The Seismological Society of America will present its highest honor, the 2026 Harry Fielding Reid Medal, to Peter Shearer, professor of geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

Where does hydrogen in the deep sea come from? An international team led by the University of Bremen addressed this question and discovered an unexpected process occurring beneath the sparsely studied hydrothermal fields at extremely slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges that could play an important role. Particularly at sites where liquids circulate through sediments. Samples from the Jøtul Hydrothermal Field off Norway were analyzed for the study. The findings have been published in the professional journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Published today (Jan. 5) in Nature Geoscience, the findings suggest that this high point on the northwest section of the ice sheet is highly sensitive to the relatively mild temperatures of the Holocene, the interglacial period that began 11,000 years ago and continues today.