5/14/2026 Astrobiology special edition: Microbes use hydrogen gas to make energy

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Logo text: AbSciCon, 2026, 17-22 May 2026 - Madison, WI. Center illustration of a black and white cow wearing a space helmet jumping over a wheel of yellow cheese with Earth, Mars and another planet in the background.

AGU News

AbSciCon26 – Next week 17-22 May!
Next week, Astrobiology Science Conference will convene in Madison, Wisconsin, hosting 900 scientific posters, talks, town halls and plenary lectures. Reporters and press officers interested in press registration 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.

Can’t make it in person? Remote attendees can join a small set of online-only discussion sessions on Zoom via the conference app. Recordings of the audio and slide presentations from in-person town halls, plenaries and oral sessions will be available on demand on the conference app about 72 hours after each session is finished. AGU media relations will be on site to help reporters connect with attending scientists.

[press information] [AbSciCon home] [program] [online-only sessions] [media advisories and tips]

Astrobiology Science Conference Highlights

*session start times are Central Daylight Time

Drill expedition finds living microbes 1 kilometer deep into the seafloor

  • Tuesday 2:00 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Turning Ocean Worlds Inside Out: From Drilling Beneath the Seafloor to Cryosphere Surfaces I Oral
  • Deep in Earth’s crust, single-celled organisms are carrying on with life, suggesting similar conditions could be habitable on other ocean worlds. The International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 399 visited the Atlantis Massif, an underwater mountain rising 14,000 feet from the seafloor in the middle of the Atlantic, where tectonic activity has brought typically inaccessible mantle rock to the surface. The researchers were on a mission to sample life below the seabed and explore how non-biological reactions between water and rocks in this environment may simulate the ancient conditions that set the stage for life on Earth and, possibly, other worlds in our Solar System. They drilled 1,267.8 meters (4,159 feet) down from the southern wall near The Lost City Hydrothermal Field and found metabolically active microbes..

 

At mountain summits, soil microbes use hydrogen gas to make energy

  • Wednesday 2:00 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: How Disequilibrium Fuels Life: Observations of Metabolic Opportunities Related to Dramatic Environmental Gradients I Oral
  • In the extreme heights of the Andes, soil microbes unlock hydrogen power. Thousands of meters up on Mt. Aconcagua in the Andes, in freezing cold, parching dryness, and intense UV radiation, microbes’ metabolisms get weird. After studying soil samples at elevations from 3,300 to 6,900 meters above sea level, researchers found that the higher the elevation, the more soil microbes use “trace hydrogen oxidation” to derive energy from tiny amounts of hydrogen gas in the atmosphere. Near the mountain’s summit, microbes used this strategy 75 times more intensely than at the lowest elevation where it was observed. The finding helps researchers understand how life persists not only in extreme Earth environments, but potentially under similar conditions on Mars.

 

These microbes may subsist on oxygen made by rocks

  • Wednesday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Aerobic Aliens: Are Aerobic Worlds Inevitable? Pathways to Planetary Oxygenation I eLightning
  • With no plants around, these underground microbes get oxygen from rocks. Deep underground, the lack of sunlight prevents the creation of oxygen through photosynthesis by organisms like plants and algae, the way most oxygen on Earth is made — but microbes down there have other ways to get the gas. When crushed-up silicate minerals react with oxygen-free water, researchers found, they produce enough oxygen and hydrogen to support hardy subterranean microbes that don’t require much oxygen to live. Since silicate minerals and water occur on worlds like Mars, Europa, and Enceladus, it’s possible life could subsist in a similar way beyond Earth.

 

Need medicine in space? Just add water.

  • Wednesday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Microbial and Human Habitability of Mars: Is Synthetic Biology the Solution? I Poster
  • Astronauts might one day make their own medications by adding water to a test tube. In the future, years-long space missions will need medicines to treat low bone density, radiation poisoning, and other medical issues — but these protein-based drugs would break down over the course of such long voyages, eventually rendering them useless. A better approach may involve taking the protein-building parts of living cells and freeze-drying them in test tubes, a method that has kept them viable for nearly three years in unpublished lab experiments. Adding water to a test tube could revive those protein-builders even years into a mission, giving astronauts the tools to make their own medicines on demand.

 

Forget washing machines: astronauts may clean their clothes with plasma guns

  • Thursday 10:00 AM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Planetary Protection for Crewed Missions: New Strategies, Emerging Technologies, and Lessons Learned I Oral
  • On future long-haul missions, even astronauts will need cozy comforts like bedding and sofas to stay comfortable for years in space. But current space-approved cleaning methods don’t work well on soft materials, which make great breeding grounds for microbes. Instead, researchers are trying another approach: blasting cotton T-shirt fabric with plasma jets, which produce reactive oxygen and nitrogen species that kill microbes better than vacuuming or surface wipes can. Trials on clean fabric so far show no impacts to the fabric itself, and researchers are now running tests with several microbe species. They also plan to test a handheld, soda-can-sized plasma jet cleaning tool currently being designed.

 

Exoplanet atmospheric complexity is an Earth-agnostic signature of life

  • Monday 2:00 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Assembly Theory Across Scales: From Molecules to Planetary Systems I eLightning
  • Life is a planetary process that accrues complexity on a global scale. To detect life beyond Earth without reference to Earth’s particular biology, scientists have proposed looking for signatures of molecular complexity based on the number of steps needed to construct a molecule. Biological molecules have a large “assembly index” of greater than 15. By extending this concept to atmospheric complexity, researchers can search for life in the spectra of exoplanet atmospheres as observed from our home planet (or general vicinity).

