Earth Sciences

A significant breakthrough has been made in limiting the lower mantle's thermal state and material composition by a team of researchers led by Professor Wu Zhongqing from the School of Earth and Space Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences under the title "Compositional and thermal state of the lower mantle from joint 3D inversion with seismic tomography and mineral elasticity." The World's inside can be generally separated into the covering, upper mantle, lower mantle, and center. The lower mantle, situated at profundities going from 660

What happens when seamounts—mountains and volcanoes on the seafloor—are pulled into subduction zones has long baffled scientists. Now, new research from The University of Texas at Austin demonstrates that when seamounts sink, a trail of soft sediments is left behind. Instead of violent tremors, the researchers believe that the sediment patches facilitate gradual tectonic pressure escape during slow slip earthquakes. The findings, which were published on June 7, 2023, in the journal Nature Geoscience, can be used to modify earthquake models and assist researchers in figuring out the mechanisms that cause earthquakes. Nathan Bangs, a senior researcher at the University

The Hunga Volcano eruption in Tonga on January 15, 2022, continues to set records. A new study claims that the eruption resulted in a "supercharged" thunderstorm with the strongest lightning ever recorded. During the eruption, the researchers discovered that there were nearly 200,000 lightning flashes in the volcanic plume, peaking at more than 2,600 flashes per minute. The submarine volcano erupted in the southern Pacific Ocean, releasing a 58-kilometer-high plume of ash, water, and magmatic gas. Scientists were able to learn a lot about the scale of the eruption from the towering plume, but satellites couldn't see the vent, making

In addition to providing a vast network of cables that span the globe and serve as a communication aid, the ocean's depths are home to a complex marine ecosystem. These crucial cables may be damaged by earthquakes and tsunamis. Scientists who are keeping an eye on this seismic activity face a challenge because more than 70% of the Earth's surface is water. However, the cables themselves provide a potential new method for using laser light to monitor seismic activity. A new report by specialists at Geo-Sea and their colleagues revealed in Earth and Planetary Science Letters has utilized laser innovation,

Scientists have utilized information from past distributions to address the subject of why the icy ocean ice is responding significantly more rapidly and clearly to environmental change than the Antarctic ocean ice, which has remained somewhat stable as per the drawn-out investigations checking the Antarctic area's ocean ice designs. Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research was the journal that published their findings. "The distinctions in reactions are made sense of regarding geographic, climatic, and meteorological contrasts between the two locales. According to Mohammed Shokr, the paper's first author, "Arctic sea ice is located in the polar area and is surrounded by land, whereas sea

The world's first comprehensive classification of river channel belts at a 30-meter resolution is provided by a new study by Björn Nyberg and colleagues. The movement of a river creates wide corridors known as river channel belts. The intuitive guide created by Nyberg and associates shows the worldwide conveyance of waterway channel belt degrees. In addition to the active river channels, the overbank deposits left behind by rivers' gradual movement over time are also included in the channel belt extents. According to Björn Nyberg, "The new global map developed in this study offers an unprecedented level of detail that can

The "biological pump," in which carbon is utilized by organisms at the surface and transferred to ocean depths away from contact with the atmosphere, is one of the most significant components of the Southern Oceanic carbon cycle, according to new research. The study was published in PNAS by researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mnoa and NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, absorbs approximately 40% of the total amount of human-generated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and 60%–90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As a result,