3/5/2026: Arctic ice melt triggers dual heatwaves continents away

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People walking down a city street in Italy on a hot, sunny day with mist hanging in the air

Sprays of mist cool pedestrians during a heatwave in Florence, Italy. Due to a domino chain of atmospheric connections, Arctic ice loss from human-driven climate change may be triggering heatwaves as far away as East Asia, new research indicates. Credit: Richard Vanlerberghe, Unsplash

Featured Research 

Arctic ice melt triggers heatwaves in Europe and East Asia
Heatwaves are simultaneously striking Europe and eastern Asia more frequently due to declining ice in the Barents Sea, where spring ice loss has increasingly persisted through summers since 2000. Researchers found these longer seasonal ice lows set off a domino effect, combining with land-atmosphere interactions to trigger unusual atmospheric circulation over northwestern Europe. This, in turn, sends high pressure rippling into East Asia, inducing similar atmospheric anomalies there and priming both regions for heatwaves. As human-driven warming disproportionately affects the Arctic, the study shows, warming there can impact crops, ecosystems, public health, and economies across continents. Understanding these links could help improve early warning systems for extreme weather, the authors noted. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Evidence of human impact on atmospheric temperature counters U.S. federal report
A 2025 review of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions by the U.S. Department of Energy falsely asserted that changes in atmospheric temperature in recent decades do not bear the fingerprints of human influence in ways climate models expect, researchers state in a new paper. Evidence shows that human-induced increases in atmospheric CO2 and depletion of ozone have altered the atmosphere’s thermal structure, warming its lowest layer, the troposphere, while generally cooling the stratosphere just above. Climate models have predicted these effects for over 50 years, the researchers wrote, and temperature data from satellites confirms our best current model estimates with high confidence. [AGU Advances commentary][U.S. Department of Energy report] 

Asian forests struggle to maintain microclimates amid canopy loss and warming
By 2050, peak daytime temperatures even on the shady floors of southeast Asian forests will rise by 1.4 to 2.1 degrees Celsius, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions and compared to a baseline period of 1984 to 2014, a new study predicts. Researchers used ground-level temperature readings, satellite data, and future climate projections to estimate changes for 46 forests in Southeast Asia, where deforestation is rapid. Canopy loss reduces shade cover, eliminating the previously cool, moist microclimates below and piling heat stress on sensitive species living there. Conservation efforts should target forest areas most capable of maintaining these microclimates, the team wrote. [Geophysical Research Letters study] 

In Central Asia drylands, solar arrays boost ecosystem health
As of 2023, photovoltaic installations occupied 444 square kilometers of Central Asia, mostly in barren lands and grasslands. According to new research using satellite imagery to map these power plants’ proliferation from 2010 to 2023, the panels’ presence generally promotes plant growth, conserves soil moisture, moderates temperature swings, and reduces soil saltiness. As dryland solar power booms due to abundant sunlight and few land-use conflicts, researchers wrote, strategically siting solar arrays could help improve ecological resilience and restoration while generating clean energy at the same time. [Earth’s Future study] 

Dammed, urbanized rivers emit more planet-warming methane
Stretches of river impacted by urbanization and damming emitted 1.7 to 2.1 times more methane than less-disturbed upper reaches, according to new research of 747 kilometers of a river in northern China during late summer. Slower streamflow and sewage input in these areas cause fine sediment and nutrients to build up, oxygen to deplete, and methane-making microbes to proliferate. The result highlights the role humans play in controlling methane emissions along human-disturbed rivers, which scientists recognize as a significant source of the planet-warming gas in the atmosphere, the researchers wrote. [JGR Biogeosciences study] 

Drought drove the Amazon’s 2023 switch to a carbon source
The change was caused by thirsty vegetation taking up less carbon than normal, not by the year’s extended fire season, new research shows. [Eos research spotlight][Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

Boomerang earthquakes don’t need complex faults
New simulations show earthquakes can reverse direction within seconds on simple, uniform faults, suggesting back-propagating subevents are more common than previously thought. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study]

Satellite view of the California wildfires of January 2025
Satellite observations of the southern California wildfires of 2025 reveal that almost all the burned areas were reached by fire within 24 hours, and wildfires in residential areas burned more intensely than nearby natural vegetation fires at night. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

Future hotspots of hazardous rivers in the atmosphere
Atmospheric rivers can produce heavy precipitation and associated hazards worldwide. A new study identifies regions where these hazards have already, and will further, increase with global heating. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

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2/26/2026: Human actions intensify flood risk around the globe

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Muddy water flooding over the banks of a river and inundating a road in a wide, flat landscape dotted with tree and shrubs, seen from the air.

Flooding of the Burke River in Queensland, Australia during Tropical Cyclone Trevor in 2019. New research projects that up to 70% of Earth’s land will face worsened flood risks as human-driven climate change continues. Credit: John Robert McPherson, Wikimedia Commons

AGU News 

AGU and global partners announce platform to advance responsible governance of solar geoengineering research
As interest in solar geoengineering research grows, a group of international scientific, policy, and civil society organizations today announced a new platform designed to bring clarity, consistency, and public accountability to how this research is governed. [press release] [Solar Geoengineering Research Governance Platform] 