 

Humpback whale night thrums and other possible missed signals from non-human intelligences

  • Monday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Searching for Technological Signatures of Life Beyond Earth II Poster
  • The search for extraterrestrial life is limited by human capacity to imagine how to look, listen and recognize intelligence. Low pitched (30 to 250 Hertz), above-water rumbles of humpback whales, recorded for the first time by scientific observers, demonstrate how observing the communication of non-human intelligent life on Earth expands our imagination of life beyond Earth. The “night thrums” can travel more than 10 kilometers above the waves, and had been noted by sea kayakers, lighthouse keepers and other quiet ocean visitors. The new study confirms a spectrum of other humpback aerial pizzles, chuffs, boils, howls and hoots that add an open-air dimension to the whales’ communication.

 

Icy worlds get new planetary protection guidelines

  • Monday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
    Session: Accessing Ocean Worlds: Challenges and Technologies for Sub-ice Exploration and Science I Poster
  • An international scientific committee aims to keep Europa, Enceladus and other icy moons pure for science – and Earth safe from returning samples. With the Europa Clipper and Juice missions en route to survey the large, icy moons of Jupiter for signs of life, astrobiologists are already planning for more robot missions to can drill into the ice and take samples. To prevent visiting spacecraft from contaminating pristine worlds with stowaway lifeforms from Earth, the Committee on Space Research recently released an update to its Planetary Protection Policy, first published in support of the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty. The new guidelines define icy worlds, establish the driest and coldest conditions at which Earth life can survive and assign a 1,000-year period of biological exploration for all icy worlds during which contamination controls should be honored to preserve them for science.

 

Searching for life in the stars is controversial, putting some scientists’ safety at risk

  • Thursday 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM session abstracts
    Online Session: Safety for Scientists: Astrobiology, a Global Issue, and a Call to Action
  • Searching for life beyond earth can become an incendiary activity: it often generates significant public attention and emotion around a topic that is inherently controversial and uncertain. Misunderstandings about the science involved sometimes end in public backlash that threatens scientists’ safety. A session about how astrobiologists deal with these challenges will include talks on:
    • International safety recommendations and the specific safety challenges astrobiologists face. app schedule
    • How to foster trust between scientists and the public in advance, to preemptively mitigate the impacts when misunderstandings do arise and promote acknowledgement of scientific expertise even when science cannot offer certainty. app schedule
    • How potential public reactions to extraterrestrial life in the future could, by association, impact the researchers studying it. app schedule
    • Scientists’ firsthand experiences with the aftermath of putting controversial research out into the world. app schedule

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5/7/2026: The Yangtze is stealing the headwaters of the Yellow River

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A boat emitting a trail of smoke on a wide, peaceful river between steep cliffs at dusk.

Dusk on the Yangtze River. As the topographic divide between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers’ basins has moved over time, billions of cubic meters of water that once flowed into the latter each year now drain into the former. Credit: Andrew Hitchcock, Wikimedia Commons

AGU News 

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 

The Yangtze is stealing the headwaters of the Yellow River
China’s two longest rivers arise on the Tibetan Plateau, on opposite sides of a 3,000-kilometer-long divide that separates their drainage basins. Deep gorges and steep terrain shape the Yangtze headwaters while the Yellow flows through the gentle Zoige Basin. A new study argues the Yangtze is actively pirating the Yellow’s headwaters, pushing the divide northwestward. The climate swings of the Quaternary, the current ice age, amped up erosion in this region in favor of the steeper Yangtze basin. Over the last few million years, the Yangtze has stolen 30,000 square kilometers that once drained into the Yellow, reducing the annual runoff in upper Yellow River by 5 billion cubic meters. It’s about the same volume (4 billion cubic meters) that China plans to transfer back to the Yellow River through the western route of the massive South-to-North Water Diversion Project. [JGR Solid Earth study]

This asteroid literally dug up evidence of past water on Mars
Roughly fifteen years ago, an asteroid left a 25-meter-wide crater in Mars’s dusty Arabia Terra region, driving itself into the plains within a much larger, older crater. The impact acted as “nature’s drill,” write the authors of a new study, offering a rare glimpse beneath the Martian surface. Observations of the crater from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that magnesium saponite — a clay mineral that only forms with water around — exists just a few meters down, presenting another piece of evidence for past water on Mars. [JGR Planets study]

Coral heat stress in 2024 over three times more anomalous than in most warm years 
Compared to the historical average from 1981 to 2010, marine heatwaves around the globe in 2024 spanned more days and were more intense by more than three standard deviations — in other words, exceeding the historical average over three times more than most other above-average years for marine heatwaves. The extreme conditions of that year, when the average global sea surface temperature reached a record 0.61 degrees Celsius above the historical average, contributed to the fourth worldwide coral bleaching event on record. Reefs in the Red Sea, the Coral Triangle, Fiji, the Caribbean, and Brazil suffered especially severe heat stress, researchers report. [Geophysical Research Letters study] 

ER visits from asthma spike during nighttime heatwaves in Baltimore
When heatwaves in Baltimore last through the night, emergency rooms receive more patients with heightened asthma symptoms. A new study drawing on hundreds of adult and pediatric cases from 2016 to 2022 and air temperature measurements at the neighborhood level found that socially vulnerable neighborhoods and those with the greatest nighttime temperature changes were most likely to see ER visits shoot up. Baltimore’s Code Red Extreme Heat alert system, which relies on daytime temperature forecasts, doesn’t capture this correlation between heat and asthma, potentially underestimating residents’ heat exposure. Including measurements taken at night, when the city’s heat island effect strengthens, could improve early warning systems, the researchers wrote. [Johns Hopkins University press release][GeoHealth study]

