarTV, the moment has since gone viral, offering a rare glimpse at the immense forces constantly reshaping Greenland’s icy landscape.

The AfarTV Youtube channel is awesome!

https://inv.nadeko.net/channel/UCaG0IHN1RMOZ4-U3wDXAkwA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaG0IHN1RMOZ4-U3wDXAkwA

When Mike first saw the alternative projection in a magazine, his immediate response was to try to draw on it, to show how water moves around the globe – the great conveyor that transports heat, carbon and nutrients to all corners and back again. 

This flow has many pathways, and Mike, with his Antarctic hat on, naturally thinks of the circulation around the White Continent as being the “central roundabout” in the system. But he taps the map in the North Atlantic: “This is the branch that’s getting all the attention right now.” 

He’s referring to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. It’s considered one of Earth’s climate tipping points – classified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “low risk, high impact”. Some climate models predict the circulation might decline or even slow dramatically in the future under certain warming conditions.

“This is a unique opportunity; we are studying nature’s blank pages,” said Ana Miller, a geomicrobiologist at the Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville in Spain who led the study published in Environmental Microbiome.

The tubes formed by the Tajogaite eruption were sometimes tall enough for a person to walk upright through them. But the temperatures could be uncomfortably hot, even after toxic gases had dissipated and initial temperatures cooled from upward of 800°C (1472°F). In some sampling sites, air temperatures hovered at a blow-dryer hot 60°C (140°F), while rock surfaces reached 90°C (194°F).

Yet even in such inhospitable conditions, the researchers found adventurous microorganisms already dwelling in the caves and, in some cases, altering the rock.

Field images of the main features and morphology of the newly formed lava tubes of the Tajogaite Volcano in La Palma and corresponding sampling points. A Sima Hornitos (TSH); B Canal Hornito Bonito Lava Tube (THB); C Tubo Rojo (TR), and D Shatter Ring-1 (TDS)

link to open access paper https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40793-026-00874-y

I am trying to find a transcript, but this podcast is a great discussion by geologists on how they tackle identifying a rock (from the perspective of explaining it to a normal person not a weirdo geologist), it seems pretty simple but in practice it is really nice to hear experts talk about their approach to what laymen assume is an easy to answer task of simply identifying the correct category with close inspection, context is always a part of it!

One of the most common things you get asked as a geologist is "what is this rock?!" like they are holding up a baseball card you can specifically name and identify outside of any other context of where what when....

Some of the world's best-known volcanic regions, including Yellowstone National Park in the United States, Lake Toba in Indonesia, and Lake Taupo in New Zealand, sit above magma reservoirs containing thousands of cubic kilometers of molten material.

Scientists usually identify these systems through visible or measurable evidence at the surface. Such clues can include ancient eruption deposits, volcanic craters, rising or sinking ground, and escaping gases. When those signs are absent, however, even enormous quantities of magma can remain undetected within Earth's crust.

That appears to have happened in Tuscany. Researchers from UNIGE, working with specialists from the Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (IGG-CNR) and the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), mapped approximately 6,000 km3 of volcanic fluids within the continental crust.

The newly identified material extends across Tuscany at depths ranging from 8 to 15 km.

--->Over geological timescales, a magma body of this size could theoretically play a role in the development of a supervolcano. Researchers emphasize, however, that the system does not currently represent a threat.<---

link to open access paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03334-0

In counting geoneutrinos, physicists can get a direct measure of Earth’s vital heat-producing elements. “It’s the one thing we do that focuses on the Earth,” said Ryan Bayes (opens a new tab), a particle astrophysicist at Queen’s University in Ontario who works on SNO+. “Everything else we do is more focused on what we receive from other places in the universe.”

The first detection of geoneutrinos, by an instrument in Japan called Kamland, was reported in 2005. In 2009, the Borexino detector in Italy reported catching several dozen more. In November 2025, SNO+ reported (opens a new tab) its first detection, bumping up the number of observed geoneutrinos by about 50.

What makes the detections at SNO+ special is the experiment’s location: These are the first geoneutrinos measured in the western hemisphere, offering a new perspective on Earth’s radioactive interior.

...

The regions that seem to be producing the most geoneutrinos sit roughly above continent-size blobs of anomalously hot, dense material, known as large low-shear-velocity provinces, or LLSVPs, which seismologists have mapped on either side of the core. One is under Africa, the other under the Pacific Ocean. “There may be deep Earth structures in the mantle that are not understood,” Chen said. “It could be that [they] concentrate some kinds of elements.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

The lake network forms one of the largest continuous coastal shallow-lake systems on Earth. Despite its extraordinary size and diversity, it has received far less scientific attention than well-known freshwater systems elsewhere in the world. Yet the region is already experiencing many of the environmental challenges, expected to intensify in the coming decades - including a direct impact of the El Niño Southern Oscillation - alongside heavy urbanisation, which has driven eutrophication, agricultural and wastewater pollution, emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and microplastics, and increasingly frequent extreme rainfall and flooding events.