Featured Research 

Human actions intensify flood risk around the globe
Under human-induced global warming of 1.5 to three degrees Celsius, 60% to 70% of Earth’s land surface will likely face rising flood risks, especially in tropical regions. The increase comes mostly in the form of larger floods, though floods also become 10% more probable, on global average, under two degrees of warming than under 1.5. Near hydrological basins, researchers said, up to 88% of the increase in risk would not occur without human-driven climate change and past water and land management. By 2065, they project, the influence of human activities on flood risk will become apparent across nearly 40% of global land area. The team came to these results using model simulations of river discharge and climate impacts, aiming to account for human land and water management more than climate models typically do. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Minnesota winters may warm up to 12 degrees Fahrenheit this century
Winters in Minnesota may become up to 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter over the course of this century, with summers warming up to 7.2 degrees. The projections draw from global climate models combined with data on the climate interactions of more than 60 of the U.S. state’s lakes. Researchers also project up to 70 and 55 fewer days per year with lake ice and snow cover, respectively, with winter snow depth thinning by over 12 centimeters and lake ice shrinking by over half on deeper lakes. Precipitation will likely fall less often — especially during mid-to-late summer, Minnesota’s peak growing season — but more intensely when it does occur. As human-driven climate change disproportionately affects high latitudes, detailed projections like these can inform decisions about agriculture, infrastructure, and water resources, the team wrote. [Water Resources Research study] 

Hydropower dries up Swedish river habitat, but strategic flow release could help
An analysis of nearly 1,000 Swedish “bypassed reaches” — river segments drained mostly dry by diversions to hydropower plants — documents over 1,250 kilometers of lost habitat where fast-flowing riffles, rapids and waterfalls once supported specialized plants and animals. Regulations guarantee some minimum flow released back into only about a quarter of these dry stretches, and in 88% of those, the amount is too low to support fish that need strong currents. Researchers found the bypassed reaches often occupy key positions in river networks, disrupting broader movements of water, nutrients, and species. Placing minimum water discharges on high-priority reaches in Sweden and beyond, they wrote, could improve ecological health and biodiversity for thousands of kilometers of river while still allowing for hydropower. [Water Resources Research study] 

Earth’s energy budget deeper in the red than forecast, even considering warming
Under global warming, more energy enters Earth’s climate system (via the sun’s rays, for instance) than leaves it, fueling a planetary energy imbalance that has climbed rapidly since 2010. Yet as of 2024, this imbalance has swelled even more than most models expect global warming to cause. Researchers realized this after teasing out the portion of the imbalance expected due to global warming from the portion driven by other factors, using satellite measurements and temperature records from Earth’s surface. The discrepancy’s exact cause remains unclear, they wrote, but the results may indicate a growing rift between modeled expectations and real-world measurements of the energy imbalance. [Geophysical Research Letters study] 

Holes drilled for carbon storage grow over time, potentially enhancing storage
An emerging strategy for mitigating climate change is to pump water containing carbon dioxide into boreholes in peridotite rocks, prompting a mineral-forming reaction that locks the planet-warming carbon away. Researchers studying two such boreholes in Oman discovered that, even over two years after drilling, four new clusters of fractures formed in the rock after heavy rainfall raised water pressure in the boreholes. The team detected the fractures using hydrophones, finding that they grew slowly downwards for over 200 meters, likely driven by water moving into them as they formed. This process could create new pathways for fluids to reach fresh rock, potentially improving the carbon storage of the system, the researchers wrote. [JGR Solid Earth study] 

New method could improve U.S. forecasting of West Nile virus
An innovative model uses regional climate data and records of West Nile virus neuroinvasive disease to outperform existing forecasts, potentially helping communities prepare. [Eos research spotlight][GeoHealth study] 

Why more rain doesn’t mean more erosion in mountains
Erosion in mountain-basin systems driven by long-period climate variations is buffered by an erosion saturation effect, which weakens peak erosion and leads to reduced sediment flux. [Eos editors’ highlight][JGR Earth Surface study] 

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2/19/26: Beachgoer bacterial infections rise with Climate Change on the US East Coast

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A crowd of people on a beach in Massachusetts, United States.

A crowded day at Skaket Beach in Orleans, Massachusetts, U.S. As climate change warms sea surface temperatures along the U.S. East Coast, beachgoers face worsening risk of infection by heat-loving, marine Vibrio bacteria, especially on northern coastlines. Credit: DimiTalen

AGU News 

AGU Denounces Trump Administration’s Repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding
AGU President Brandon Jones released a statement today on the Trump Administration’s repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding, calling it a reckless, senseless decision with global implications for human well-being and the environment. Read more: [From the Prow] 

Press registration is open for the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland
Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration for the conference, which will convene 22-27 February. [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels]  

Featured Research 

Climate change raises risk of bacterial disease for U.S. East Coast beachgoers
Even in a future of moderate greenhouse gas emissions, beachgoers along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard will face up to 100 times more risk of infection from marine bacteria known as Vibrio in 2100 than in 2020. Knowing the bacteria proliferate faster in warmer waters, researchers simulated risk of infection by two Vibrio species (V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus) over the next 75 years, comparing warming scenarios from moderate and high emissions. Under the high-emissions scenario, risk multiplied up to 1,000 times from 2020 levels. The team projected greater danger along northern coastlines and noted that actual hazards may exceed their estimates, which accounted for Vibrio exposure from accidentally swallowing seawater but not infection through wounds. [GeoHealth study] 

India’s entire coastline is sinking, putting millions at risk
In the first assessment of land subsidence across India’s entire coast, based on satellite data from 2016 to 2024, researchers have documented ubiquitous land sinking, far more widespread than previously thought. Hotspots include several high-population cities, with Chennai and Kolkata among them. The five major deltas of India’s east coast, heavily farmed regions, are sinking up to 20 millimeters per year, while over 8.5 million people live in areas sinking more than 5 millimeters per year. Land subsidence augments the risks of sea level rise for the more than 200 million Indians living within 100 kilometers of the coast, many in low-lying, flood-prone regions. [Geophysical Research Letters study] 

Socially vulnerable Americans face worsening, disproportionate extreme heat risk
Residents of the contiguous U.S. in socially vulnerable communities, on average, weathered extreme heat nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than their low-vulnerability counterparts between 1994 and 2023. That’s up from a 2.3-degree disparity over the period from 1951 to 1980, a recent study finds — and the gap will continue to widen as human-driven global warming continues. Using climate observations and future climate projections at fine spatial scales, researchers also found that at 2 degrees Celsius of warming, vulnerable communities will see up to 18 more days per year over 95 degrees F than non-vulnerable ones, with some areas getting more than 180 days per year over that threshold. Above 95 degrees F, using fans to cool off can worsen heat stress by blowing hot air over the body. [Earth’s Future study]