In extreme weather, Appalachian forests’ slow and steady response wins the race
Appalachian forests’ adaptations to droughts and floods only appear months or years after the fact. The delayed response may provide critical resilience for the forests’ ecosystems, reducing how much water vegetation drinks up during dry periods and promoting water recharge when precipitation increases. [Water Resources Research study]

How wildfires worsen flood risk
A new approach to analyzing watersheds shows how storms occurring after a wildfire can have higher flooding risk than similar storms that occurred before a fire. [Eos research spotlight][Water Resources Research study] 

Want to predict wildfire severity? Look to the state of vegetation
A new study connects satellite data on vegetation condition, topography, and weather conditions to examine the predicted versus actual burn severity of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. [Eos research spotlight][AGU Advances study] 

Where was Baltica 616 million years ago?
Disentangling magnetic signals in its ancient rocks gives an updated view of the paleocontinent’s position during the Ediacaran period. [Eos research spotlight][Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems study] 

Toward marine cloud brightening at scale: A science agenda
Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) is a Solar Radiation Management (SRM) solution to cool the planet by changing the albedo of low-altitude marine clouds to increase reflected shortwave radiation. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study][AGU Ethical Framework Principles for Climate Intervention Research] 

Let’s not forget about long droughts
Why do conceptual hydrologic models struggle to model long-term droughts? A new study investigates. [Eos editors’ highlight][Water Resources Research study]

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4/30/2026: Mangroves clean up nitrogen pollution to the tune of $8.7 billion every year

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A mangrove forest in a coastal estuary at sunset, with branching, tangling roots half-submerged in still water

A mangrove forest along the Mida Creek near the coast of Kenya. Each year, mangroves remove hundreds of thousands of metric tons of excess nitrogen from coastal ecosystems around the world, mitigating the impacts of nitrogen pollution from human activities. Credit: Timothy K, Unsplash

AGU News

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

Mangroves clean up nitrogen pollution to the tune of $8.7 billion every year
Earth’s mangroves remove 870,000 metric tons of nitrogen from coastal ecosystems every year, a new analysis reports, with the potential to capture 5 million metric tons annually under ideal conditions. Because nitrogen pollution from human activities can trigger harmful algal blooms and oxygen depletion that threaten public health and coastal economies, the cleanup saves roughly $8.7 billion annually, more than 12 times the value of mangroves’ carbon sequestration. The paper’s authors argue for a “blue nitrogen” market to financially recognize this service and incentivize mangrove conservation, nitrogen pollution reduction, and coastal water quality management. [Earth’s Future study]

Ongoing greening masks the impact of deforestation in Southeast Asia
Despite losing up to almost 7% of its forested area, Southeast Asia became about 5.5% greener and 12.5% more ecologically productive from 2001 to 2022, according to an analysis of satellite data. The gains likely stem mostly from intensified agricultural practices and rising carbon dioxide concentrations, the latter of which is spurring plant growth in many parts of the world. However, this masks the damage deforestation has caused: had the forests remained intact, researchers estimated, Southeast Asia would be about 16% greener and 6% more productive than it is today. The finding exemplifies how “greener” doesn’t always mean “healthier” in ecological terms, the team wrote. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Excess dry plants, more than wind or topography, made L.A.’s 2025 fires so severe 
The conditions of burnable fuels before the devastating January 2025 wildfires in California’s Los Angeles County determined those fires’ burn severity more than winds or topography, according to a modeling study examining three of those fires. The study’s findings and methods may help land managers assess fire hazards based on changing fuel conditions, informing fuels treatments (such as prescribed burns) to reduce the severity of future fires. As both wildfire risk and the wildland-urban boundaries most vulnerable to disastrous fires grow, understanding what drives severe fires becomes increasingly important for proactive fire management, the authors write. [AGU Advances study]

Global warming could prompt Earth’s peatlands to heat the planet even further
If global warming remains relatively low, Earth’s peatlands above the 25th parallel north will continue to sequester carbon while releasing methane, a balance that has historically had a net cooling effect on the climate. Under a high-warming scenario, however, these peatlands could start emitting more methane and carbon dioxide, while also sequestering less of the latter, by mid-century, substantially amplifying global warming by the late 23rd century. Warming in peatlands is altering both primary productivity, which ultimately sequesters carbon, and decomposition, which releases methane, shifting the balance of planet-warming gases these ecosystems emit and absorb. [JGR Biogeosciences study]

Hydrologists call for a unified, AI-ready repository for U.S. water data
A November 2025 executive order commanded the DOE to develop an AI platform trained on U.S. federal scientific data called the “Genesis Mission.” The DOE has listed water availability for energy as a key challenge for the project. Hydrologists Amobichukwu Amanambu and Jonathan Frame argue in an op-ed that the focus should broaden to consider critical water issues holistically, including demands from agriculture, data centers and other stakeholders beyond the energy sector, as well as predictive management of surface water, groundwater and flooding. [Eos opinion]

How space plasma can bend the laser of gravitational wave detectors
A new study reveals how and to what extent laser beams are bent during propagation through space plasma in TianQin, a geocentric space-borne gravitational wave detector. [Eos editors’ highlight][Space Weather study]

More braided rivers from increasing flow variability
Global analysis of satellite data and river flow records show that higher flow intermittency after climate change may lead to an increasing number of threads in braided rivers, thus impacting ecosystems. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study]

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4/23/2026: Future wildfires may burn less of the American West than expected

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Four firefighters in full gear stand in a shrubby area in front of a conifer forest on fire during the daytime.

