All things geology, climate, oceans, and more
Australia just can’t seem to catch a break. The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather update Thursday noting that the current heat wave that began on the northwestern part of the continent earlier this week is making its way southeast, toward the region where the bushfires continue to burn. This is bad, bad news…
A collaboration between physicists and citizen scientists has led to the discovery of a previously unknown form of Northern Lights. Dubbed “the dunes,” the spectacular auroral form is providing new insights into Earth’s upper atmosphere. New research published today in AGU Advances describes the auroral dunes, which appear as undulating, green-tinged waves in the night…
On Tuesday afternoon, a major magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Jamaica. The shaking could reportedly be felt on land and tsunami warnings went up for Belize, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, and Jamaica. The U.S. Geological Survey issued a report on the quake just before 2:30 p.m. local time. It was…
A grim report from the United Nations warns that unusually large swarms of locusts will be descending upon East Africa in the coming months, in what could be the worst infestation in a quarter century. The pests could pose a serious risk to crops and livelihoods in the region. “The current swarms represent an unprecedented…
Tossa de Mar is an absurdly beautiful vacation town in Catalonia, Spain. It’s got clear blue water views, a variety of European cuisines, and for a limited time only, massive amounts of weird ass sea foam. A powerful storm blasted the region on Tuesday, turning the ocean into a tempest. That whipped up a thick…
It’s cold in Florida, so you know what that means: falling iguanas. No, seriously. The National Weather Service Miami office issued a warning Tuesday that temperatures could dip into the 30s and 40s on Wednesday, leading to iguanas plummeting out of trees. And Twitter users confirmed Wednesday morning that many iguanas did, in fact, do…
A 70-kilometer-wide (43-mile) impact structure in the Australian Outback has been dated to 2.2 billion years old, making it the oldest known asteroid crater on Earth. Fascinatingly, this asteroid likely plunged into a massive ice sheet, triggering a global-scale warming period. New research published today in Nature Communications confirms the Yarrabubba crater in western Australia…
It’s been one hell of a weekend in eastern Canada. Less of a “snow day,” more of a—and, yes, this is a real weather term—“bomb cyclone.” The capital of Newfoundland, St. John’s, was hit with 30 inches of snow in 24 hours, shattering a previous record, the Weather Channel reported. Officials also recorded snowdrifts as…
Scientists have new evidence in their quest to settle the longstanding debate about whether it was a gigantic meteorite or massive volcanic eruptions that triggered the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. A curious thing about the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction is that two apocalyptic-scale events happened at roughly the same time. Some 66…
Australia has been on fire. Perhaps you’ve heard. After months of relentless heat and bone-dry conditions, parts of the continent are finally seeing much-needed rainfall. That could help quell the fires, but heavy downpours have also already led to debris flows, adding insult to injury in a country that really doesn’t need any more pain.…
A volcanic eruption in the Philippines spewed hot lava and ash on Monday. Officials have now advised hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. The Taal volcano, which is the second most active volcano in the Philippines, sits 37 miles from the capital of Manila. It began erupting on Sunday, shooting ash and…
Approximately one-third of Australia’s Kangaroo Island has been torched by recent wildfires, as new satellite photos reveal. Given the island’s ecological importance, it’s a tragedy for the ages. Known as Australia’s “Galapagos Island,” Kangaroo Island is located south of South Australia, around 112 kilometers (70 miles) southwest of Adelaide. It’s Australia’s third largest island after…
The Indonesian capital of Jakarta experienced some of the worst flooding in nearly a decade as the new year began this week. At least 43 people have died and nearly 400,000 have been left displaced. More rains are expected in the coming week, further adding to the country’s watery woes. As a last-ditch effort to…
Significant portions of Australia’s southeast coast are completely blanketed in thick smoke, as revealed by these upsetting new satellite images. New images posted to NASA’s Earth Observatory show the grim effects of Australia’s historically bad wildfire season, which continues to worsen. A natural-color photo (above) taken on July 24, 2019 by the Landsat 8 satellite…
There are few things as soothing as desert snow, the rough and spiky landscape smoothed over by a layer of frozen flakes. That’s exactly what happened this week in Joshua Tree National Park after an extremely powerful storm ripped across the region. To get snow in this corner of the Mojave Desert, you need two…
I was sitting in a meeting around 3 p.m. when everyone’s phones began buzzing simultaneously. Alerts rang out all around G/O Media’s offices as the National Weather Service blasted out a snow squall warning. Now look, as Earther’s resident weather dude, I knew this warning had to mean business. Sending a push alert to millions…
There’s heat, and then there’s Australia heat. The country set a new record for its hottest day Tuesday as the average maximum temperature across Australia reached 40.9 degrees Celsius (105.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in January 2013. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology announced this…
Back in May 2018, Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano kickstarted a months-long eruption that would turn out to be the most destructive in its history. Its Halema’uma’u summit crater progressively collapsed and consumed its surroundings, while magma draining from below fed rivers and fountains of lava streaming out of its eastern flanks. Ultimately, the volcano expelled some…
White Island is home to New Zealand’s most active volcano. And on Monday, it erupted while tourists were visiting, and police reports indicate there are “no signs of life.” The volcano sits northeast of New Zealand’s North Island in the Bay of Plenty. Despite experiencing regular eruptions—most recently in 2016—the volcano has been a major…
A spectacular cirrus arc, which stretched from Nebraska to northern Minnesota and Canada, foreshadowed the recent winter storms in the Midwest and New England. This cirrus arc was imaged on November 28 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, according to the NASA Earth Observatory. A meteorological phenomenon known as jet…
