Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University showed that agricultural land preserved around river confluences can help mitigate floods. They make a case for Eco-DRR, an approach that uses existing environmental resources to improve resilience against flooding. Statistical analysis showed that municipalities with agricultural land in areas with high water storage potential suffered fewer floods, with stronger correlation when agricultural land was situated near river confluences. The team hope their findings inform effective land usage.

Hail is the result of raindrops being propelled into the coldest parts of the atmosphere. Eventually, stones fall back to Earth, where scientist have been studying for decades how they form. Now, with the help of CT scans, researchers could see the insides of the icy stones without breaking them for the first time. This way they have observed the entire internal structure of exceptionally large hailstones, which might provide important information about future extreme hail events.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) will feature advanced technologies and research ranging from Earth to space sciences during the 24th Annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) Conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., Dec. 9-13.

Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, heatwaves at sea – 2023 set a number of alarming new records. The global mean temperature also rose to nearly 1.5 degrees above the preindustrial level, another record. Seeking to identify the causes of this sudden rise has proven a challenge for researchers. After all, factoring in the effects of anthropogenic influences like the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, of the weather phenomenon El Niño, and of natural events like volcanic eruptions, can account for a major portion of the warming. But doing so still leaves a gap of roughly 0.2 degrees Celsius, which has never been satisfactorily explained. A team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute puts forward a possible explanation for the rise in global mean temperature: our planet has become less reflective because certain types of clouds have declined.

A team led by the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) analysed data from this century’s last Venus solar transit and validated methods to study the atmosphere of Earth-sized exoworlds.