Firefighters stand before a wildfire in Wyoming, USA. As climate change dries out the American West, priming it for more wildfire, projections of future burned area vary depending on whether scientists base their estimates more on atmospheric dryness or soil dryness. Credit: United States Forest Service, Wikimedia Commons

AGU News 

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] 

Research roundup: When cities make it rain 

By altering the shape, temperature, and atmospheric stability of the landscapes on which they sit, urban areas have the power to change regional rainfall. Check out the latest research on this topic from AGU journals: 

  • Urbanization in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City metro area as of 2020 has brought 30% more daily rainfall to the urban center than the landscape would have had without any urbanization. [JGR Atmospheres study] 
  • Global satellite data show that most large cities receive a greater amount of light rain, but less intense heavy rain, than nearby rural areas. [Earth’s Future study] 
  • Heat from Houston, Texas draws moisture from nearby countryside to form taller clouds and trigger stronger, wetter, longer storms over the city than in rural areas. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Featured Research 

Western U.S. wildfire projections may be greatly overestimated, study argues
Previous studies may have overestimated future wildfire-burned area in the Western United States by up to an order of magnitude, a new study claims. Most studies use atmospheric dryness to estimate how big fires will get, since the two have historically correlated well. Soil moisture has also mirrored burned area quite well in the past, but scientists expect it to change far less than atmospheric dryness under climate change, meaning projections from the two will diverge. At 3 degrees Celsius of warming, for instance, projections based on atmospheric dryness estimate the area burned during each 6-month fire season will grow 16 times larger than in the period from 1984 to 2014, while those based on soil moisture show burned area doubling. Recent advances in hydrology, the authors write, indicate the latter will provide the better proxy going forward. [AGU Advances study] 

Past jump in farm burning on the Tibetan Plateau likely sped up glacier melting
Biomass burning shot up fourfold on the western Tibetan Plateau after the 1970s, mostly from the expansion of farming and crop residue burning in the northwestern Indian Peninsula. The finding comes from the first high-resolution history of biomass burning in the region, based on an analysis of charcoal particles in an ice core covering the period from 1935 to 2012. Agricultural burning releases black carbon, which can settle on Tibetan glaciers in a dark layer that absorbs sunlight, likely making those glaciers melt faster. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Carbonate weathering projected to sequester up to 25% more carbon by 2100
Carbonate weathering, a natural process in which worn-down rocks react with water and carbon dioxide to lock away atmospheric CO2 and help regulate the global climate, sequestered 127 million tons of carbon per year from 1950 to 2014 — about 3.7% of what the world’s forests sequester. Compared to that period, scientists project, this global carbon sink will increase roughly 14% to 25% by 2100. That’s partly because at altitudes above 3,000 meters, snow and glaciers melting from climate warming provide more water and plant growth, both of which aid in weathering. Below that elevation, however, warming hinders the weathering process instead. [Earth’s Future study] 

Metals and rippled rocks on Mars hint at an ancient lake friendly to life
In the Gale Crater on Mars in late 2022, NASA’s Curiosity rover encountered the largest deposit of iron, zinc, and manganese ever found together in the crater. The metals lay within preserved ripples in the rock, a shape indicating that a broad, shallow lake once filled that area — even though the rocks were deposited during a time when Mars’ climate was turning drier and colder. In Earth’s lakes, metal-rich deposits like this form via chemical reactions almost always in the presence of microbial life, suggesting that this lake may have provided favorable conditions for Martian life. [Los Alamos National Laboratory press release][JGR Planets study] 

Europe’s baby steps away from rising seas
In 1859, the Dutch king forced evacuation from Schokland, an island community struggling with damaging floods caused by subsidence. Stone embankments could not hold back storm surge from the sea and the defenses became too expensive to maintain. Since then, retreat has remained less popular than engineered defenses in the battle against rising sea levels in Europe, according to a new study that reviewed 44 proposed or complete managed retreat projects in 11 European countries (map), relocating 8,700 households. Most projects are small, disconnected from broader climate adaptation planning and reactive to devastating flooding rather than proactive. Because modern governments prefer persuasion over force, they will need adequate and transparent compensation, early community buy-in and trusted local leaders to make this adaptation strategy effective. [Earth’s Future study]  

Mediterranean mussel farming could collapse by 2050
New experiments suggest that ocean warming and acidification are on track to slash both oyster and mussel farming yields. [Eos research spotlight][Earth’s Future study] 

Navigating the past with ancient stone compass needles
The emerging field of magnetic microscopy allows scientists to reconstruct ancient magnetic fields from individual magnetic particles. A new study evaluates the accuracy of the technique. [Eos research spotlight][JGR Solid Earth study] 

Amazon River breezes mimic pollution in clouds
Natural river breezes create clouds over the Amazon that mimic the signs of pollution, complicating climate impact assessments. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

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4/16/2026: Environmental recovery in Mongolia improves air quality across East Asia

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A massive dust storm engulfing a swath of eastern Asia, as seen from space, with the curve of the planet visible against the backdrop of space in the background

A massive dust storm over the Gobi Desert, which spans southern Mongolia and northern China. Dust kicked up in Mongolia accounts for a significant portion of dust pollution in northern and northeastern China, but declining desertification in Mongolia has improved air quality beyond its borders over the past 20 years. Credit: NASA, Wikimedia Commons

