Geophysics News

Earth Will Warm More Than Expected Due to Future Changes in Ozone, Study Suggests

This year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is one of the largest in recent years. Image credit: ESA.
Aug 21, 2025 by News Staff

While banning ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs has helped the ozone layer to recover, when combined with increased air pollution the impact of ozone could warm our planet 40% more than originally thought. The ozone hole over Antarctica in 2020. Image credit: ESA. “CFCs and HCFCs are greenhouse gases that warm the planet,” said University of Reading’s Professor Bill Collins and his colleagues. “Countries banned these gases to save the ozone...

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NASA’s high-flying ER-2 airplane carries instrumentation in this artist’s impression of the Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye Geostationary Lightning Mapper Simulator and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (ALOFT) mission to record gamma rays (colored purple for illustration) from thunderclouds. Image credit: NASA / ALOFT team.

New Study Provides First Precise Explanation for How Lightning Initiates in Nature

Jul 28, 2025 by News Staff

In a new paper, Penn State Professor Victor Pasko and his colleagues described how they determined strong electric fields in thunderclouds accelerate electrons...

The limestone boulder Maka Lahi. Image credit: Köhler et al., doi: 10.1016/j.margeo.2025.107567.

World’s Largest Cliff-Top Boulder Provides Evidence of Ancient Tsunami in Tonga

May 22, 2025 by News Staff

Locally known as Maka Lahi, meaning ‘Big Rock,’ this boulder was moved more than 200 m inland by a tsunami around 7,000 years ago. The limestone boulder...

Sohail et al. analyzed a high-resolution ocean and sea ice simulation of ocean currents, heat transport and other factors to diagnose the impact of changing temperature, saltiness and wind conditions. Image credit: Sohail et al., doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/adb31c.

Melting Ice Sheets are Slowing World’s Strongest Ocean Current, Study Shows

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

More than four times stronger than the Gulf Stream, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the world’s strongest ocean current and plays a disproportionate...

The Sun as seen by Solar Orbiter in extreme ultraviolet light from a distance of roughly 75 million km. The image is a mosaic of 25 individual images taken on March 7, 2022 by the high resolution telescope of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. Taken at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, this image reveals the Sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona, which has a temperature of around a million degrees Celsius. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / E. Kraaikamp, ROB.

Solar Heat May Play Role in Seismic Activity on Earth

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

Heat from our Sun drives atmospheric temperature changes on Earth, which in turn can affect things like rock properties and underground water movement,...

An artist’s impression of a ‘Snowball Earth.’ Image credit: NASA.

Giant Glaciers Reshaped Earth’s Surface and Paved Way for Complex Life

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

By chemically analyzing crystals in ancient rocks, scientists from Curtin University, the University of Portsmouth and St. Francis Xavier University discovered...

The Earth’s inner core was previously considered to be solid. Image credit: USC Graphic / Edward Sotelo.

Surface of Earth’s Inner Core May Be Changing, Scientists Say

Feb 11, 2025 by News Staff

Geoscientists from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cornell...

NASA’s high-flying ER-2 airplane carries instrumentation in this artist’s impression of the Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye Geostationary Lightning Mapper Simulator and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (ALOFT) mission to record gamma rays (colored purple for illustration) from thunderclouds. Image credit: NASA / ALOFT team.

Gamma-Ray Emission from Tropical Thunderstorms Takes More Forms Than Previously Thought

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

There’s more to thunderclouds than rain and lightning. Along with visible light emissions, thunderclouds can produce intense bursts of gamma rays that...

Han et al. found that erosion from a river network about 75 km from Mount Everest is carving away a substantial gorge; the loss of this landmass is causing the mountain to spring upwards by as much as 2 mm a year and has already increased its height by between 15 and 50 m over the past 89,000 years. Image credit: Truthseeker08.

Nearby River is Pushing Up Peak of Mount Everest, Study Suggests

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

Mount Everest, also known as Chomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmāthā in Nepali, is about 15 to 50 m taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift...

A map of the East Pacific Rise region where the discovery of an ancient seafloor was made. Image credit: Jingchuan Wang.

