Earth & Climate News

September 18, 2026

Top Headlines

Anak Krakatau Blasts Ash Nearly 10 Miles High

Sep. 17, 2026 Anak Krakatau erupted for more than 24 hours in early September, sending volcanic ash up to 50,000 feet into the atmosphere. The ash cloud shut down eight airports, disrupted nearly 3,000 flights, and affected air quality as far away as Jakarta. ...

Scientists Just Discovered Why Arctic Sea Ice Moves so Strangely

Sep. 17, 2026 Arctic sea ice may move in unexpected ways because individual ice floes are constantly colliding and transferring energy. Researchers found that this simple process can explain several long-standing mysteries about how quickly the ice moves and ...

Scientists Turn Seawater Into Fresh Water Without Harmful Brine

Sep. 16, 2026 Scientists have developed a solar-powered desalination system that turns seawater into fresh water while removing nearly all of the leftover salt as a solid instead of producing harmful brine. The self-cleaning technology could also recover valuable ...

Irrigation’s Climate Benefit Could Equal 363 Years of Its Own Emissions

Sep. 16, 2026 U.S. irrigation produces some greenhouse gas emissions, but new research suggests it prevents vastly more by allowing farmers to grow more food on less land. Without irrigation, replacing lost crop yields could require converting natural ecosystems ...

Scientists Stunned as Volcano Cloud Starts Destroying Methane

Sep. 15, 2026 The Hunga Tonga eruption may have triggered a surprising chemical reaction that destroyed some of the methane released into the atmosphere. Scientists say the discovery could reshape estimates of methane pollution and inspire new methods for slowing ...

A Coral Reef Thought Dead for 60 Years Is Teeming with Life

Sep. 14, 2026 More than 60 years after surveys suggested a deep coral reef off Benin was probably dead, scientists have found it alive. Cameras revealed healthy-looking coral patches supporting multiple fish species more than 50 meters beneath the surface. The ...

This German Submarine Sank in 1917. It’s Still Leaking TNT

Sep. 14, 2026 A World War I submarine wreck off Denmark is leaking TNT into the surrounding water, seabed, and marine life more than a century after it sank. Scientists warn that thousands of similar wrecks could pose growing environmental risks as they continue ...

One Mount Etna Eruption Took Weeks. Another Happened in Hours

Sep. 13, 2026 Mount Etna’s ancient eruptions followed radically different paths, with some magma lingering near the surface for weeks while other magma raced upward from nearly 30 kilometers deep in just hours. Scientists traced the difference to volcanic gases ...

Back-to-back Arctic Storms Can Double Sea Ice Loss

Sep. 13, 2026 Scientists have found that Arctic cyclones become especially destructive when several strike one after another. These storm clusters cause about twice as much sea ice loss as isolated cyclones, with impacts that persist roughly two and a half times ...

Global Warming Is Breaking a 400-year Climate Link Between Two Oceans

Sep. 13, 2026 The Indian and Pacific oceans have been climatically linked for centuries, but scientists say that connection is now breaking down in an exceptional way. Ancient climate records suggest volcanoes disrupted the relationship in the past, while today ...

Scientists Find Water Was Fueling Volcanoes 3 Billion Years Ago

Sep. 12, 2026 Ancient rocks from Western Australia suggest water was reaching deep inside Earth more than three billion years ago, long before modern plate tectonics may have fully developed. Researchers propose that water-rich pieces of crust periodically sank ...

Wasps Are Disappearing This Summer, and Scientists Are Worried

Sep. 11, 2026 Britain’s wasps have become mysteriously scarce this summer, and scientists suspect an unusual combination of temperature swings, heatwaves, and food shortages may be responsible. Even the wasps that remain appear unusually small, potentially ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:20am EDT

Scientists “truly Astonished” by Discovery That Challenges Earth’s Origin Story

Sep. 16, 2026 A new study suggests Earth formed almost entirely from material in the inner Solar System, challenging the idea that water-rich material from beyond ...

DNA Solves the Mystery of a Body Found in the Arctic in 1859

Sep. 10, 2026 Scientists have used DNA from living descendants to identify four more members of the doomed Franklin expedition, including Harry Peglar, whose identity had remained uncertain for 166 years. The ...

UNESCO Warns There’s Close to a 100% Chance of a Mediterranean Tsunami

Sep. 10, 2026 The Mediterranean may seem far removed from the world’s major tsunami zones, but history and modern modeling show that destructive waves can strike the French Riviera with surprisingly little ...

Geologists Reveal the Americas Collided Millions of Years Earlier Than Thought

Sep. 9, 2026 Volcanic rocks in Colombia are rewriting the timeline of the collision between Central and South America. Their magnetic signatures show that major ...

Antarctica Gained a Record 695 Billion Tons of Ice. Scientists Found the Surprising Reason

Sep. 6, 2026 East Antarctica gained an astonishing 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing Antarctica’s long-term decline. ...

Indonesia’s Most Dangerous Fires Are Burning Underground

Sep. 6, 2026 Indonesia’s dangerous peat fires are surging early in the 2026 fire season as a strengthening El Niño and severe drought dry out wetlands that can burn underground for months. These slow ...

Extreme Drought Now Covers 44% of Puerto Rico

Sep. 4, 2026 Puerto Rico’s normally rainy season has instead brought a severe and fast-growing drought. By August 25, three-quarters of the territory was in at least moderate drought, with extreme drought ...

Giant Greenland Iceberg Slams Into Joe Island and Survives

Sep. 4, 2026 A giant iceberg measuring more than 76 square kilometers broke from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in August 2026, marking the Arctic’s largest glacier calving event since 2020. The berg later ...

