Accounting for the total energy budget of Earth’s ecosystems has real-world implications for water resource management, land use policy, and monitoring of crop conditions.
Science Updates
The Ozone Paradox: A Growing Cost of a Warmer Atmosphere
Mexico City’s air is getting cleaner, but ozone levels near the ground aren’t decreasing as fast as expected. Climate change is partly to blame.
Confronting Salty Problems in the Coastal Plain
An interdisciplinary network of scientists and stakeholders is working to understand how saltwater intrusion and sea level rise are affecting rural communities and to help address the consequences.
Vast Space, Sparse Data: An AI Answer to Twin Space Weather Challenges
Modern machine learning and AI methods can help heliophysics researchers and space weather forecasters overcome limitations from a dearth of observations and the infrequency of extreme events.
New Directions in Mapping Ice Sheet Fabrics and Flow
Polarimetric radar advances enable scientists to measure orientations of crystals, bubbles, and other properties that affect the flow of glaciers and ice sheets—and their contributions to sea level.
Sensing the Sounds from Earth’s Hazardous Environments
Low-cost infrasound sensors, deployed in large numbers, provide a practical means of data collection near volcanoes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other geophysical phenomena.
Melting Glaciers Make the Coastal Ocean More Sensitive
Fresh water from retreating ice does more than raise sea levels. It affects how the ocean responds to acidification and other environmental changes.
Lessons from Linking Great Salt Lake Desiccation and Depression
By melding different expertise and merging disparate datasets, researchers revealed how lake bed dust may be affecting mental health outcomes across Utah.
An Art-Science Partnership Offering New Views of Dynamic Landscapes
The immersive and interactive WILDLAND exhibition allowed the public—and the exhibition’s creators—to explore connections among water, trees, fire, and other natural and human-made materials expressed across a spectrum of artistic approaches.
Tracking Microplastics Above and Below the Waves
Measuring plastic particles carried on Cozumel’s sea breezes and ocean currents reveals how simple physics shapes the particles’ pathways and the impacts they may have on coastal regions.
