A new study has demonstrated that AI can accurately predict extreme storm surges, offering a powerful new tool for assessing coastal flood risks in a world increasingly affected by climate change. Storm surges are temporary rises in sea level caused primarily by storms and are among the leading causes of coastal flooding. As global sea levels continue to rise, the combination of higher baseline water levels and more intense coastal storms poses a growing threat to the more than 10% of the world’s population living in low-lying coastal regions.
Continue reading “AI improves storm surge forecasting”Global map reveals mycorrhizal fungi
A new study published in the journal Science has produced the first global maps showing the distribution, density, and estimated mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, revealing the enormous scale of one of Earth’s most important yet largely invisible ecosystems. These underground fungal networks play a critical role in supporting plant life, cycling nutrients, and helping regulate the global climate by storing carbon in soils.
Continue reading “Global map reveals mycorrhizal fungi”How oxygen triggered a mass extinction
Earth’s modern atmosphere is often viewed as a prerequisite for life, but the history of oxygen reveals a much more complicated story. Around 2.4 billion years ago, the gas that now sustains most living organisms triggered one of the largest environmental crises in Earth’s history. During an event known as the Great Oxidation Event, oxygen transformed from a biological waste product into a planetary force that reshaped the atmosphere, oceans, climate, and the evolution of life itself.
Continue reading “How oxygen triggered a mass extinction”Brain research could transform AI
Flourish AI is a newly established neuro-AI company that aims to solve two of the biggest limitations of modern artificial intelligence: high energy consumption and the inability of current AI systems to learn continuously after training. Founded by neuroscientist and entrepreneur Reardon, former Amazon executive Rob Williams, and a team of leading researchers, the company seeks to create AI systems that operate more like the human brain. Their vision is to develop a synthetic intelligence that matches the learning efficiency, adaptability, and low power requirements of biological intelligence while avoiding the enormous computational demands of today’s large language models (LLMs).
Continue reading “Brain research could transform AI “Sea level rise explained by new study
A new international study has provided one of the most comprehensive explanations yet for the causes of global ocean expansion and rising coastlines over the past six decades. The research, published in Science Advances, shows that Earth’s oceans are rising at nearly twice the rate observed in the 1960s, confirming that climate change is accelerating the pace of sea level rise worldwide. Scientists say the findings not only improve understanding of the processes driving ocean growth but also resolve a long-standing discrepancy between observed ocean levels and the known factors contributing to them.
Continue reading “Sea level rise explained by new study “Arctic Ocean reaches chemical tipping point
A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment suggests that climate change has triggered a major and potentially irreversible transformation in the chemistry of the Arctic Ocean, with significant consequences for marine ecosystems and the global climate system. Researchers have found that the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice has caused a substantial reduction in nitrate, a nutrient essential for the growth of plankton that form the foundation of the region’s food web.
Continue reading “Arctic Ocean reaches chemical tipping point “AI tracks algal blooms from space
NASA scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence system designed to address one of the most persistent environmental and public health challenges affecting coastal waters: the detection and monitoring of harmful algae outbreaks. The research, recently published in the journal Earth and Space Science, demonstrates how AI can combine data from multiple satellites to identify harmful events in regions such as western Florida and Southern California. The innovation could significantly improve how scientists and local authorities detect and respond to algal blooms before they spread and cause major damage.
Continue reading “AI tracks algal blooms from space”Earth’s outer core changes direction
Scientists have gained new insights into the dynamic processes occurring deep inside Earth after discovering an unexpected reversal in the movement of molten iron within the planet’s core. By analyzing satellite observations and ground-based measurements collected between 1997 and 2025, researchers found that a large region of liquid iron beneath the equatorial Pacific unexpectedly shifted direction around 2010. Previously, the flow had been moving slowly westward, but it suddenly changed and began moving strongly eastward. This surprising behavior challenges long-standing assumptions that the outer core follows relatively stable circulation patterns over long periods of time.
Continue reading “Earth’s outer core changes direction”GCM reveals drivers of ice age climate
Over the past 2.58 million years — a period scientists call the Quaternary — Earth’s climate has swung repeatedly between cold glacial periods and warmer interglacials. A new study in Nature Communications uses a GCM (General Circulation Model) paired with a faster statistical model called an emulator to investigate what drives these shifts. Because running a GCM continuously over millions of years would take decades of supercomputing time, the researchers instead used one to generate 182 training simulations, then used those results to calibrate the emulator.
Continue reading “GCM reveals drivers of ice age climate”Stratosphere cooling explained
Earth’s atmosphere is responding to rising carbon dioxide in a way that reveals one of the clearest signatures of human-caused climate change. While temperatures at Earth’s surface and in the lower atmosphere continue to rise, the stratosphere—the atmospheric layer extending from roughly 11 to 50 kilometers above Earth—has been cooling for decades. Scientists have recognized this unusual contrast since the 1960s, but new research from Columbia University now explains the detailed physical mechanism behind it.
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