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 

Environmental recovery in Mongolia improves air quality across East Asia
Natural environmental recovery in Mongolia from 2005 to 2023, marked by a drop in desertification across most of the country, reduced national dust emissions by roughly 23%. Because desertification-fueled dust storms in Mongolia impact air quality and health for hundreds of millions of people across East Asia, the improvement had an international ripple effect, cutting dust pollution in North and Northeast China by 5.4% and 13.3%, respectively. Intentional land restoration could have even greater region-wide benefits: researchers estimate that restoration actions in Mongolia, akin to those in China’s Inner Mongolia, could have lowered dust pollution in Northeast China by over 18% during the same period. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Reaching carbon neutrality earlier cuts humid heatwave health risks significantly
Cutting net human carbon emissions to zero by mid-century could reduce the global health risk from humid heat stress by 45%, compared to a scenario in which emissions peak around mid-century but don’t reach net zero by 2100. It would also lower the disparity in risk between low- and high-income countries by over 78%. The earlier humanity achieves carbon neutrality, the more risk it averts: getting there by the 2050s rather than the 2070s, for instance, reduces risk in low-income countries by over 35%. Humid heatwaves present greater danger than either heat or humidity separately, especially for outdoor laborers with limited access to medical services. [Earth’s Future study] 

Water from rocket exhaust might stick around on the moon longer than thought
Water from rocket exhaust may bind to grains of lunar soil, causing it to take longer to escape back into space than scientists previously thought, according to a new study based on data from the Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-6 lander missions. Scientists need to know how water moves on the moon in order to develop adequate planetary protection measures. Depending on how they move, water and other substances from spacecraft could contaminate future research sites at the moon’s poles, where ice may preserve clues about the history of the solar system. [JGR Planets study] 

Uranus’ faint, thin outer rings born of ice and mystery
Unlike Saturn’s spectacular rings, Uranus’ are dark and difficult to observe — particularly the outermost pair, discovered in 2005. New observations from James Webb Space Telescope combined with older data from Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory in Hawaii find tiny icy grains make up the blue μ ring created by micrometeorite impacts on the planet’s small moon, Mab. The icy composition of the μ ring confirms that Mab is mostly made of water-ice. The authors infer that the dusty, red v ring, meanwhile, must have resulted from collisions between thus-far-invisible, organics-rich rocky bodies orbiting between some of Uranus’ 14 known moons. [JGR Planets study] [Keck Observatory press release] 

South Carolina communities take disaster risk reduction into their own hands
A pilot program to improve disaster resilience in South Carolinian communities facing disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards — the first of its kind in the U.S. — met with success, according to a report by researchers at institutions involved in it. The EJ Strong Program provided training sessions in disaster risk reduction to over 110 people from those communities between 2020 and 2024, 46 of whom received certificates at the end. The program also produced an online course, an app, an emergency food access map, and public school materials all focused on disaster risk reduction, plus air quality and flood monitoring systems and funding for disaster resilience projects in vulnerable communities. As heatwaves, floods, sea level rise, and public health crises hit disadvantaged communities the hardest, community-led disaster management can give them more agency over how to manage the risks they face. [GeoHealth study] 

Conservation practices on farms can lower flood risk and boost water quality
Nature-based solutions for agricultural conservation, such as winter cover cropping, have boomed over the past 30 years in Shell Creek, Nebraska as local stakeholders and government agencies have worked together to improve watershed management. In a recent study, researchers reported that this trend likely contributed to healthier winter vegetation, less frequent and intense flooding and, to a lesser extent, better water quality. The example of Shell Creek indicates that conservation practices can help make agricultural water systems more sustainable, they wrote. [Water Resources Research study] 

Fixing Baltimore’s unequal weather data coverage
A new partnership between researchers and community members created a comprehensive network of weather stations across underserved areas of the city. [Eos research spotlight][Community Science study] 

Glaciers may flow into the ocean more quickly than we think
New research found that adjusting a key model variable may give more accurate predictions of glacial retreat. [Eos research highlight][AGU Advances study] 

An ancient landscape beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet
Geophysical observations of the subglacial topography of Coats Land reveal a landscape formed by tectonics and fluvial erosion that influenced the formation of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. [Eos editors’ highlight][JGR Earth Surface study] 

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4-9-2026: Fluffy “snow” on Titan’s plains

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Image on a black background of an orange moon, centered) in front of a thin horizontal line of rings and a thin, yellow slice of Saturn to the right. The shadow of the rings is cast on the lower hemisphere of the planet.

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]

4/2/2026: As Earth’s climate warms, when it rains, it pours

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Two people on a moped in a flooded city street during a downpour at night

As climate change continues, more regions are receiving a greater share of their total rainfall through extreme rain events. Among other impacts, this can stress food and economic security in areas that rely on rainfed agriculture. Credit: qimono, Pixabay

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] 

Attend the 2026 Astrobiology Science Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, 17-22 May
Reporters and press officers interested in press registration 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. [AbSciCon home] [program] 

Lunar research roundup 

With Artemis II’s crew set to begin their outbound lunar transit tonight, check out the latest research on Earth’s Moon from AGU journals: 

  • Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis cracks open “new” 50-year-old lunar samples from NASA’s collection [JGR Planets special collection][introduction] 
  • Looking for a sunny spot near cold pits of darkness: where to land on the south pole of the Moon [JGR Planets study] 
  • How to bring a snowball souvenir back from space: the challenge of icy sample return begins with Artemis [Geophysical Research Letters study]  
  • Day-night temperatures for scientific sightseeing locations on the Moon [Earth and Space Science study] 
  • Astronauts could listen for moonquakes with fiber optic cables [Earth and Space Science study] 
  • Lunar spacecraft exhaust could obscure clues to origins of life [press release][JGR Planets study] 

Featured Research 

As the climate warms, more of Earth’s rainfall arrives via extreme rain events 
Should Earth warm by four degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels, much its land area could see a 15% to 20% increase in the fraction of its rain that comes from extreme rain events. The African Sahel, the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and northern Australia would rank among the most affected regions, according to new climate model projections. More than half of global croplands could suffer as a result, and low-income countries reliant on rainfed agriculture would be especially hard-pressed to maintain food security and economic stability. The finding highlights the need to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, the researchers wrote, especially as many regions are already seeing extreme rain dominate their total annual rainfall even faster than models predict. [Water Resources Research study]  