Global warming and rising seas stymie salt marshes’ carbon sequestration
The combination of human-driven global warming and saltwater intrusion from sea level rise may hinder salt marshes’ ability to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change. Researchers monitored soils from salt marshes in China’s Yangtze River estuary both in the field and under controlled levels of temperature and salinity. Temperatures over 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) boosted the soils’ emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, both greenhouse gases — and saltier conditions amplified the effect. This suggests that salt marshes may become less effective carbon sinks as temperatures climb and sea levels rise, the team said. [Earth’s Future study]

Children’s asthma-related hospital visits rise when wildfire smoke fills the air
Asthma-related hospital visits among children rise when wildfire smoke pollutes the air, a recent study finds. Looking at data from 2017 to 2020 from a children’s hospital serving two counties in Northern California, researchers found that an additional 10 micrograms per cubic meter of smoke particulates correlated with a 4% higher risk of hospital visits the same day and a 13% higher cumulative risk over the ensuing five days. The effect amplified in communities already facing environmental and socioeconomic stress. As wildfire smoke events to continue worsening in the Western U.S. under human-driven climate change, the team wrote, public health efforts must prioritize children in vulnerable communities during wildfires. [GeoHealth study] 

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2/12/26: Climate patterns put a damper on African dust storms

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A dirt road in the desert with wind kicking up dust

Wind kicks up dust on a dirt road in the Sahara Desert. Dust storms in northern Africa can negatively impact human health and agriculture, but also play a major role in forming clouds and delivering nutrients around the world. Large-scale climate phenomena are making these storms less frequent, a trend likely to continue with climate change. Credit: Armands Brants

AGU News

AGU Denounces Trump Administration’s Repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding
AGU President Brandon Jones released a statement today on the Trump Administration’s repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding, calling it a reckless, senseless decision with global implications for human well-being and the environment. Read more: [From the Prow]

Press registration is open for the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland
Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration for the conference, which will convene 22-27 February. [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels]

Featured Research

North African dust storms are in decline. Climate change may continue the trend.
Dust storms in the Sahara and Sahel regions of northern Africa have declined at a rate of roughly 0.1 storms per month since the mid-1980s. In a recent study, researchers say the major cause was the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a long-term pattern of anomalous surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean. In the Sahel, this phenomenon has brought wetter, warmer conditions that moisten soil and fuel plant growth, suppressing dust, while in the Sahara, it has altered wind patterns to the same effect. The team expects the trend to continue under climate change, potentially benefiting air quality and agricultural yields in northern Africa but also impacting how much dust is in the air globally, which in turn influences cloud formation, solar radiation, and nutrient delivery. [JGR Atmospheres study]

On dry-region farms, solar panels can boost crop growth and carbon sequestration
Agrivoltaics, which sites solar panels and farm crops together, can do more than produce food and energy on the same land: in some cases, it can fight drought and enhance carbon sequestration. Researchers fed data from agrivoltaic farms in Colorado and Illinois into a computer model to simulate how the panels affected the land’s water use and carbon storage. In drier Colorado, the panels’ shade kept the soil moist, boosting grass growth and thereby storing more carbon. Amid Illinois’ wetter conditions, however, the shade mostly served to hamper maize and soybean growth, reducing carbon storage. Combining data from both sites, the researchers estimated that solar panel coverage of about 60% worked best for balancing the benefits from both solar and crops. [JAMES study]

As climate change makes floods more variable, coastal deltas will shrink
Coastal deltas and wetlands will likely shrink and sequester less carbon as the timing and intensity of extreme rains and floods get more variable, as scientists expect due to human-driven climate change. In a recent study, researchers ran two experiments on miniature-scale deltas in a lab — one with a constant flood discharge, and one with a variable flow that tripled in volume from base flow to peak flow. The variable flow made its delta slope into the water nearly twice as steeply, and shrink in area by 2.5 times, compared to the steady flow. The former delta also held 108% less organic material, suggesting variable flooding patterns could reduce wetland’s carbon sequestration abilities. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

As warming worsens hot droughts, plants contribute more to ozone pollution
Simultaneous heatwaves and drought, an increasing phenomenon in the northern hemisphere due to global warming, spur plants’ production of ozone-forming chemicals while reducing their ability to suck ozone from the air, a recent study found. Researchers used models to estimate chemical interactions between plants and the atmosphere during hot droughts, with a focus on the US, western Europe, and China. Except in cases of severe drought, the models indicated that hot drought augments plant emissions of ozone precursors by 10% to 24%, mainly due to heat boosting the activity of enzymes central to the process. Drought, meanwhile, prompts plants to close their stomata, or pores, to save water, exchanging gases with the atmosphere up to 36% less and therefore removing less ozone from the air. [JGR Atmospheres study]

Rising gases flag hidden faults in Türkiye
Leaks of carbon dioxide and radon gas from soils in Türkiye align with the presence of underground faults, potentially even revealing previously unknown fault areas, according to a recent study. Researchers measured gas emissions from soils at 98 sites in the Hatay Province of southeastern Türkiye after the country’s 2023 earthquake. In two areas, they found gas leaking along linear paths. Faults may allow gases to rise to the surface, the team wrote, meaning the measurements may indicate buried faults associated with known fault structures. The gas patterns even showed one fault may stretch farther west than previously estimated. The researchers said this confirms soil gases offer a way to detect hidden faults and improve earthquake risk assessment. [Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems study]

How the spring thaw influences arsenic levels in lakes
Four lakes near Yellowknife, Canada, show that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. [Eos research spotlight][JGR Biogeosciences study]

