When fires in Quebec blanketed much of the eastern United States and Canada with thick smoke in June 2023, many of us wondered: what’s causing these wildfires? While lightning strikes ignite half of ...

(A) Observed zonal-mean temperature trends from 8-30 kilometers during 2002-2022. Stippling indicates statistically significant trends at 95% confidence. The climatological lapse-rate tropopause ...

Sea level rise threatens to flood thousands of industrial sites containing hazardous materials, according to a new study. Credit: Unsplash/Kelly Sikkema Research & Developments is a blog for brief ...

Year after year, the solar system’s planets move around the Sun in a seemingly steady and unchanging orbital dance. But the Sun, planets, major moons, and dwarf planets constantly exchange ...

Natural and engineered nature-based structures offer promise for storm-related disaster risk reduction and flood mitigation, as long as researchers can adequately monitor and study them. Protecting ...

Before Earth became the Blue Planet, it was engulfed by a very different kind of ocean: a vast, deep magma ocean reaching down hundreds or perhaps even thousands of kilometers. As early Earth’s magma ...

The array of processes and organisms that make up the biological carbon pump has immense influence on Earth’s carbon cycle and climate. But there’s still much to learn about how the pump works. During ...

Climate change is causing trees in the boreal forest to grow faster. But is it enough to offset carbon emissions from forest disturbances? Credit: Jakub Fryš, CC BY SA 4.0 In the world’s cold northern ...

The aftermath of the 4 November 2025 landslide at Mae Moh Mine in Thailand. Image copyright Planet, captured on 15 November 2025, used with permission. Planet imagery shows the massive coal waste ...

Rocks are important in subsurface engineering, but they are mostly invisible, extremely heterogeneous, and difficult to access. Thus, data on rock properties is scarce and uncertainties are large. Liu ...

Tunnels of cold water from Antarctica may have driven a chill in the Western Pacific Warm Pool 1.5 million years ago. Credit: NOAA About 1.5 million years ago, the mid-depth waters of the tropical ...

Permafrost across the Arctic is degrading, causing erosion as well as changes to microbial communities. Credit: Benjamin Jones/USGS/Flickr, Public Domain In the Arctic, a major variable for future ...