Phys.org Earth Science

• Tracking plastic in the deep sea: How the Levant Basin became a sink for packaging waste

  A new study has uncovered the Levant Basin as one of the world's most concentrated graveyards for plastic packaging and the mechanisms that help the plastic sink down to the seafloor.

• Tiny chip can sort and count nanoplastics for better pollution monitoring

  A first-of-its-kind method that's cheap, portable and powerful in detecting harmful nanoplastics particles has been developed by an international consortium of researchers, with far-reaching implications for global health and environmental science.

• Strong tides speed melting of Antarctic ice shelves

  Antarctic ice is melting. But exactly which forces are causing it to melt and how melting will influence sea level rise are areas of active research. Understanding the decay of ice shelves, which extend off the edges of the continent, is particularly pressing because these shelves act as barriers between ocean water and land. Without ice shelves, the continent's glaciers would flow freely into the ocean, hastening sea level rise.

• AI and climate change: How to reliably record greenhouse gas emissions

  Large companies in the EU are legally required to report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet pulling this information manually from long PDF sustainability reports is slow and error-prone. Many teams try to speed up the process with automation—for example, by using large language models (LLMs), AI systems that read text and produce answers.

• Boosting timber harvesting in national forests while cutting public oversight won't solve America's wildfire problem

  The western United States is facing another destructive wildfire season, with more acres burned in Colorado alone in 2025 than in the past four years combined. If global warming continues on its current trajectory, the amount of forest area burned each year could double or even triple by midcentury.

• Why building nature-centric housing involves a mindset shift

  How do you build 1.5 million new homes in five years without destroying nature? Housing is unaffordable for most people, so the UK government plans to build as many homes as possible, as soon as possible. Assuming this brings house prices down (which isn't a given), how can it be done without harming wildlife and worsening climate change?

• Why the East Antarctic interior is warming faster and earlier than its coastal areas

  Scientists have confirmed that East Antarctica's interior is warming faster than its coastal areas and identified the cause. A 30-year study, published in Nature Communications and led by Nagoya University's Naoyuki Kurita, has traced this warming to increased warm air flow triggered by temperature changes in the Southern Indian Ocean.

• As world gets hotter, Americans are turning to more sugar, study finds

  Global warming in the United States is amping up the country's sweet tooth, a new study found.

• Corporate reports miss the mark on ocean health, according to new analysis

  New research led by Stanford University and co-authored by Lancaster University explores the industrial impacts on the ocean and compares them with what leading companies in the ocean economy disclose, underscoring the need for greater transparency and accountability.

• The hard truth about the circular economy—real change will take more than refillable bottles

  We extract more than 100 billion tonnes of raw materials from Earth each year, then throw most of them away. The "circular economy" offers a different approach: instead of the linear "take-make-waste" model, we could reuse, repair and recycle materials. But despite growing enthusiasm for a circular lifestyle, we're actually moving backwards—and using more virgin resources than ever.

• Rapid climate action will come at a cost, according to the Business Council. But experts say the benefits are far larger

  This month, the Australian government will release its emissions-reduction target for 2035, likely to be between 65% and 75%. A 70% cut would mean reducing Australia's emissions from about 440 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent down to 132 million metric tons.

• Team discovers hidden structures, invisible in traditional seismic scans, that block the pumping of oil

  A common problem with oil wells is that they can run dry even when sound-based measurements say there's still oil there. A team from Penn State University used Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's (PSC's) flagship Bridges-2 supercomputer to add a time dimension to these seismic measurements, as well as to analyze how oil damps down the loudness of sound traveling through it. Their preliminary analysis suggests that hidden rock structures in oil reserves prevent all the oil from being pumped out. They're now scaling up their work to tackle realistically sized oil fields.

• Face masks release microplastics and chemicals that could harm people and the environment, study finds

  The global use of face masks surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have since been discarded as waste, contributing to land and water pollution.

• Study analyzes attributes of resilience after major earthquakes

  Resilience is a term often discussed in the face of a natural disaster such as a major earthquake, but the attributes of resilience and how they interact are rarely analyzed, researchers say in a new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

• New book asks whether addressing climate change requires stability or conflict

  A new book is set to change how we think about tackling the climate crisis. It asks a big question: When it comes to climate change, is it better to "lock in" steady, long-term policies, or do we need dramatic political conflict and protests to force real change?

• Politicians now talk of climate 'pragmatism' to delay action—new study

  Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to "maximize extraction" of the UK's oil and gas from the North Sea as a "common sense" energy policy.

• Study: There is less room to store carbon dioxide, driver of climate change, than previously thought

  The world has far fewer places to securely store carbon dioxide deep underground than previously thought, steeply lowering its potential to help stem global warming, according to a new study that challenges long-held industry claims about the practice.

• Scientists tap 'secret' fresh water under the ocean, raising hopes for a thirsty world

  Deep in Earth's past, an icy landscape became a seascape as the ice melted and the oceans rose off what is now the northeastern United States. Nearly 50 years ago, a U.S. government ship searching for minerals and hydrocarbons in the area drilled into the seafloor to see what it could find.

• Researchers discover massive geo-hydrogen source to the west of the Mussau Trench

  Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the solar system. As a source of clean energy, hydrogen is well-suited for sustainable development, and Earth is a natural hydrogen factory. However, most hydrogen vents reported to date are small, and the geological processes responsible for hydrogen formation—as well as the quantities that can be preserved in geological settings—remain unclear.

• Discovery of North America's role in Asia's monsoons offers new insights into climate change

  A study published in the journal Science Advances, indicates how the heating in North America can trigger remote effects in Asia—this could be further exacerbated by anthropogenic global warming and human modification of the North American land surface.

• Pulsed biogenic methane identified as key driver of oceanic anoxia during the Mesozoic Era

  The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), a major environmental upheaval occurring approximately 183 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, stands as one of the most severe perturbations to Earth's carbon cycle in geological history.

• What climate change means for the Mediterranean Sea

  Temperatures in the Mediterranean are currently rising to record levels. Instead of a refreshing dip, holidaymakers in places like Greece, Italy, and Spain, among other places, are now facing water temperatures up to 28° C or even higher. With an average water temperature of 26.9° C, July 2025 was the warmest since records began for the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Copernicus Earth Observation Service.

• Mirror image molecules reveal drought stress in the Amazon rainforest

  In 2023, the Amazon rainforest experienced its worst recorded drought since records began. River levels dropped dramatically and vegetation at all levels deteriorated due to intense heat and water shortages. In such conditions, plants release increased amounts of monoterpenes—small, volatile organic compounds that act as a defense mechanism and help communication with their environment. Some molecules, such as α-pinene, which smells like pine, occur as mirror-image pairs, known as enantiomers.

• Physics-based indicator predicts tipping point for collapse of Atlantic current system in next 50 years

  The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is an enormous loop of ocean current in the Atlantic Ocean that carries warmer waters north and colder waters south, helping to regulate the climate in many regions. The collapse of this critical circulation system has the potential to cause drastic global and regional climate impacts, like droughts and colder winters, especially in Northwestern Europe.

• New research explores climate change and the limits of human progress

  According to Roy Scranton, director of the University of Notre Dame's Environmental Humanities Initiative, the biggest problem we face with climate change isn't excessive carbon emissions or energy usage. And it isn't the fundamental imbalance created by human activities that threatens ecosystems and has pushed the planet into instability.