Meteorites from Earth or Mars could theoretically seed life on the clouds of Venus 
Chunks of rock knocked loose from Earth or Mars (if life existed there) could, in theory, fly through space and deliver life to the clouds of Venus, according to recent model simulations. Small amounts of the rock could survive entering Venus’ atmosphere while still carrying living cells, scattering in fragments tiny enough to float in the clouds. Researchers estimate this process could theoretically send about 100 cells to Venus’s clouds every Earth-year. What happens after that remains unclear: although too little water exists in the Venusian sky to support Earthly life, the pressures and temperatures there resemble those on Earth’s surface, making it a place of interest to scientists studying the possibility of extraterrestrial life. [JGR Planets study]  

Global wheat yields take a hit from rising extreme heat-drought combos 
Simultaneous extreme heat and drought, on the rise due to human-driven climate change, is hurting global wheat yields. For over 70% of the world’s wheat-growing area, when these hot-dry combos persist for more than 10% of the growing season, yields drop by over 6%, on average. Canada, Australia, and Central Asia suffer the most severe impacts, while heavily irrigated regions like China and India are less affected. The findings come from a recent study including analysis of meteorological and soil data from 1981 to 2020. Heat and drought can hinder wheat production more in tandem than when they occur separately, the researchers wrote. [Earth’s Future study]  

Air pollution disproportionately affects Cape Town’s vulnerable communities 
Over 40% of the population of Cape Town, South Africa, lives in areas at high or very high risk for air pollution, mostly in informal settlements and historically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Researchers arrived at the result after comparing social vulnerability data with satellite data on air quality, an approach that allowed them to consider areas lacking traditional air quality monitors. The finding highlights the need to consider social factors and prioritize high-risk areas when addressing air pollution, the team wrote: improving housing and healthcare access in socially vulnerable communities, for instance, could mitigate adverse impacts. [GeoHealth study]  

Asia’s heat-flood combo of 2022 unlikely without human-driven climate change 
An extreme weather combination that hit Asia in the summer of 2022, consisting of simultaneous floods in Pakistan and heatwaves in the Yangtze River Basin, likely wouldn’t have happened without the influence of human-driven climate change. Researchers compared the atmospheric conditions of 2022 against those during a similar combined weather event in 2010 that inflicted significant socioeconomic impacts in the same regions. They found that the 2022 event was essentially a version of its 2010 counterpart, but amplified by warming. In a future scenario of high greenhouse gas emissions, they estimated, events like that of 2022 could become 57 to 326 times more probable by the last 30 years of this century. [Water Resources Research study]  

What’s under the water matters
The fate of barrier islands in presence of sea level rise depends on their underwater shape. [Eos editors’ highlight][JGR Earth Surface study] 

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3/26/2026: Super-wet winters may recharge western U.S. mountains’ groundwater

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A massive, snowy mountain at sunset, wreathed in clouds and towering over smaller, tree-covered mountains below

Mount Rainier in Washington state. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges in the western U.S. are losing groundwater, but new research suggests short, extreme bursts of winter precipitation may help them recover groundwater lost during long dry spells. Credit: U.S. National Park Service, Wikimedia Commons

AGU News 

Earth’s Future expands scope
AGU’s popular journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants is adding three new thematic areas: climate impacts, communities and resilience, and sustainable resource systems. Learn more about the research directions these topics encompass from the new deputy editors. [Eos editors’ vox][Earth’s Future editorial] 

Featured Research 

Super-wet winters can recharge western U.S. mountains’ groundwater
In the mountains of the western U.S., extremely wet winters can replenish groundwater enough to make up for multiple years of loss. This helps these systems quickly bounce back to above-normal levels after historical lows, according to a new study using satellite measurements of groundwater in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. The mountains release groundwater at a steady rate, the researchers wrote, meaning they can store the extra water from a super rainy season for at least a year rather than letting it flush through them rapidly. For communities and ecosystems around these mountains, groundwater is critical: as severe multi-year droughts have recurred, sharp groundwater declines have accounted for over 90% of the regions’ total water loss over the past 20 years. Scientists predict extremely wet winters to get more frequent and intense, which may help offset those losses as the regional climate gets drier. [Water Resources Research study] 

Human emissions amplified Asia’s extreme 2024 heat-flood combo
In the spring of 2024, northwestern central Asia took a double-whammy of extreme weather: severe flooding from record-breaking rainfall displaced over 100,000 people, while a subsequent heatwave cranked the average 7-day maximum temperature to nearly six degrees Celsius above normal. Although natural forces like La Niña and sea surface temperature patterns played a significant role, researchers reported, warming from greenhouse gases amplified the effect, making the extreme combo eight times more probable. A scenario of moderate continued greenhouse gas emissions could raise the risk of a similar event by more than 22 times by the end of the century, according to observational data and climate model simulations. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Earth’s oldest trees offer a history of cold snaps at sub-seasonal resolution
Using tree ring cores from 83 bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva), the longest-lived tree species on the planet, in the White Mountains of California, researchers have built a 1,100-year climate record spanning 900 to 2014 C.E. The record is the longest yet created based on “blue rings,” microscopic bands within tree rings where sudden, unseasonable cold prevented cells from fully lignifying, or becoming rigid and woody. These subtle features document abrupt cooling events too brief for traditional tree-ring studies to detect, including cold snaps induced by volcanic eruptions blocking sunlight. The detailed history may help scientists studying short-term cold extremes today, especially as climate change is projected to induce more late-spring frosts in some parts of the world, stressing crops and forests. [Geophysical Research Letters study] 