A road map to truly sustainable water systems in space
Future astronauts need efficient, durable, and trustworthy closed-loop systems to provide water for missions lasting months to years. [Eos research spotlight][Water Resources Research study]

Why are thunderstorms more intense over land than ocean?
A new perspective on convective instability sheds light on the factors controlling intensity in the rising motions that produce precipitation, and occasionally thunder and lightning, over land. [Eos editors’ highlight][Geophysical Research Letters study]

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2/5/2026: This purple flower is a carbon-storing power player

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photograph of small purple flowers on brown stems against a blurry brown and green background

Flowers of Limonium narbonense, a species of sea lavender native to Mediterranean coasts. The plant’s hardy, extensive belowground structures make it adept at securely storing carbon, boosting the climate-mitigation services of the salt marshes where it often grows. Credit: Hectonichus, Wikimedia

AGU News

Press registration is open for the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland
Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration for the conference, which will convene 22-27 February. [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels]

Featured Research

This purple flower is a carbon-storing power player
Sea lavender, a genus of flowering plants common to coastal areas around the Mediterranean, may boost the carbon storage abilities of salt marshes. Researchers studying the distribution of biomass and carbon content in a salt marsh of Italy’s Venice Lagoon found a sea lavender species growing wherever carbon storage was highest, more so than six other common species they examined. The plant grows plenty of tough, woody mass underground that durably locks away carbon, the researchers explain, making it a valuable member of salt marsh communities. Because salt marshes trap and store carbon far more effectively than solid-land ecosystems, managing them sustainably matters for mitigating human-driven climate change. [JGR Biogeosciences study]

Arctic melting may hasten the loss of Antarctic ice, too
A domino-style series of connections and feedbacks between the poles means that Arctic ice loss may speed up Antarctic ice loss as well. Researchers used model simulations of climate and ice sheets to show that as northern ice caps diminish, the newly de-iced areas and the northern Atlantic Ocean warm up. That warmer water eventually circulates to the Southern Ocean, where it periodically washes up against the Antarctic coast and amplifies the retreat of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which scientists already consider especially vulnerable to ice loss from global warming. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Drying of giant lakes helped awaken dormant tectonic faults
Over tens of thousands of years, declining water levels at three massive lakes helped activate nearby dormant faults on the Tibetan Plateau, according to a recent study. As the water weight lightens, the researchers say, Earth’s crust slowly rebounds upward, pushing on nearby faults and making them more prone to slippage. To quantify this process, the team studied lake shorelines for indicators of historical water levels, then used a plate tectonics model to estimate how the lightened water load would affect tectonic activity. About a fifth of fault movement near Nam Co Lake over the past 116,000 years stems from this phenomenon, they found, as does roughly 70 meters of vertical movement on the fault near the Yamzho Yumco and Puma Yumco lakes. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Hydrogen-powered planes would leave more climate-friendly contrails
If future airplanes fly on hydrogen power, their contrails — not just their emissions — would be more climate-friendly than those of conventional kerosene-fueled planes, a recent study projects. When today’s planes fly through cold, humid air, the long, wispy contrails they leave behind can morph into clouds which act like heat-trapping “blankets” in the atmosphere, worsening the climate impact of flying. Researchers simulated how hydrogen-powered planes’ contrails would evolve over time in a range of atmospheric conditions. Contrails with fewer but larger ice crystals (as expected from hydrogen planes) faded more rapidly, partly because larger crystals drop out of the sky more quickly, reducing the overall climate impact. [JGR Atmospheres study]

Changing flight paths during space weather protects passengers from radiation
In May of 2024, a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Paris protected those aboard from the radiation of a geomagnetic storm by altering its flight path. By comparing radiation levels recorded by onboard instruments against those estimated for a hypothetical flight that stayed on-route, researchers found that while the plane still received sporadic pulses of high radiation, the dosage would have been up to three times higher had it stayed the course. The story underscores the importance of considering alternate routes to protect passengers during space weather events like solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the team says, since Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field provide less protection from these events’ radiation at high altitudes. [JGR Space Physics study]

Cooling crust births new subduction zones
Scientists still aren’t certain how subduction zones — boundaries where one tectonic plate slides under another — get started, partly because it’s unclear how the normally-rigid plates weaken enough to deform into such a system. In search of answers, researchers analyzed rocks from a nearly 500-million-year-old oceanic subduction zone in present-day Québec using high-resolution imaging. They found that cooling at the plate boundary altered the rocks’ mineral compositions and made grains smaller, enabling deformation — a counterintuitive result, since cooling typically strengthens rocks. While they haven’t yet pinpointed the cause of cooling, the team says this shows subduction can begin without a sudden release of built-up stress in oceanic crust. [JGR Solid Earth study]

Our oceans’ “natural antacids” act faster than we thought
New evidence from New Zealand suggests that calcium carbonate dissolution occurs not just over millennial timescales, but over annual and decadal ones too. [Eos research spotlight][AGU Advances study]

Which countries are paying the highest price for particulate air pollution?
Cutting air-polluting emissions 10% could save hundreds of thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars in the northern hemisphere each year, with the biggest benefits in China. [Eos research spotlight][GeoHealth study]

1/29/2026: Record Io eruption hints at a sponge-like interior

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a glowing volcanic eruption on the surface of Io, a moon of Jupiter, as seen from space, with the eruption positioned on Io's horizon against the backdrop of space

A volcano erupts on Io, our solar system’s most volcanically active world, in an image captured in 1997 by the Galileo spacecraft. In late 2024, the Juno spacecraft witnessed Io’s most powerful known eruption, revealing clues about its subsurface structure. Credit: NASA, NASA-JPL, DLR

AGU News

Press registration is open for the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland

Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration for the conference, which will convene 22-27 February. [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels]

