A smoggy orange atmosphere hides the surface Titan in this true color image of the moon passing in front of Saturn and its rings, captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. It is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere and an earthlike liquid cycle. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
AGU News
AGU 2026 Journalism Awards call for nominations
AGU is now accepting nominations for its 2026 Journalism Awards, which honor outstanding reporting on the Earth and space sciences published in 2025. Nominate your or your peers’ best work by Sunday, 19 April 2026 at 11:59 p.m. ET. [press release and submission links]
AbSciCon26 registration open
Reporters and press officers interested in press registration for the Astrobiology Science Conference to meet in Madison, Wisconsin, 17-22 May should email AGU Media Relations at [email protected]. Please include a link to a byline, masthead or a staff page listing your name and position. Freelancers should provide a link to a portfolio or links to at least three bylined science news stories published in the last 12 months. [press information] [AbSciCon home] [program]
Featured Research
Fluffy snow blankets the plains of Saturn’s weird moon Titan
Two layers of organic material smooth Titan’s vast, monotonous plains new research finds: a thin, light top cover analogous to fluffy snow overlays rougher, denser ground. The fluff most likely snowed down out of the moon’s atmospheric haze of methane and more complex carbon-based molecules. Wind and occasional hydrocarbon rain may compact the fluffy snow creating the rougher underlayer. [JGR Planets study]
Heat kills more Texans than officially reported
Most heat-related deaths in the Lone Star State happen on regular hot summer days, rather than during extreme heat waves, a new study finds. State records underestimate heat related deaths, underlining the need for better tracking and protection programs as Texas anticipates hotter years ahead. [GeoHealth study]
China’s restive boundary rivers give, and take away
Since 1987, more than 100 islands have formed, dissolved or merged with the banks of the many rivers flowing on China’s borders. Although treaties signed between China and its neighboring countries establish the legal fixity of national boundaries, the rivers are not so compliant. Erosion and deposition have shifted riverbanks. Water diversion, wetland conversions, dam construction and other human interventions have influenced the changes in flow, seasonality, and wandering of the rivers. A new study surveys who won and lost ground in their movements over the last three decades. [Earth’s Future study]
Climate change reaches down to the ocean deeps
The surface of Earth’s oceans absorbs vast amounts of heat and carbon from the atmosphere, buffering the effects of climate change. A stable water layer 200 to 1,000 meters deep called the pycnocline acts as a barrier limiting vertical mixing between the surface and dense, cold, nutrient-rich-water below. But new research finds patterns of change at the surface are penetrating down through the pycnocline, suggesting the ocean’s interior is more susceptible to climate change than oceanographers have assumed, potentially speeding ocean deoxygenation and impacting marine ecosystems. [AGU Advances study]
New study shakes up established predictions for changing rainfall in the tropics
How will a changing climate will alter rainfall patterns? As surface temperatures rise, the tropical Pacific may experience unexpected drying. On very large scales, wet places are expected to get wetter and dry places drier, shrinking wet regions in the tropics but intensifying rain within them. This has been well-studied in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, where moist air rises near the equator and circles back down in the subtropics. But the east-west Pacific Walker circulation, which rises in the western topical pacific around the Maritime Continent and descends near northern South America, may produce the opposite pattern as temperatures rise and circulation slows, new modeling predicts, decreasing mean rainfall within expanded rainy regions. [AGU Advances study] [NOAA explains Walker circulation and ENSO]
New noise detection enforces Radio Quiet Zones — for science
Sensitive radio telescopes need quiet on Earth to hear the music of the cosmos. TranQuiL is a groundbreaking system that revolutionizes Radio Quiet Zone enforcement by enabling long-range detection and precise localization of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interference with unparalleled accuracy. [Eos editors’ highlight] [Radio Science study]