For decades, scientists have probed Earth's remote mantle by analyzing how seismic waves of distant earthquakes pass through it. But we are still challenged by the technique's limitations.
Hazards & Disasters
Posted inNews
Reduced Middle East Air Pollution Linked to Societal Disruption
Invasions, armed conflict, sanctions, and economic distress correlate with cleaner air in high-resolution satellite data that reveal air quality at the individual city level.
Posted inScience Updates
Forecasting and Communicating Risk of Rip Currents, Wave Runup
NOAA Coastal Hazards Resilience Workshop—Rip Currents and Wave Runup; Suffolk, Virginia, 14–16 April 2015
Posted inResearch Spotlights
New Models Explain Unexpected Magnitude of China's Wenchuan Quake
The 2008 earthquake surprised scientists, but the inclusion of new variables reveals that Earth's crust under the Sichuan Province was under more strain than previously thought.
Posted inScience Updates
Monitoring Gas Emissions Can Help Forecast Volcanic Eruptions
5th Meeting of the Network for Observation of Volcanic and Atmospheric Change; Turrialba Volcano, Costa Rica, 27 April to 1 May 2015
Posted inNews
Geoscientists: Focus More on Societal Concerns
The unprecedented toll from a powerful tsunami shocked a theoretical geophysicist, now an international geoscience organization leader, into action and advocacy to use science to aid society.
Posted inNews
Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Largest Since 2002
Downpours in June drove nutrients into the Mississippi River that ultimately deprived a much larger portion of the Gulf of oxygen than had been expected.
Posted inOpinions
How Can We Better Understand Low River Flows as Climate Changes?
When rivers run low, they threaten ecosystems, economies, and the communities who depend on them. Scientists need to determine how climate change alters this process, but to do so, they'll have to abandon a long-held assumption.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
What Climate Information Is Most Useful for Predicting Floods?
Basing forecasts on data that preserve variations over space yield more reliable predictions than using standard numerical measures of climatic cycles' intensity.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Past Phosphorus Runoff Causes Present Oxygen Depletion in Lakes
Sediment cores show how phosphorus pollution in the 1950s led to current, inherited hypoxia in lakes in the Alps.