The study of Earth’s systems, including its physical structure, natural processes, and interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Earth sciences investigate phenomena such as weather, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions to understand our planet’s past, present, and future.
An M8.8 earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula at 23:47 UTC on July 29, 2025, generating a Pacific-wide tsunami captured for the first time in high resolution by NASA’s SWOT satellite.
High above Earth, narrow bands of fast-moving air circle the planet near the tropopause at 9–16 km (30 000–52 000 feet). These fast-moving corridors are known as jet streams, and they steer storm systems, influence temperature patterns, and shape how aircraft move across the globe. Understanding how they form and change over time helps explain many of the weather shifts we experience at the surface. Their behavior also connects daily weather with long-term climate patterns, making them one of the atmosphere’s most influential features.
Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and collaborators have identified a previously unknown cyclic climate pattern, the tropics-wide intraseasonal oscillation (TWISO), evident across tropical regions on 30–60-day timescales. The discovery, described as one of the most significant advances in climate dynamics, may help improve medium-range forecasts by revealing a predictable rhythm in tropical activity.
Researchers analyzing 11 years of seismic data from Japan found that earthquakes occurring at greater depths release more energy, revealing a direct link between stress release and crustal rock strength.
A massive swarm of earthquakes that rattled the Aegean Sea between January and March 2025 was not caused by fault movement, as scientists first feared, but by waves of magma slicing through the crust beneath Santorini. The finding, published in Science on November 20, offers a detailed look at how Earth’s interior pulses and shifts beneath volcanic regions.
At the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest, where one tectonic plate slides beneath another, researchers from the University of California, Davis have found that rocks deep within faults can cement themselves back together within hours after seismic slip, offering new insights into how large earthquakes may initiate.
A sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is a rapid wintertime heating of the polar stratosphere that disrupts the polar vortex and raises the odds of cold outbreaks across the Northern Hemisphere within weeks.
Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow corridors of concentrated water vapor that move through the atmosphere and deliver massive amounts of rain and snow to mid-latitude coasts. These “rivers in the sky” shape flood seasons in the U.S. West Coast and Europe and are closely monitored because their intensity, duration and landfall location determine whether they bring beneficial moisture or trigger destructive floods.
A polar vortex is a rotating mass of cold, dense air in the winter stratosphere, extending vertically from about 10–15 km (6.2–9.3 miles) to 50 km (31 miles) altitude and typically monitored at levels like 10 hPa at roughly 30 km (18.6 miles) above the surface. Its strength and shape influence the jet stream, altering the probability of cold-air outbreaks across North America and Europe for several weeks after major disturbances.
A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry identifies equatorial upwelling of phosphorus-rich deep water as the primary driver behind the record Sargassum blooms affecting the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and northern South America. Researchers show that this nutrient supply strengthens nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria living on Sargassum, giving the algae a competitive advantage that has intensified since 2011 and contributed to a new negative record of biomass this year.
