EurekAlert! News by Subject: Earth Science

Earth Science

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 23-Oct-2026 03:16 ET (23-Oct-2026 07:16 GMT/UTC)

29-Jun-2026

Scientists find ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole, MIT scientists have found. Using modern tools, they also determined that carbon tetrachloride, a common dry-cleaning and degreasing agent, was at the root of early ozone loss.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, European Commission

29-Jun-2026

Detection of Earth’s free oscillations utilizing TianQin

Beijing Institute of Technology Press Co., Ltd
Peer-Reviewed Publication

As humanity's exploration of the Earth's internal structure deepens, Earth's free oscillations, serving as crucial "fingerprints" for revealing the large-scale structure and dynamic processes within the Earth, have always been a core subject in geophysics. Ground-based station observations are currently the mainstream method for measuring Earth's free oscillations. With the advancement of space technology, high-precision inter-satellite distance measurement holds the potential to become a novel method for detecting these oscillations.

29-Jun-2026

Methane munchers in the deep sea rapidly respond to a seabed methane leak

Science China Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Human activity and climate change are estimated to increase the amount of seabed methane leakage. Much of the methane could be consumed by microbes, yet it is unclear how quickly such communities establish. Through six-year seabed monitoring, researchers found that an animal-microbe “biofilter” removing up to100% of the dissolved methane can develop in just 2–3 years, not the decades once thought. Fast-growing methane-oxidizing microbes feed burrowing animals, which churn the seafloor like tiny gardeners to help the microbes feast on the greenhouse gas. This discovery improves our understanding of seafloor methane removal capacity, which is critical to assess the effects of global warming and anthropogenic disturbance in the deep sea.

Journal: National Science Review

29-Jun-2026

Not all soil fungi equally drive carbon cycling: widespread saprotrophs identified as the hidden engine of soil carbon decomposition

Science China Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A recent study published in National Science Review reveals that soil fungi with broad geographic distributions play a disproportionately important role in carbon decomposition. By combining nationwide field surveys across China, and DNA stable isotope probing experiments, researchers found that widespread saprotrophic fungi, not locally diverse but narrowly distributed species, are the main active decomposers of plant residues. The findings establish occupancy as a key biogeographic property linking microbial diversity to ecosystem functioning.

Journal: National Science Review

29-Jun-2026

How a landmark study revealed the Great Barrier Reef’s survival over 30,000 years of upheaval

University of Sydney
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international expedition including University of Sydney researchers has pieced together the clearest picture yet of how the Great Barrier Reef responded to dramatic environmental change over the past 30,000 years. Multiple studies since the expedition more than 10 years ago traced the reef’s retreat, regrowth and repeated collapse from the last ice age to the dawn of the modern reef.

Journal: Marine Geology
Funder: Australian Research Council

29-Jun-2026

Rivers in the sky over Antarctica, captured in 3D

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Atmospheric rivers are responsible for transporting moisture and play an important role in snowfall over the ice sheet. However, conventional two-dimensional detection methods have been unsuccessful at capturing these systems accurately. Now, researchers have developed a new 3D algorithm for the detection of atmospheric rivers. Their findings reveal that atmospheric rivers form vertically structured moisture plumes that exert strong control over Antarctic precipitation and its long-term variability.

Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
Funder: JST SPRING, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, The Science Program of the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE), The National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan

28-Jun-2026

Rediscovery of once-lost super-sized Megalodon vertebrae

Museum Sønderjylland
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Gram, Denmark — An associated set of gigantic vertebrae belonging to the iconic extinct Megalodon or megatooth shark that had been missing in action since the 1980s was discovered, providing new information about the shark’s lifestyle. Two Museum of Southern Jutland staff, Mette Elstrup and Trine Sørensen, and a researcher at Aarhus University, Henrik Lauridsen, teamed up with a scientist in the United States and another in Australia and took a renewed look at a once-lost vertebral specimen of Otodus megalodon, the fossil shark that lived nearly worldwide about 15 to 3.6 million years ago. The new study appears in the international journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

Journal: Palaeontologia Electronica