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Category: climatology – Page 2

Computer simulations reveal hurricane currents can knock down surface wave heights

Using advanced computer simulations, researchers from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) have concluded how and why strong ocean currents modify surface waves. “Our primary finding is that hurricane-generated ocean currents can substantially reduce both the height and the dominant period of hurricane waves,” said Isaac Ginis, URI professor of oceanography. “The magnitude of wave reduction depends strongly on how accurately ocean currents are predicted. This highlights the importance of using fully coupled wave-ocean models when forecasting hurricane waves.”

Ginis conducted the research with URI Professor Tetsu Hara and Angelos Papandreou, who earned his Ph.D. in oceanography from URI in December 2025. Their results were published in a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Physical Oceanography in January 2026.

According to Ginis, waves are most strongly reduced by currents on the front right of the storm, where winds, waves, and currents are typically strongest.

How a superionic state enables long-term water storage in Earth’s interior

The cycling of water within Earth’s interior regulates plate tectonics, volcanism, ocean volume, and climate stability, making it central to the planet’s long-term evolution and habitability and a key scientific question. While subducting slabs are known to transport water into the mantle, scientists have long assumed that most hydrous minerals dehydrate at high temperatures, releasing fluids as they descend.

Whether water can survive the extreme conditions of the deep lower mantle, however, has remained an open question.

Japan wakes up world’s biggest nuclear plant 15 years after Fukushima disaster

Just under 15 years after the catastrophic nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Japan has officially restarted a reactor at the world’s largest nuclear plant.

While many argue for the benefits that nuclear power can provide amid a rapidly growing climate crisis, the dangers that it poses are evident across a number of notably horrific incidents over the years.

Disasters in Kyshtym and Chernobyl have displayed the dangerous potential that a nuclear accident can cause, and few have been quite as devastating as the incident that occurred in Fukushima back in 2011.

Evidence of ‘lightning-fast’ evolution found after Chicxulub impact

The asteroid that struck the Earth 66 million years ago devastated life across the planet, wiping out the dinosaurs and other organisms in a hail of fire and catastrophic climate change. But new research shows that it also set the stage for life to rebound astonishingly quickly.

New species of plankton appeared fewer than 2,000 years after the world-altering event, according to research led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and published in Geology.

Lead author Chris Lowery, a research associate professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) at the Jackson School of Geosciences, said that it’s a remarkably quick evolutionary feat that has never been seen before in the fossil record. Typically, new species appear on roughly million-year time frames.

Tree bark microbes for climate management

In a new Science study, researchers report that bark microbes process methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, showing that bark is an important component of global trace gas dynamics.

Learn more in a new Science Perspective.

Microbes living in bark can process the greenhouse gases methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide.

Vincent Gauci Authors Info & Affiliations

Science

Vol 391, Issue 6781

Continue reading “Tree bark microbes for climate management” | >

Cleaner ship fuel linked to reduced lightning in key shipping lanes

Cuts in sulfur emissions from oceangoing vessels have been tied to a reduction in lightning stroke density along heavily trafficked shipping routes in the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, according to new research from the University of Kansas.

The work is published in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.

Previous studies had found frequent lightning along shipping routes over the Bay of Bengal before a 2020 International Maritime Organization rule capped sulfur in fuel used by oceangoing ships, leading to a roughly 70% drop in sulfate emissions in the Bay of Bengal.

New map reveals a rugged world beneath the Antarctic ice sheet

Scientists have discovered there is more to Antarctica than meets the eye. A new map of the landscape beneath the frozen continent’s ice sheet has revealed a previously hidden world of mountains, deep canyons and rugged hills in unprecedented detail.

The Antarctic ice sheet is a vast expanse of ice covering approximately 98% of the continent. While the frozen surface has been fairly well-studied, the ground beneath this two-kilometer-thick layer has remained a mystery. In fact, until now, we knew more about the surface of Mars than what lies beneath the bottom of our own planet.

The ice sheet plays a crucial role in our climate. Not only is it a major freshwater reservoir, but its icy surface reflects sunlight, helping cool Earth. But because our computer models are missing key details about the land it sits on, it is difficult to predict factors such as exactly how fast the ice will melt and how much sea levels will rise.

Tiny titans of recovery: Fossil burrows reveal resilient micro-ecosystem after global mass extinction

An international team of scientists from South Africa, Canada, France and the UK has uncovered fossil evidence of a tiny ecosystem that helped kick-start the recovery of Earth’s oceans after a global mass extinction.

The team, led by Dr. Claire Browning, an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town (UCT), found fossilized burrows and droppings left by creatures so small they lived between grains of sand, revealing an ancient community that probably played a critical role in reviving marine life after the end-Ordovician ice age and mass extinction event. The discovery is reshaping how scientists understand early marine resilience.

The findings are published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

When lightning strikes: Models of multi-ignition wildfires could predict catastrophic events

Multi-ignition wildfires are not overly common. But when individual fires do converge, the consequences can be catastrophic. The largest fire on record in California, the 2020 August Complex fire, grew from the coalescence of 10 separate ignitions.

In a new study, published in Science Advances, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of California (UC), Irvine and collaborators examine multi-ignition fires, calculating their impact and modeling the mechanisms behind them by leveraging the Department of Energy’s flagship Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). The work shows that when flames combine, they are disproportionately destructive: They spread faster, last longer, generate stronger atmospheric events and strain firefighting resources.

In California, the study found that multi-ignition fires make up only 7% of the total number of fires, but they contribute to 31% of the burned area in the state.

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