Featured Research

Io’s largest known eruption hints at a sponge-like interior
In late December of 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft witnessed the most intense eruption ever recorded on Io, Jupiter’s most volcanically active moon. The eruption spanned 65,000 square kilometers (over 25,000 square miles) of the southern hemisphere and released 140 to 260 terawatts of energy, over 1,000 times more than usual for the area by previous estimates. Three other hotspots also lit up enough to place them among the 10 most powerful known on Io — though other nearby volcanoes did not. Scientists interpret this as a single event affecting an underground network of massive, interconnected magma chambers, almost like pores in a giant sponge. [JGR Planets study]

Earthquakes may tease their final sizes right at the start
Just a few seconds of an earthquake’s onset hold enough information to predict its eventual size, potentially. After training a deep learning model on data from over 2,100 earthquakes showing changes in the energy they released over time, researchers found the model needed, at most, the first five seconds of data from a quake — accounting for the first 20% of the rupture process — to predict its magnitude with at least 80% accuracy. The finding could eventually inform the creation of more effective earthquake early warning systems. [JGR Machine Learning and Computation study]

To save water in the southwestern U.S., attitude change efforts alone may not suffice
Rather than rely solely on policies encouraging residents to save water, cities and towns in the southwestern U.S. should employ a diverse set of strategies to conserve water as human-driven climate change makes droughts more frequent and intense, a recent study suggests. Researchers used a computer model to simulate how policies aimed at reducing water demand affected reservoir supply in Denver, Las Vegas, and Phoenix under different climate change scenarios. While the policies counteracted the negative impacts of climate change in some cases, they proved insufficient in others. To maintain water availability under climate change, the team wrote, a multi-pronged approach may be the safest bet. [Water Resources Research study]

US faces coin-toss odds of trillion-dollar climate damages in the next five years
The U.S. has a roughly 54% chance of suffering over one trillion dollars in damages from extreme weather and climate disasters between 2026 and 2030 alone. The estimate comes from a recent statistical model using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s database of billion-dollar climate disasters from 1980 to 2024 to extrapolate into the near future. Disasters at that level are occurring more often due to both climate change and communities’ increasing vulnerability: in the 1980 to 2024 period, even the record-high financial toll of Hurricane Katrina was not an outlier but an expected result. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Beaufort Sea landfast ice, once thought consistent, is disappearing
An updated 27-year record of northern Alaska’s landfast sea ice — ice reaching over the sea from the coast — contradicts previous findings that the Beaufort Sea’s seasonal landfast ice has held steady since the 1970s. Instead, a comparison of the new data against 1970s satellite data shows its annual extent shrank an average of 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from then to the late 1990s and aughts. The ice’s seasonal duration has also shortened at a rate of 13 days per decade from 1996 to 2023, an outcome consistent with ocean warming. The researchers say the Beaufort Sea is likely on track to lose its most extensive areas of landfast sea ice, which provide seasonal coastal erosion protection, wildlife habitat, and platforms for human hunting and travel. [JGR Oceans study]

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1/22/2026: Brightening clouds could cool the Arctic

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scattered clouds over a glassy ocean surface covered in icebergs

Clouds hang over the Chukchi Sea. Using salt particles to brighten Arctic clouds could potentially prevent warming there without impacting other regions, though researchers caution that this simulated result doesn’t account for all real-world factors and impacts. Credit: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service

AGU News

Press registration is open for the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland
Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration for the conference, which will convene 22-27 February. [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels] 

Featured Research

Cloud brightening could cool the Arctic without affecting other regions, simulations indicate
Spraying sea salt particles into the low Arctic atmosphere could brighten clouds, significantly cooling the region and restoring Arctic sea ice, according to simulations using three separate Earth system models. The models assumed a “middle-of-the-road” greenhouse gas emissions scenario in which global warming reaches three degrees Celsius by 2100, with the goal of using marine cloud brightening to maintain near-current temperatures in the Arctic. The approach also showed minimal climate impacts beyond the Arctic from spraying salt particles — though the researchers stressed that their simulations didn’t account for impacts to communities, ecosystems, and atmospheric chemistry within the Arctic. [Earth’s Future study]

Climate change will increase soil erosion, especially in dry regions
As rainfall gets less frequent but more intense — the forecast for many regions due to human-driven climate change — soil erosion will increase, especially in drier climates and places with coarse soil. Researchers arrived at this result after feeding different rainfall scenarios into computer models to simulate the resulting soil erosion over time in different landscapes. The outcome echoes long-term observations from real-world monitoring, the team notes. Erosion can negatively impact soils’ abilities to regulate water, carbon, and nutrient cycles, as well as to provide habitat for plants and animals. [JGR Earth Surface study]

Climate change may dry out tropical America even more than previously thought
Annual rainfall across tropical America will likely decline as human emissions heat up the Earth, climate models project, exacerbating the risk of Amazonian wildfires, Panama Canal disruptions, and other impacts to agriculture, ecosystems, and water resources. However, in a new study, researchers say most models underestimate this effect. The team used real-world observations to correct for this bias in 42 climate models and found that every degree Celsius of warming caused a 46-millimeter drop in the region’s annual rainfall — 50% more than expected without the correction. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

A viscous fluid could mitigate earthquakes triggered by industrial activity
Fracking, geothermal energy production, storage of captured carbon, and other industrial activities beneath Earth’s surface commonly trigger earthquakes that can sometimes threaten lives and livelihoods. Investigating ways to minimize this hazard, researchers found that a shear thickening fluid — a mix of silica powder and ethylene glycol that gets more viscous as friction builds up around it — helped a simulated fault slip more stably and silently in lab experiments with a friction-generating machine. Injecting similar fluids into fault zones could help limit the magnitude of industrially-induced earthquakes, the team writes. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

