Salt marshes, those critical habitats that protect coastal towns from flooding, store massive amounts of blue carbon, support fisheries and play a key role in ecological resilience, are struggling to survive as oceans rise due to climate change. A new study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Geological Survey reveals a previously undiscovered source of the sediments that are key to the salt marshes’ survival: the ocean. The research, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, relies on an innovative method of working with satellite data to see a process that has been hitherto invisible and holds immediate implications for coastal management.

A new regional assessment shows that Southeast Asia is a major net source of greenhouse gases, with land-use change and rising fossil fuel use overwhelming natural carbon sinks, reservoirs that store carbon-containing chemical compounds for a long period. 

Global warming accelerates glacier melting, which releases antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) into downstream ecosystems, poses a threat to ecological security and human health. Revealing the distribution and potential risks of ARGs in glaciers is crucial for assessing the impact of glacier melting caused by climate change on downstream ecosystems. Based on the above background, a research team of the Center for Pan-third Pole Environment of Lanzhou University published “Profiles and risk assessment of antibiotic resistome between Qinghai-Xizang Plateau and Polar Regions”.

Aviation’s climate impact extends beyond carbon dioxide emissions. A new study from Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Imperial College, UK, reveals that contrails can represent a significant portion of aviation’s overall climate cost. The study also shows that climate impact can be reduced by optimising flight routes.

In a new article in Nature Communications, The social costs of aviation CO₂ and contrail cirrus, the researchers demonstrate that both CO₂ emissions and contrail formation contribute materially to aviation’s climate impact – and that the associated societal costs differ substantially depending on weather patterns and routing decisions. They find that, at the global level, contrails account for about 15 percent of aviation’s climate impact when measured in economic terms.

Intense storms that sweep over the Southern Ocean enable the ocean to absorb more heat from the atmosphere. New research from the University of Gothenburg shows that today’s climate models underestimate how storms mix the ocean and thereby give less reliable future projections of our climate.

How much longer will glaciers survive? A new study from ETH Zurich researchers offers the first detailed projection of how many glaciers could vanish by the year 2100 due to global warming – and why regions such as Switzerland will be most affected. This approach could also help policymakers, the tourism industry and natural hazard management plan for the future.

To address the global environmental and climate crisis and advance the UN SDGs, it is essential to fully leverage Earth observations (EO) through the integration of atmospheric, hydrological, cryospheric, lithospheric, ecological, and socio-economic data. Based on discussions from the 2023 “Towards Global Earth Observatory” workshop, this paper highlights the fragmented nature of current EO and data repositories and emphasizes the need for a more coordinated global Ground-Based Earth Observatory (GGBEO). We summarize the status of key in-situ and ground-based remote sensing systems and outline the actions required to build an integrated GGBEO with interoperable data repositories, unified observation networks, and sustainable long-term support.