Air quality in America’s largest cities has steadily improved thanks to tighter regulations. However, increased heat, wildfire smoke and other emerging global drivers of urban aerosol pollution are now combining to create a new set of challenges on the East Coast. Research from Colorado State University published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science begins to unpack and characterize these developing relationships against the backdrop of New York City.

Tokyo faces severe risks due to soil liquefaction, a phenomenon where the ground behaves like a liquid during strong seismic events. To improve existing hazard maps, researchers from Japan developed a new framework that combines extensive borehole data with artificial neural networks. Their model can accurately predict soil properties, producing high-resolution 3D liquefaction hazard maps, helping to improve earthquake risk management in Tokyo and other vulnerable megacities.

What processes have regulated climate over the course of Earth’s history? Researchers are addressing this question in the face of anthropogenic climate change. Dr. Dominik Hülse of MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, and Dr. Andy Ridgwell of the University of California (USA) have uncovered a previously missing part of the puzzle in describing the global carbon cycle and climate regulation. In a new issue of the professional journal Science, they introduce an expanded Earth System model that shows how global warming can be overcorrect into an ice age.

A new Research Unit is studying the medieval way of life in the Wadden Sea region in North Frisia (Schleswig-Holstein) and how human intervention at that time resulted in massive transformation of this coastal landscape. The Research Unit, entitled 'Times of Rise and Failure – TORF', is undertaking seven subprojects in various natural science and humanities disciplines. It will be financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) over the next four years.

In July 2024, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Calama, Chile, damaging buildings and causing power outages. A sequence of events, discovered by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, helped supercharge its strength. In a recent study in Nature Communications the researchers describe the chain of events that was responsible for increasing the earthquake’s intensity.

Wildfire-born storms have become a growing part of fire seasons across the West, with lasting impacts on air quality, weather, and climate. Until now, scientists have struggled to replicate them in Earth system models, hindering our ability to predict their occurrence and understand their impacts on the global climate. Now, a new study provides a breakthrough by developing a novel wildfire-Earth system modeling framework.