In arid mountains, wildfire may augment the volume of snowmelt runoff
In the dry Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, winter snowpack evaporates significantly less where wildfire has razed entire stands of trees — leaving more snow available for water runoff. Researchers attribute the finding, based on data from monitoring towers, to the loss of canopy: snow piled on treetops increases the total snow surface area, allowing for more evaporation than in a burn zone with all its snow flat and stable on the ground. Areas where forests had only been thinned, in comparison, saw only minor drops in snow evaporation. While fire might keep more snow for runoff, the authors note that snow typically melts faster in burned areas, releasing that runoff more rapidly. This knowledge can help land managers understand how intensifying wildfires in western North America will impact the amount and timing of snowpack runoff available for people and plants, as well as hazards like flood risk. [Water Resources Research study]

The Antarctic, like the Arctic, will warm faster than lower latitudes
Under two degrees Celsius of global warming, the Antarctic will warm roughly 40% more than the Southern Hemisphere average, according to recent climate model simulations. Researchers say the effect primarily owes to how the region responds to ocean surface warming and will intensify as global warming continues. Scientists had already recognized that human-driven climate change disproportionately warms the Arctic, a phenomenon dubbed “Arctic amplification” — but its southern counterpart, Antarctic amplification, has remained uncertain. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Climate change may cause the oceans to release more ozone-depleting compounds
Climate change has set the oceans on track to release more brominated compounds, chemicals capable of efficiently destroying the ozone layer — up to 14% more in a moderate-emissions scenario and 40% more in a high-emissions scenario by 2100, according to model projections. Two key brominated compounds would together increase by up to 1.13 parts per trillion in the atmosphere, enough to make a dent in the stratospheric ozone budget, researchers say. Marine macroalgae and phytoplankton make these compounds naturally, but as climate change alters the balance of energy and nutrients entering and leaving the oceans, both the biological production of bromine and how it gets exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere are changing. [JGR Atmospheres study]

Marine snow grows faster and fluffier as it sinks
New observations highlight how abiotic and biotic processes influence the fall of tiny oceanic particles from the surface waters to ocean depths. [Eos research spotlight] [Global Biogeochemical Cycles study]

ALMA’s new view of the Solar System
High-resolution radio observations link the chemistry of local moons and comets to the birth environments of distant exoplanets. [Eos editors’ highlight] [AGU Advances study]

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1/15/2026: These pink reefs show surprising potential climate resilience

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A frilly, coral-like, crustose algae growing among other marine life on a reef

Coralline algae growing near Manawatāwhi (Three Kings Islands) in New Zealand. These calcified seaweeds act as reef-builders, providing habitat for marine biodiversity in coastal seas worldwide. Credit: Peter Southwood

AGU News 

“State of Science” report details Trump administration’s disruptions to US science
Eos, the science news magazine of the American Geophysical Union, today released “The State of the Science 1 Year On,” a special report assessing how the Trump administration’s first year in its second term disrupted the U.S. scientific enterprise and what actions may lie ahead this year. The report contextualizes key federal actions taken in 2025 across climate and energy, health and public safety, the federal scientific workforce, academia and research, and environmental protection. [Eos report] 

Press registration is open for the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland
Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration for the conference, which will convene 22-27 February. [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels] 

Featured Research 

A marine biodiversity habitat may prove unexpectedly resilient to climate change
A crusty, pink seaweed known as coralline algae grows in coastal seas around the world, helping build reef habitats that support a rich diversity of marine life. Scientists expect the impacts of climate change, particularly ocean acidification, to hit these reefs particularly hard. But a recent study found that, for about two-thirds of the year, a coralline algae reef off the west coast of Scotland already experiences pH levels as low as those expected by 2100 under a scenario of at least moderate greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers say this prolonged exposure offers hope that as pH lows get more extreme in the future, these algae — and the ecosystems they underpin — may show more resilience than previously thought. [JGR Biogeosciences study] 

Faced with water restrictions, many Americans would willingly pay to reuse water
In water-stressed regions, treating and reusing water can offer a valuable way to meet demand for this precious resource—so much so that rural Americans would pay, on average, $49 a month for water reuse systems if it meant avoiding restrictions on their water usage, according to a recent national-level survey study of over 3,000 individuals. That’s enough to sustainably fund water reuse programs in communities with small water systems, positioning water reuse as a viable solution in rural regions facing water restrictions. [Water Resources Research study] 

Canada’s air was cleanest in the 2000s. Massive wildfires have reversed the trend.
Air pollution regulations have cleared the air in industrialized eastern Canada since the 1980s, while in the west, wildfire has made summers increasingly smoky, a new study reports, mirroring previous findings from the United States. The record 2023 fires are part of a trend; as the climate warms, the future will be even smokier for North America. Wildfire smoke is less tractable than vehicle exhaust and industrial pollution, which regulators can tackle at the source tailpipes and smokestacks, and will require new approaches to policy, monitoring, and education as well as air-cleaning technologies to reduce unhealthy exposure. [Earth’s Future study] 

Logging too often, even at low intensity, leaves forest soils no time to recover
Forest soils need at least 10 to 15 years to recover after logging, a recent study finds. Some foresters maintain forests with a wide range of tree ages, returning every 5 years or so to take whichever trees are ready for harvesting. This strategy can maintain a healthier forest structure compared to operations that plant trees of the same age and return a decade later to harvest them all at once. However, more frequent visits by heavy logging machinery keep the soil compacted, reducing the diversity of its microbial life and increasing erosion and runoff. Samples from Mediterranean beech forests in southern Italy revealed that while soils recovered somewhat after five years, they hadn’t fully healed. The researchers suggest waiting 10 to 15 years between operations and taking precautions to minimize soil compaction during logging to make forestry operations more sustainable. [JGR Biogeosciences study] 

