A new study mined museum collections to investigate just how sooty the air in the United States has been for the past 135 years.
Hazards & Disasters
Posted inFeatures
Volcanic Unrest at Mauna Loa, Earth’s Largest Active Volcano
Mauna Loa is stirring—is a major eruption imminent? Comparisons with previous eruptions paint a complicated picture.
Posted inNews
IAEA Affirms Japan’s Fukushima-Related Radioactivity Monitoring
Laboratories outside Japan have validated the results. Marine radioactivity levels from the nuclear disaster have fallen, but questions remain years after the meltdown.
Posted inScience Updates
An 1888 Volcanic Collapse Becomes a Benchmark for Tsunami Models
When volcanic mountains slide into the sea, they trigger tsunamis. How big are these waves, and how far away can they do damage? Ritter Island provides some answers.
Posted inNews
Past FEMA Head Urges Smarter Rebuilding After Natural Disasters
Craig Fugate says the United States has an opportunity to rebuild more resiliently if Congress doesn’t simply provide relief money but also requires rebuilding to higher standards.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
What Causes Ecological Shifts?
A new information-processing framework helps researchers tease out the factors driving ecological shifts over short timescales.
Posted inOpinions
To Understand Future Solar Activity, One Has to Know the Past
Short-term funding strategies present serious problems for programs like solar activity studies, where observations and analysis span decades or longer.
Posted inScience Updates
Drone Peers into Open Volcanic Vents
An unmanned aerial vehicle provided the high-resolution data that allowed scientists to construct their first detailed map of erupting vents at Stromboli, one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
California Floods Linked to Atmospheric Water Vapor “Rivers”
Narrow atmospheric streams of water vapor that deliver heavy rains are more commonly associated with floods and debris flows in northern California than with flash floods in southern California.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A New Baseline to Monitor Earth’s Dynamic Surface
Researchers devise a new mathematical approach to combine space- and ground-based observations into an alternative reference frame for monitoring the changing positions of Earth’s features.