Clouds, smoke and fog may darken the skies, but sediment, algae blooms and organic matter can turn day into night on the seafloor. That’s why an international team of scientists have created the first framework to identify and compare these marine blackouts. The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, introduces the concept of a marine darkwave: a short-term but intense episode of underwater darkness that can severely impact kelp forests, seagrass beds and other light-dependent marine life.

A new study reveals that ozone transported from the upper atmosphere is a widespread and previously underrecognized source of surface ozone across China. By developing a novel identification method via ranking ground observational ozone concentrations, researchers show that these events substantially elevate surface ozone levels, intensify wintertime atmospheric oxidation capacity, and accelerate sulfate and secondary organic aerosol formation.

This review highlights how water-related optical imaging technologies overcome extreme low-light and high-pressure challenges in deep-sea environments, enabling high-resolution vision from surface waters to the Mariana Trench. It explores advanced methods like polarized imaging, single-photon detection, and AI-driven image restoration, offering new tools for ecological monitoring, resource mapping, and autonomous navigation in Earth’s final frontiers.

Over the past two decades ENSO, a climate pattern in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that includes El Niño and La Niña, has been the dominant driver of  total water storage extremes at the global level. What’s more, the researchers found that ENSO has a synchronizing effect on water storage extremes across continents.