Besides carbon emissions, direct heat from human activities boosts climate warming
Greenhouse gases aren’t the only things warming the planet: industrial facilities, heating and cooling systems, vehicle exhaust, and even our own bodily metabolisms release heat directly into the environment. Under a high-emissions scenario, these heat sources could contribute an additional 0.6 °C (1.08 °F) to average summer temperatures in North America during the end of this century, making heatwaves more frequent, according to a recent modeling study. They would also alter atmospheric conditions and reduce cloud cover to make the eastern and northwestern United States and central Canada hotter and drier, increasing plant stress and wildfire risk. This highlights the need to mitigate heat at its sources through solutions like urban greening, low-emissions transportation, and energy systems that make use of recovered heat, the researchers write. [JGR Atmospheres study] 

Successful liquid lake conditions in a cold Martian paleoclimate
Simulations from a new lake model explain how liquid water could have been maintained over Mars in a cold climate, thus resolving a critical scientific gap in our understanding of Mars’ early history. [Eos editors’ highlight][AGU Advances study] 

Melting glaciers mix up waters more than we thought
Existing theory underestimates the mixing of freshwater and seawater by up to 50%. [Eos research spotlight][JGR Oceans study] 

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1/8/2026: Heat makes rivers’ microscopic cleaners falter

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Photograph of a river in foreground with trees and shrubs overhanging.

Parts of the San Saba River in Texas, USA, have experienced water temperatures up to 45.2°C (113.3°F). Riverbed microbes exposed to temperatures recorded there grew less active the hotter it got, indicating that climate change may make it tougher for some rivers to break down organic matter, especially where stagnant pools form. Credit: William L. Farr

AGU News

Ocean Science Meeting special hotel rates end next week
Staff, freelance and student journalists, press officers and institutional writers are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration. Book conference hotels at the discounted rate when you register by 14 January. (Press, please register before booking hotels to avoid conflicts with press registration!) [media advisory][OSM26 Press][eligibility guidelines][preview conference hotels]

Featured Research

As rivers heat up, their tiny, invisible recycling teams may slow down
Microbial metabolism doesn’t always crank faster at higher temperatures, a new study finds. Microbes living in streambed sediments break down organic matter and recycle nutrients, helping to maintain healthy water quality and nutrient balance in riversBut climate change could impede that gift by making rivers warmer, especially in the stagnant pools that form when rivers dry up. Researchers tracked riverbed microbes’ activity over 77 days at 20, 30 and 40 degrees Celsius and found that their activity slowed down at higher temperatures — contrary to common assumptions that heat speeds up metabolism. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

When shooting fluids underground, go slow and steady to minimize earthquakes  Industrial activities like geothermal energy production and underground carbon storage involve injecting fluids underground, which can trigger earthquakes. To find out how to mitigate this effect, researchers experimented in a lab with a piece of sandstone containing an artificial fault. Injecting water at high pressure caused faster fault slip and more quaking, as did injecting it in repeating cycles. Conversely, injecting water slowly and steadily minimized slipping and quaking. [JGR Solid Earth study]

Stratospheric aerosol injection could prevent some climate “tipping points,” but which will get priority?
Some scientists have proposed scattering sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere as a supplementary way to mitigate climate change, in addition to reducing carbon emissions. A new modelling study finds this strategy could also protect various “tipping elements” — ice sheets, permafrost, rainforests, coral reefs, and other systems at risk of suddenly and irreversibly deteriorating due to climate change. Scattering particles at high latitudes would most effectively protect high-latitude elements (like the Greenland ice sheet) but leave lower-latitude elements less protected, while doing so at low latitudes would achieve the reverse. A particle deployment strategy designed to stabilize the overall global temperature, meanwhile, would offer medium-quality protection for elements at both latitudes. As such, the authors write, using this strategy may require weighing which outcomes to prioritize. [Earth’s Future study]

New Moon crater fractures mapped
When high-speed meteorites strike planetary bodies, the intense energy melts parts of the impact crater, creating “impact melt deposits.” As the molten rock cools, it contracts, causing fractures to split open along its surface. Since mapping these fractures manually can miss smaller melt deposits, researchers tried using a deep learning model to automatically detect fractures in satellite imagery of the Moon. The model discovered new impact melt deposits in Crookes crater. For the first time, it also mapped fractures in the Schomberger A crater, which could contain water ice due to the crater’s dark, near-polar location. [JGR Planets study]

Deaths from flooding down in Asia but rising in Africa
Improvements in infrastructure and emergency response have made floods and storms in Asia less deadly, according to an analysis of 2,000 of the world’s deadliest extreme climate events since 1988. While Asia’s upgrades have saved an estimated 350,000 lives since then, the research found, other regions have been less fortunate. Population growth has made African floods more deadly, and extreme temperatures are killing more Europeans as heatwaves become more common relative to cold snaps. Understanding how mortality from climate hazards changes over time can help us predict and prepare for future hazards, the researchers write. [Geophysical Research Letters study]

Marine heat waves can exacerbate heat and humidity over land
Researchers found the unprecedented 2023 East Asian marine heat wave increased land temperatures and humidity by up to 50%. [Eos research spotlight][AGU Advances study]

How a move to the shallows 300,000 years ago drove a phytoplankton bloom
And what that could mean for today’s ocean. [Eos research spotlight] [AGU Advances study]

What could happen to the ocean’s carbon if AMOC collapses
Mass glacier melting may have led this influential ocean current system to collapse at the end of the last ice age. A pair of modeling studies examines how such a collapse could affect dissolved inorganic carbon and carbon isotopes in Earth’s oceans. [Eos research spotlight] [Global Biogeochemical Cycles study and study]

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12/11/2025: Reindeer, algal blooms, undersea mountains and more hit stories coming to AGU25

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AGU News 

Register for AGU’s 2025 annual meeting for on-site and remote access to 20K research presentations in the Earth and space sciences 

Join us in New Orleans or online next week at the 2025 AGU Annual Meeting, 15-19 December at the Morial Convention Center. 

