Researchers use computer simulations to uncover the significant contributions that dry soil and atmospheric wind patterns make to major heat waves.
Modeling
What Lies Beneath Is Important for Ice Sheets
New research reconstructing the topography of Antarctica shows that the continent has 25% less land above sea level than when ice first started to accumulate 34 million years ago.
Finding Faults in Our Past: Uncovering the Messina Earthquake
The source of the deadly 1908 Italian earthquake may finally be identified, thanks to a fresh look at the geomorphology of the Strait of Messina.
Hydropower and Bugs
Alpine hydropower plants commonly flush sediment that accumulates at intakes, but the associated rapid rise in discharge, turbidity, and streambed instability put aquatic insects at risk.
Why Is the Red Planet Red? Chlorate May Oxidize Mars’ Surface
Laboratory experiments and geochemical model suggest that chlorate is very effective to oxidize reducing iron to reddish iron oxides on Mars when liquid water was present on the surface.
Improving Estimates of Coastal Carbon Sequestration
A new two-model approach could reduce uncertainties in calculated rates of “blue carbon” accumulation within soils of seagrass, tidal marsh, and mangrove habitats.
Three Times Tectonics Changed the Climate
Fifty years after the birth of modern plate tectonics theory, a group of researchers highlights three key examples of how our planet’s shape-shifting outer layer has altered our climate.
Sparks May Reveal the Nature of Ash Plumes
In lab experiments and models, researchers uncover how ash can affect the standing shock waves of erupting volcanoes. Their findings may lead to new predictions of volcanic ash hazards.
Modeling How Groundwater Pumping Will Affect Aquatic Ecosystems
Regions with dry climates and heavy agricultural industries may be the most hard-hit.
How Chemical Processes Influence Fracture Pattern Development
Many tools of chemical analysis, experimentation, modeling, and theory have the potential to increase our understanding of how fracture patterns develop at different geological time scales.