Full force of polar warming may be masked in short term, surging centuries later
The pace of human-driven warming at Earth’s poles may vary in the short term before flaring up centuries down the road, according to climate simulations comparing different rates of CO2 increase leading to the same final atmospheric concentration. The poles are already warming more than the global average, a phenomenon called polar amplification. This effect may dominate the Arctic early on, but if CO2 concentrations consistently climb faster than 0.5% per year, changes in global ocean circulation and heat transport could cause Arctic amplification to fade — only to return after several centuries. Regardless of the rate of CO2 increase, the models showed amplified warming in the Antarctic emerging more gradually, then surging more than 1,000 years after CO2 concentrations stabilize as heat stored deep in the ocean rises to the surface. [Geophysical Research Letters study] 

Mining and industry pollute a vital Colombian river with heavy metals
Concentrations of mercury, cadmium, and nickel in the Sinú River often rise significantly above baseline levels scientists frequently use to evaluate trace element pollution in soils. Soil samples collected at various depths during the rainy and dry seasons of 2021 along a stretch of the Sinú — a critical river supplying water for irrigation and everyday use to communities in northern Colombia — revealed concentrations exceeding those baselines by up to five times, although lead, zinc, and chromium levels stayed below the threshold. The pollution likely stems from mining, agricultural and industrial activities in the area that discharge the hazardous metals into the environment, the researchers wrote, highlighting the need for better environmental monitoring and management. [GeoHealth study] 

Stealth superstorms reveal lightning on Jupiter: beyond the superbolt 
On the gas giant, the strength and frequency of lightning appear to be more diverse than previously thought. [Eos research spotlight][AGU Advances study] 

The multi-faceted water footprint of data centers
Data centers powering artificial intelligence consume significant amounts of water, highlighting the need for greater transparency regarding water use in both existing and planned facilities.  [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

Trees shed their leaves to adapt to droughts
The browning or loss of tree leaves that can be observed during droughts may be a coping mechanism to deal with dry circumstances by avoiding additional water stress. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

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3/19/2026: Earth’s desert area is shrinking

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sunset over a broad, flat desert landscape dotted with shrubs and grasses

Sunrise in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia. Southern Africa is among the regions experiencing a contraction of its desert area, contributing to a global trend. Credit: Giles Laurent, Wikimedia Commons


AGU News 

Ignoring science weakens court decisions: Reinstate climate science in the Federal Judicial Center’s reference manual
AGU responds to the recent removal of a chapter on climate science from the 2025 4th edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, decrying the decision amid the need for judges and legal professionals to have access to clear, credible scientific guidance when evaluating cases involving climate evidence. [From the Prow]

Featured Research

Earth’s total desert area shrank 900,000 square kilometers in the past 40 years
The first map of our planet’s desert area over time, built from 40 years of high-resolution satellite imagery, reveals Earth has lost roughly 22,700 square kilometers of desert per year from 1985 to 2024. That adds up to about 900,000 square kilometers — roughly the size of Venezuela, or 3.6% of the average global desert area over those 40 years. The trend was concentrated in Australia, South Africa and east and central Asia, although deserts have expanded in North Africa, North and South America, and southwest Asia. The researchers attribute the decline to a combination of human influence, such as ecological engineering boosting plant growth in east Asia, and episodic pulses of extra water availability promoting self-sustaining plant growth in certain regions. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

By 2067, Thwaites Glacier may lose ice as fast as all of Antarctica does today
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier could be losing 180 to 200 billion tons of ice per year by 2067, about as much as the entire continent currently loses each year. The projection comes from computer models trained on satellite observations of changes in the height of the glacier’s surface from 2004 to 2017. Thwaites is already losing ice five times faster than in the 1990s and, if it collapsed entirely, could raise global sea levels over two feet all on its own. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Rising heat hurts labor productivity, economic development of agricultural nations
By 2095, the global economy may lose 841 billion to over 1.8 trillion hours of labor per year due to worker heat stress from climate change, depending on whether society takes a low- or high-emissions pathway. That’s equivalent to roughly five to ten percent of daylight working time, a new study finds. In terms of percentage of daytime work hours, low-income countries may lose 2.5 to 3.3 times more productivity than high-income nations due to their greater reliance on agricultural labor that exposes workers to heat — especially in tropical regions, where scientist expect heat exposure rise the most. This worsens global economic inequality and slows the economic development of low-income countries, the researchers write. [GeoHealth study]

Erratic swings in natural water systems reveal the Amazon’s increasing fragility
Most of the Amazon basin is seeing bigger swings in rainfall, river flow, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration, with extreme conditions lasting longer when they occur, according to an analysis of hydrological data across the region mostly spanning back to the late 1970s and early ‘80s. This erratic behavior means the Amazon’s water systems take longer to recover from disturbance. When El Niño events and warm Atlantic waters coincide with deforestation and fires to dry and heat the land, recovery slows even more, partly explaining the record-breaking Amazonian drought in 2023 and 2024 that lasted well past the peak of El Niño. The trend puts the region’s forests, climate, and water security at greater risk, the researchers wrote, highlighting the need to cut down on deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions and to control fire. [Water Resources Research study]

Californians are getting less time to recover from wildfire smoke
Between 2006 and 2010, the average California census tract saw two or three smoke waves, defined as two or more smoky days in a row. Between 2016 and 2020, it saw five — an 85% increase — with the average wave lasting four and a half days, nearly a full day longer than in the earlier period. The average time between smoke waves also shortened from 208 days to 76 days. Altogether, this leaves Californians less time to recover between smoke events. Recovery periods have dropped the most steeply in communities with high proportions of racial minorities, low incomes, and single female households. [GeoHealth study]