Recordings of the scientific program will be available to online participants on-demand within 72 hours of the sessions’ end and remain accessible to registered attendees until 14 April 2026. Press briefings will be live-streamed. 

Staff, freelance, and student journalists are eligible to apply for complimentary press registration through the end of the conference. Press officers and institutional writers covering the meeting are also eligible. 

[press registration] [press events] [scientific program] [virtual attendance] 

Featured Research 

Rivers have heatwaves, too– and they’re outpacing air heatwaves
Heatwaves may not hit rivers with nearly the intensity of air heatwaves, but they happen double to quadruple the frequency. These underwater heatwaves are driven by climate change through diminishing snowpack and changes in water flow. The new research found human activities like dams extended the heatwaves whereas agriculture reduced them. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Wednesday, 17 December] 

Air pollution is decreasing, but increasing natural hazards threaten to upset progress
Despite progress made in decreasing air pollution, hazards like wildfires, droughts, dust storms and even volcanic eruptions can decline air quality. Wildfires, droughts and extreme heat, among other things, are all expected to increase with climate change worsening, and those compounding effects can worsen air pollution in an unknown way. Using 10 years of data, researchers are creating a real-time automated process to see daily air pollution impacts that include multiple hazards at once, something often left out of air pollution prediction models. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Thursday, 18 December ] 

Even small companies can save lives by cutting emissions
Companies that have pledged to decrease and minimize their emissions could save potential lives by following through on those promises, even the companies with small environmental impacts. New research found over four million deaths could be saved depending on different emission scenarios of 3,000 companies: no decrease in emissions, some decrease, and hitting their pledged amounts within a shorter timeframe and the pledged timeframe of 2100. According to this study, some companies could impact thousands of lives, while others have a much smaller impact but could still mitigate potential losses. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Monday, 15 December] 

Warm ocean water is melting the Thwaites ice shelf from below
Along with steady warming of deep ocean water melting the Thwaits Eastern Ice Shelf from below, short bursts of heatwaves that alter sea ice are having a large impact. These bursts alter water density and disrupt ocean stratification, or the natural layering of water by heat and salinity. This disruption increases the melting speed of the ice shelf. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Tuesday, 16 December] 

Crusty snow delivered by climate change blocks reindeer from food in winter
As climate change plays out in snowy regions, warmer winter air can increase the likelihood of rain falling on existing snow. The snow then melts and refreezes, creating layers of ice that prevent foraging animals from nibbling the plants below. In northern Europe’s Fennoscandia peninsula, conditions for this phenomenon have been occurring more often and, in interior regions, earlier in the year since 1960. For winters when those shifts are especially prominent, researchers found, reindeer birthrates tend to drop the following summer. Areas with densely populated herds appear to take the hardest hit, likely because more reindeer must compete for limited food in their iced-over foraging grounds, the researchers note. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Thursday, 18 December] 

Chilean undersea mountains show how island nations can legally claim seafloors
When coastal nations want to claim seafloor resources farther than 200 nautical miles offshore, international law requires them to prove that seafloor is a true geological extension of their land. But for island nations on the summits of undersea volcanoes, this gets tricky: those volcanoes’ sides slope gradually to the seafloor, muddling where the island’s territory starts or ends. To solve this, researchers used depth maps to trace volcanic slopes and seismic and gravity data to tease out the signature of the thick, rocky crust below. Where the two cross, they argue, lies the true edge of an island. Testing the method on two Chilean islands revealed an undersea mountain range over 700 kilometers long and up to 90 kilometers wide — proof, the researchers say, that this method could help dozens of coastal and island nations claim sovereign undersea territory. What’s more, the method leans mostly on public data, making it accessible and transparent. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Monday, 15 December] 

Long drought may not cripple Amazonian forests completely — but it will remake them
Scientists expect worsening droughts to kill a lot of plant life in the Amazon. To get a clearer picture of what sustained, long-term droughts might do, researchers have subjected an Amazonian forest plot to simulated drought for over 20 years. As expected, trees — especially the largest ones — died at a higher rate over the first 15 years. However, the die-off reduced competition for water, leaving the survivors with more to drink: their sap flow and internal water content matched that found in drought-free forest. As deaths slowed down, the ecosystem stabilized in the final seven years, albeit in a much-altered form — one with less plant mass and, consequently, less carbon stored in wood. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Wednesday, 17 December] 

How California’s worsening wildfires might contribute to toxic algal blooms, too
Toxic cyanobacteria have been causing harmful algal blooms to develop more often and last longer in at least 71 lakes across California since 2002, with high-risk blooms occurring earlier in the year, researchers in the state have found. The team hypothesizes that wildfires, also on the rise in California, may play a role — specifically, by leaving burned landscapes more prone to sediment erosion into lakes, providing cyanobacteria with more nutrients to fuel the blooms. If so, fire monitoring could be a valuable tool for forecasting the risk of harmful algal blooms. [Conference abstract – Presentation on Friday, 19 December] 

Indonesia’s energy plans threaten its climate goals while barely reducing fuel imports
In its quest for energy self-sufficiency, Indonesia in 2023 produced Presidential Regulation Number 40, designed to boost annual bioethanol production. Put into effect in 2024, the regulation seeks to achieve this by converting at least 700,000 hectares, but potentially up to two million hectares, of land into sugarcane plantation. The caveat: this would occur in the country’s easternmost region, home to some of Earth’s densest remaining tropical rainforest. Using remote sensing and mapping tools, researchers assessed deforestation from the project’s first year, as well as its likely future impact on land use, oil demand, and resulting greenhouse gas emissions. The project would dramatically alter local landscapes and livelihoods, they found, as well as jeopardize Indonesia’s goal of becoming a net carbon sink by 2030 — but would barely make a dent in fuel imports. [Conference abstract – Monday, 15 December]