Plants May Be Evolving the Wrong Traits for a Warming World

Sep. 3, 2026 Morning glories may be getting caught in an evolutionary tug-of-war between surviving climate change and attracting increasingly scarce pollinators. Over just nine years, researchers found that the ...

Deep Beneath Mars, Scientists Find a Vast Hidden Magma System

Sep. 3, 2026 Deep beneath Mars, scientists have found evidence of enormous magmatic systems once thought to require Earth-like plate tectonics. Seismic measurements suggest molten rock repeatedly evolved and ...

One of Earth’s Driest Places Was Just Covered in Snow

Sep. 1, 2026 Rare storms covered huge stretches of Chile’s Atacama Desert in snow and dumped extraordinary amounts of rain on one of the driest regions on Earth. The extreme weather shut down observatories, ...

Why Scientists Asked 1,000 People to Bury Their Underwear

Aug. 28, 2026 More than 1,000 volunteers buried cotton underwear across Switzerland to help scientists measure how active different soils are. The faster the fabric disappeared, the more biological activity was ...

Scientists Find a Huge Hidden Ice Reservoir Beneath Utah’s Mountains

Aug. 27, 2026 Beneath the rocky slopes of Mount Timpanogos lies far more ice than anyone walking across the surface might suspect. Researchers used gravity measurements to map the buried glacier in 3D and found it ...

Earth May Have Lost the Sun’s Protective Shield Millions of Years Ago

Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help ...

A Manhattan-Sized Ice Island Just Broke Free from Greenland

Aug. 25, 2026 A huge section of Greenland’s Petermann Glacier has snapped off, forming an ice island about the size of Manhattan. Satellites watched cracks spread rapidly before the 76-square-kilometer slab ...

New Mexico’s Largest Reservoir Plunges to Just 1.4% Full

Sep. 2, 2026 Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico’s largest reservoir, plunged to just 1.4 percent capacity in July 2026 after years of extreme drought and record early snowmelt. The dramatic decline exposed ...

A Lost Mega-Cliff May Explain the Grand Canyon’s Missing Billion Years

Aug. 20, 2026 A colossal cliff system created as the supercontinent Rodinia broke apart may have exposed the heart of the Grand Canyon nearly a billion years before the Colorado River carved it. The ancient ...

This Total Solar Eclipse Looked Strangely Golden — Here’s Why

Aug. 20, 2026 Spain’s total solar eclipse delivered an unexpected sight: a corona glowing gold instead of its usual pearly white. Because the Sun was setting, its light passed through more atmosphere, while ...

The Atlantic Ocean Can Handle More Warming Than Expected — With One Big Catch

Aug. 14, 2026 Scientists have found that the AMOC may be far more vulnerable to rapid warming than to temperature alone. When warming happens slowly, the ocean can adapt, but at faster rates similar to today’s, ...

Australia’s Red Soil May Be Hiding a Massive Clean Energy Source

Aug. 29, 2026 Researchers have discovered that Western Australia’s iron-rich rocks can naturally generate hydrogen and that the process may be boosted to produce much larger amounts. If it can be scaled up, the ...

Marine Heatwaves Are Harming Human Health in Surprising Ways

Aug. 11, 2026 Marine heatwaves are emerging as a threat not just to coral reefs and fisheries, but to human health and well-being. Researchers warn that unusually hot oceans can fuel stronger storms, trigger ...

Manhattan-Sized Ice Island Breaks Off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier

Aug. 26, 2026 A Manhattan-sized ice island has broken away from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier after years of growing fractures weakened its floating ice tongue. Scientists expect two more huge sections could ...

Scientists Turn One of the Hardest Plastics to Recycle Into High-Performance Engine Lubricant

Aug. 29, 2026 Researchers have discovered a way to turn notoriously difficult-to-recycle PVC plastic into a key ingredient used in high-performance lubricants such as engine oil. The technique could give mountains ...

Scientists Discover a Natural Arctic Cloud Factory Missing from Climate Models

Aug. 18, 2026 A newly discovered Arctic process can dramatically boost the number of particles that help form clouds. Near melting sea ice, sunlight reacts with chemicals released by the ocean, algae, and ice, ...

Scientists Turn Starlink Into a Giant Scanner for Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

Aug. 12, 2026 Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they ...

The AMOC Stayed Strong Even as a Major Ocean “lifeline” Nearly Shut Down

Aug. 6, 2026 Ancient seafloor sediments have revealed a surprising twist in how the Atlantic’s massive circulation system works. During a cold period about 3.4 million years ago, the flow of warm, salty water ...

Europe’s Wildfires Became So Intense They Created Their Own Storm

Aug. 5, 2026 Historic wildfires scorched huge areas of Spain and France, with one Spanish blaze burning an area about the size of New York City and a French fire generating a rare, towering fire cloud. A ...

Ancient Arctic Carbon Is Pouring Into the Sea, but the Seabed Captures Most of It

Aug. 3, 2026 Thawing Arctic permafrost is releasing ancient carbon into the ocean, raising fears that microbes could turn it into greenhouse gases and accelerate climate change. But sediment cores collected near ...

Hidden Genetic Diversity Helped Inbred Brown Tree Snakes Conquer Guam

July 26, 2026 A notorious snake invasion that devastated Guam’s native birds may have succeeded because the reptiles carried hidden genetic advantages. Using advanced long-read DNA sequencing, researchers ...

Scientists Put the “recycling Is a Distraction” Claim to the Test

July 25, 2026 Recycling, greener diets, and other personal climate choices do not seem to distract people from supporting major environmental reforms. A four-year study of nearly 2,800 Australians found that these ...