Global observations reveal rapid reorganization of ocean nutrients
Data reveal that changes in nutrient levels vary depending on depth and distance from shore—and that these changes are happening more quickly than scientists realized. [Eos research spotlight][AGU Advances study]

Tides generate detectable electrical signals in coastal aquifers
Spontaneous potentials show possibility for monitoring coastal saltwater intrusion. [Eos editors’ highlight][JGR Solid Earth study]

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3/12/2026: Sea level rise squeezes turtle nesting beaches

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A closeup of a sea turtle in profile resting on a sandy beach

A female green sea turtle on Ascension Island, home to some of the world’s most important sea turtle nesting beaches. Four major nesting beaches around the world, including one on Ascension Island, are eroding over time as sea level rises, and there’s not always space for turtles to move further inland. Credit: Stefan Hunt, Wikimedia Commons

AGU News 

AGU letter to NSF on the proposed restructuring of NCAR
For more than six decades, National Center for Atmospheric Research has been a cornerstone of U.S. scientific leadership — advancing weather prediction, deepening understanding of the Earth system and training generations of scientists. In our response, AGU raises serious concerns about the assumptions behind dismantling such an integrated institution and emphasizes the critical role NCAR plays in protecting lives, supporting major economic sectors and advancing scientific discovery. [letter] 

The state of ocean science: politics, pressure, and what comes next
What’s next for ocean science amid funding cuts and growing demand for research? Hear Janice Lachance, CEO of AGU, discuss the state of ocean science in a special episode of the SAMS Ocean Explorer podcast, recorded at the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow. [podcast] [related press briefing with AGU President Brandon Jones] 

Featured Research 

Sea level rise squeezes turtle nesting beaches
Rising seas and human development are squeezing critical sea turtle nesting sites.
A study of nine of the most important sea turtle nesting beaches around the globe found four show long-term erosion trends since 1980, losing nearly a meter a year in at least one place. Three of those sites also offer little space for turtles to nest further inland, putting that habitat especially at risk from rising seas. Researchers using satellite images, computer models, and coastal data to study these beaches’ shoreline movement over time noted that sea level rise does not affect them all evenly: in fact, three other beaches are widening, at a long-term trend of up to two meters per year in one location. The results may help guide more effective conservation, the team wrote. [Earth’s Future study] 

With rivers dammed, estuaries lose their power to slow climate change
Since the Xiaolangdi Reservoir dammed China’s Yellow River in 1999, the amount of sediment reaching the river’s estuary has fallen nearly 90%, according to a new study drawing on data from 1984 to 2023. Consequently, the estuary’s carbon content and carbon burial rates have dropped 46% and 58%, respectively.  River estuaries bury 70% to 90% of the globe’s marine organic carbon, helping to slow climate change, but damming has weakened that ability in major rivers including the Mekong, Mississippi, and Nile. Global dam-building may have cut estuaries’ carbon burial rates by over 33%, the researchers estimate, losing over 23 million metric tons of carbon burial per year. [Earth’s Future study] 

Climate change may be making days slightly longer
Climatic changes can affect the length of Earth’s days by forming and melting glaciers and polar ice sheets, altering sea level and redistributing the planet’s water mass enough to change its rotation speed. To reveal how sea level changes have altered day length since the late Pliocene, researchers combined prehistoric climate data with a deep learning model. Human-driven climate change, they found, may be lengthening days at 1 to 1.5 milliseconds per century, depending on either a low- or high-emissions scenario this century. That may sound small, and the tidal influence of the moon still has a much stronger impact on day length. Still, it’s one of the fastest climate-induced rates of change in the past 3.6 million years and could impact activities like spacecraft navigation that require precise timekeeping or knowledge of Earth’s rotation, the researchers noted. [JGR Solid Earth study]

Daily satellite data on groundwater, ice melt and more may arrive in 2030s
Merging the observations of five existing and upcoming gravity satellite missions from Europe, China, and the U.S. may provide daily observations of water resources, ice melt, and earthquake impacts by the early 2030s, an unprecedented improvement over the monthly data currently provided by individual missions. New simulations indicate this “hybrid gravity satellite ensemble” would significantly boost scientists’ understanding of the amount of water stored in river basins, offering near-real-time tracking of groundwater depletion and enabling better water management. Scientists could also more accurately monitor the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, allowing for better tracking of sea level rise, as well as the amount of ground displaced by earthquakes. [Earth’s Future study] 

Ross Sea may step up its carbon storage game as Antarctic ice melts
The eastern Ross Sea had among the highest dissolved organic carbon concentrations in Antarctic waters during extremely low sea ice conditions in 2023, according to a new study. The low sea ice enabled researchers to access the usually unreachable area, where they also recorded high iron concentrations and enhanced biological production. Iron-rich runoff from melting glaciers may have boosted microbial activity in the eastern Ross Sea, they wrote, producing organic carbon as a byproduct which then accumulated as water circulation patterns trapped it in place. As human-driven climate change fuels more glacial ice melt, the Ross Sea may emerge as a significant Antarctic carbon sink, though the researchers also emphasized the negative impacts of ice melt on ecosystems, sea level rise, and ocean circulation. [Global Biogeochemical Cycles study] 

The “wet-gets-wetter” response to climate change does not always apply
While the precipitation response to a warming climate is often stated as “wet gets wetter,” this response does not apply to east-west overturning circulations like the Pacific Walker circulation. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

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