Geoscientists Discover Mysterious Subduction Zone beneath Pacific Ocean

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

During the Mesozoic era, between 250 and 120 million years ago, an ancient seafloor sank deep into Earth in the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic plate boundary...

Energy dispersive spectroscopic map of the sample studied by Voisey et al. Image credit: Chris Voisey.

Earthquake-Induced Piezoelectricity Plays Key Role in Formation of Large Gold Nuggets: Study

Sep 2, 2024 by News Staff

Gold nuggets occur predominantly in quartz veins, and the current paradigm posits that gold precipitates from hot water and carbon dioxide-rich fluids...

Collinson et al. report the existence of a +0.55 ± 0.09 V electric potential drop between 250 km and 768 km from a planetary electrostatic field generated exclusively by the outward pressure of ionospheric electrons; they experimentally demonstrate that the ambipolar field of Earth controls the structure of the polar ionosphere, boosting the scale height by 271%. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s Endurance Mission Measures Earth’s Ambipolar Electric Field for First Time

Aug 28, 2024 by News Staff

First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the polar wind, a steady outflow of charged particles into space...

Air pollution is increasing the severity of summertime thunderstorms. Image credit: ELG21.

Air Pollution Can Increase Severity of Summertime Thunderstorms, Study Says

Aug 20, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Scientists from James Madison University have performed a multi-variable investigation of thunderstorm environments in two distinct geographic regions:...

Hadean Earth. Image credit: Alec Brenner.

New Study Refutes Leading Theory of Continent Formation

Aug 5, 2024 by News Staff

In the new study, Dr. David Hernández Uribe from the University of Illinois Chicago used computer models to study the formation of magmas thought to hold...

Zhu et al. uncovered a nonlinear and boomerang-shape relationship between Saharan dust and tropical cyclone rainfall. Image credit: Enrique.

Study Shows Previously Unknown Link between Saharan Dust Plumes and Tropical Cyclone Rainfall

Jul 25, 2024 by News Staff

According to new research, giant plumes of Saharan dust, transported across the Atlantic Ocean by trade winds, can suppress hurricane formation over the...

Wang et al. demonstrate that the inner core of Earth gradually super-rotated from 2003 to 2008, and then from 2008 to 2023 sub-rotated two to three times more slowly back through the same path. Image credit: USC Graphic / Edward Sotelo.

Inner Core of Earth Began to Decrease Its Speed around 2010, Study Suggests

Jun 14, 2024 by News Staff

Movement of the inner core of our planet has been debated by the scientific community for two decades, with some research indicating that the inner core...

Collins et al. estimated flow through 3 million river segments, identifying locations around the world marked by intense human water use, including parts of the Colorado, Amazon, Orange, and Murray-Darling river basins, shown as gray here. Image credit: NASA.

New Study Provides Estimates of How Much Water Courses through Earth’s Rivers

Apr 30, 2024 by News Staff

Accurate assessment of global river flows and stores is critical for informing water management practices, but current estimates of global river flows...

Earth’s magnetic field lines. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Earliest Evidence of Earth’s Magnetic Field Found in Greenland

Apr 25, 2024 by News Staff

Recovering ancient records of Earth’s magnetic field is challenging because the magnetization in rocks is often reset by heating during tectonic burial...

Toffoli et al. report direct observations of surface waves from a stereo camera system along with concurrent measurements of wind speed during an expedition across the Southern Ocean in the austral winter aboard the South African icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II. Image credit: Alessandro Toffoli.

Strong Winds Drive Formation of Colossal Rogue Waves, Scientists Say

Apr 16, 2024 by News Staff

A rogue wave is a single swell that is much higher than nearby waves, which can damage ships or coastal infrastructure. Ocean waves are among the most...

This image from Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera shows the globe of Mars set against a dark background. The disk of the planet features yellow, orange, blue and green patches, all with an overall muted grey hue, representing the varying composition of the surface. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / G. Michael / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Drives Deep-Ocean Circulation in Earth’s Oceans, Study Suggests

Mar 13, 2024 by News Staff

Geoscientists from Australia and France have used the geological record of Earth’s deep oceans to discover a connection between the orbits of our home...

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