Using stable isotopes to uncover a hidden step in Earth’s water cycle The Indian summer monsoon transforms South Asia’s landscape. Rivers swell, reservoirs replenish, crops receive life-sustaining water, and millions await relief after months of intense heat. But what happens to a raindrop between the cloud and the ground? Not every raindrop reaches the surface …[Read More]
“Plants carry traces of past weather. Reading them may help us navigate a hotter, drier world.” Wenli Zhao As global warming intensifies drought frequency, understanding how ecosystems store and deplete water is critical for anticipating vegetation stress. This blog walks us through a novel groundbreaking study published on EGU journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences …[Read More]
When you picture the western Mediterranean, you likely imagine sun-drenched beaches, terracotta roofs, and bright blue skies. But has it always been this sunny? A groundbreaking study published in the journal Research provides a definitive answer: it has not. By pulling back the curtain – or rather, the cloud cover – on a thousand years of …[Read More]
On a humid morning in Augsburg, Germany, on August 10, 1893, a ten-foot iron cylinder roared to life for the first time. The engine belonged to Sir Rudolf Diesel, and running through its veins was not the petroleum distillate we associate with his name today, but in fact, peanut oil! Diesel’s early experiment proved something …[Read More]
On July 20, 1976, a machine of steel and titanium dropped through a thin atmosphere and touched the dirt of Chryse Planitia. Scientists at NASA held their breath, since five years earlier, the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 probe had died less than two minutes after touchdown. To mitigate this nightmare, engineers programmed Viking 1 to …[Read More]
This interview is part of an ongoing series exploring the evolving role of interdisciplinarity across the geosciences. As environmental challenges grow more complex, addressing them requires not only disciplinary expertise but also meaningful collaboration and innovation across fields, methodologies, and communities. In each conversation, I ask Division Presidents to reflect on how cross-divisional work is …[Read More]
38 years ago, representatives from 46 countries around the globe came together to find a solution to the climate crisis. Alerted to an issue discovered by scientists 13 years previously, the representatives of these nations worked together swiftly and with purpose to create an international treaty to combat a major environmental issue. The treaty was …[Read More]
This Halloween, we turn our gaze from fictional haunts to the chilling, rigorous world of paleoclimatology. The paper by Hartmann et al. (2025), published on Climate of the Past, focuses on the implementation of external forcings in a regional climate model around the 1257 CE Samalas volcanic eruption. This paper can be quite the unsettling …[Read More]
As the world commemorates the 35th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate this landmark agreement’s monumental impact on our planet. Officially known as the “Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer,” this treaty stands as one of the most successful environmental accords in history, showcasing what humanity …[Read More]
Until recently, scientists assumed lightning had a homogeneous distribution of energy inside its channel. But researchers like Damien Bestard, a PhD student with the Sorbonne Université have found that the composition of each bolt is quite variable. Bestard presented his findings at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly EGU23 on Monday (April 24). As part …[Read More]