Christian Wurzbacher of the Technical University of Munich argues that these lakes can serve as "sentinel ecosystems"- natural observatories that reveal early signs of environmental change. By combining microbial ecology, environmental DNA, remote sensing, water chemistry, and long-term ecological monitoring, scientists hope to develop new indicators capable of detecting ecosystem stress before irreversible damage occurs.

link to open access paper https://oneecosystem.pensoft.net/article/186107/

Earth's molten outer core lies about 2200 km below the surface. As this electrically conducting liquid iron moves, it helps generate the planet's geomagnetic field. For many years, scientists studying small variations in that field concluded that much of the outer core was flowing mainly westward.

That pattern changed dramatically in 2010. Beneath the Pacific Ocean, a large region of molten material began moving strongly eastward instead of continuing its weaker westward flow. Scientists still do not know what caused the reversal.

Satellite observations, including measurements from ESA's Swarm and CryoSat missions, have now allowed researchers to study the event in greater detail.

Published in the Journal of Studies of Earth's Deep Interior, the study combines ground-based observations with satellite measurements collected from 1997 through 2025. The researchers used data from ESA's Swarm and Cryosat missions, along with observations from Germany's CHAMP mission and the Ørsted mission.

Their analysis showed that a broad area of iron-rich fluid below the equatorial Pacific shifted from a weak westward flow to a strong eastward flow in 2010.

Scientists had generally viewed large-scale circulation in the outer core as relatively stable. The sudden change beneath the Pacific suggests that the system can vary much more quickly than previously believed. The findings offer new clues about the turbulent motions responsible for producing Earth's magnetic field. They may also point to connections between activity in the outer core and changes taking place even deeper inside the planet.

link to open access paper https://jsedi.episciences.org/articles/17268

“By measuring invisible heat radiating from Earth's coldest places, PREFIRE is helping scientists understand why the poles are changing so rapidly, and what those changes might mean for the rest of the planet,” said Chad Greene, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Scientists have long known that far-infrared radiation accounts for nearly 60 percent of the energy Earth loses to space, but that portion of the spectrum—invisible to human eyes—had never been comprehensively measured on a global scale. By directly tracking this invisible energy in near-real-time, the PREFIRE mission is helping scientists refine models and gain a better understanding of the Earth system.

The coastal dune system in Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in northeastern Brazil is among the most surreal landscapes on Earth. At first glance, the park looks like a desert, but it is far from it. This place receives about 125 centimeters (50 inches) of rain per year—slightly more than Seattle and double what falls in London. 

The result is a paradox: rows of sparkling white quartz dunes, some rising 30 meters (100 feet), soar over a mosaic of blue and green freshwater lagoons. The park's name stems from the Portuguese word lençóis, meaning "bedsheets," a reference that makes the most sense when the park is viewed from afar. From that perspective, the sweeping curves of the largest coastal dune field in South America resemble a rumpled, white bedsheet.

Now, a new study published in the journal Science Advances and led by the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) has made it possible to observe and quantify a key transport pathway: the large-scale winter upwelling of surface water rapidly delivers nutrient-rich organic particles to depths of over 1,000 meters.

link to open access article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-026-02060-8

Despite decades of research into the complex interplays of tropical ocean conditions, land-atmosphere feedbacks, and large-scale circulation that drive the monsoon, predicting its variability from place to place and year to year remains difficult.

Traditionally, scientists have focused on studying tropical drivers such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean variability. Increasingly, however, attention is turning toward processes far outside the tropics. Rapid environmental change in the Arctic, particularly the decline of sea ice, is emerging as a potential contributor to atmospheric variability that may extend into monsoon regions.

The Arctic is warming nearly 4 times faster than the global average, a phenomenon known as “Arctic amplification.” And since satellite observations of Arctic sea ice began in 1979, summer (minimum) sea ice extent has declined sharply—by about 12% per decade—exposing larger expanses of ocean surface, which absorbs more solar radiation than ice does, and accelerating regional warming [Screen and Simmonds, 2010; Serreze and Barry, 2011].

To better understand how different drivers of flooding interact near coastal cities, Xu et al. used the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) with the River Dynamical Core (RDycore) shallow-water equation library built to simulate extreme flooding events. Their modeling highlights the importance of rural runoff for urban flooding events, the researchers say, while also underlining the continued role of coastal wetlands in blunting the dangers of compound flooding events.

link to open access paper https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2026GL122550