Environment – New Scientist

Few volcanos come with more risk than Mexico's Popocatépetl, situated near Mexico City.  To mitigate danger, volcanologist Chiara Maria Petrone is trying to predict its next eruption

When most people are asked to name a river, they often reach for the Amazon or Nile, but these aren’t the only remarkable rivers out there. Here are 10 more from around the world – and solar system

Once seen as miraculous, these days ice is no longer extraordinary. But in a winter season when Antarctic sea ice hit a historic low, it is clear we should cherish it more, says Max Leonard

Iceland is bracing for a volcanic eruption, as thousands of small earthquakes have shaken the southern part of the Reykjanes peninsula since October

A 15-kilometre-long mass of lava has formed underneath the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland and could erupt at any time

Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the largest lake in South America, has been captured in detail by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission

Two strange, high-density blobs buried more than a kilometre underground may have come from the ancient world Theia, which is thought to have slammed into Earth to create the moon

The Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago filled the sky with fine silicate dust, which blocked out sunlight and lingered for 15 years

A better picture of the hidden landscape beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica could help us understand how the ice will respond to climate change

Earth’s iron-rich inner core may owe some of its surprising softness to the motion of atoms, suggest experiments with iron at high temperature and pressure coupled to AI simulations

Analysis of tree rings shows that two faults near Seattle, Washington ruptured at the same time or soon after each other more than 1000 years ago – a repeat today would cause a major disaster in the region

If humans still exist millions of years from now, they will face inhospitably warm conditions on a supercontinent centred at the equator. Most land mammals won't be able to survive

Understanding how the world’s largest-known collection of pink diamonds came to the surface in Australia around 1.3 billion years ago could help us find hidden deposits elsewhere in the world

An independent task force formed by NASA to look into unidentified anomalous phenomena found no evidence of alien craft, and suggests that if we want to find proof of visitors we need better data

The destruction of telecommunications cables during the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in 2022 shows that underwater debris currents can travel at 122 kilometres per hour

Climate researchers thought that current global average sea levels were the highest in more than 100,000 years, but new models suggest oceans just 6000 years ago may have been higher than at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and possibly even higher than today

A 33-million-year-old layer of Earth's crust is laced with helium-3, which is normally only found in space. Now we might have an explanation for how it got there

An analysis of GPS data has revealed a slow and otherwise undetectable slip of tectonic plates that begins two hours before an earthquake - but detecting this in advance would require more accurate sensors

This photo of Tungurahua, a volcano exploding in the Ecuadorian night, comes from an illustrated book to accompany a TV series about Earth’s deep history

Geologists hoping to declare a new epoch dominated by humanity’s influence on Earth have chosen Crawford Lake in Canada as the location where the start of the Anthropocene is defined

Chris Packham's new BBC series, Earth, looks at significant moments in Earth's history, including anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss, "It's not a sixth mass extinction event that we're precipitating," he says, "it's a mass extermination event"

Earth appears to have less mass beneath a certain part of the Indian Ocean compared with the rest of the planet. Plumes of magma at the location could explain why

Changes in the distribution of groundwater around the planet between 1993 and 2010 were enough to make Earth's poles drift by 80 centimetres

From a photograph of algae choking an Indian river to a shocking depiction of the wearing away of the UK coast, these are some of the pictures in the running for the contest

The Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii has begun erupting, spewing volcanic gas and ash across the island

Pressure on the San Andreas fault from a now-dried lake could have been sufficient to trigger past major earthquakes in California. The lake’s disappearance could explain why there have been no such quakes for nearly 300 years

An oil company in China has started drilling a hole that would be the deepest in the country and among the deepest in the world

A link between volcanic activity and rising bubbles of low pressure in the ionosphere has now been proven, which may be why the colossal Tonga volcano eruption in 2022 disrupted satellite communications

The second series of this show about Earth 66 million years ago is a joy to watch - but it inspires more than it informs. A little more science would have been nice

Semi-mythical "earthquake lights" may be accompanied by changes to Earth's magnetic field. Now researchers say these changes could be used to forecast major tremors

A well in Nebraska is the first in the world to have been drilled in search of naturally occurring geologic hydrogen, but tests to determine how much of the gas it might supply are on hold because of a broken pump

The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia on 11 April sent plumes of volcanic ash many kilometres into the air and could affect flights

Carbon emissions within the next 50 years could lead to a tipping point where large parts of the Greenland ice sheet melt over the next 10,000 years

Billions of years ago, crushed quartz reacting with water could have created the conditions needed for the evolution of the photosynthetic microbes responsible for most of the oxygen now in Earth’s atmosphere

Tiny pieces of stone found in a rock formation in Western Australia may be the oldest evidence of a meteorite impact on Earth, dating back nearly 3.5 billion years

Geologists think there may be vast natural stores of hidden hydrogen gas within Earth, but no one is sure how much there is or how much could be recovered for energy

From a sea turtle and diver swimming in harmony in Malaysia to a red-eyed tree frog in its Costa Rican rainforest home, take a peek at some of the winning entries in one of the most prestigious photography competitions

Launching a million tonnes of moon dust around Earth could dim sunlight across our planet by 1.8 per cent. This would reduce the global temperature, but whether it would be worth the resources, and the risks involved in such a strategy, are unclear

Olivier Grunewald took this image of the Icelandic volcano's central crater filled with lava, forming a fiery lake of liquid rock

At least 1500 people have died in Turkey and Syria after a 7.8-magnitude quake followed by a 7.5-magnitude quake in the same region less than 10 hours later

Rock weathering has helped keep Earth’s climate relatively stable for millions of years, but the process isn't fast enough to keep up with human carbon emissions

Turbidity currents are cascades of sediment that tumble down Earth’s 9000 submarine canyons carrying carbon, plastics and pharmaceuticals into the deep sea. We are finally learning just how often these dramatic events occur.

Measurements of seismic waves travelling through Earth’s inner core indicate that its rotation may be slowing, switching its direction relative to the rest of the planet’s spin

My new novel The Terraformers explores what you might include - and leave out - if you were building an Earth-like planet. I spoke to some scientists to see what might work, says Annalee Newitz

The Deep Sea Explorers project is calling for volunteers to help remove noise from data collected by a neutrino telescope at the bottom of the sea, finds Layal Liverpool

The coming year will be a turning point for the Amazon rainforest, artificial intelligence and even our diets. Let's choose a more hopeful direction for humanity

Christopher Ison's photo of Storm Eunice and Zhenhuan Zhou’s shot of Niagara Falls covered in ice have taken the top prizes in the Royal Meteorological Society’s annual competition

This year, there were the lows of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, soaring prices and extreme weather, and the highs of an accelerating shift to green energy and space wonders from the James Webb Space Telescope

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga on 15 January 2022 created 90-metre high tsunamis and shot ash 57 kilometres into the sky

Can you match these pictures of poo to the animal responsible? This quiz from naturalist Chris Packham is a bit of fun - but you will learn some fascinating faeces facts along the way

A century and a half after HMS Challenger embarked on the first global survey of the ocean, some ideas from the era still linger. They urgently need to be left behind, says Helen Scales

An intense and moving documentary tells the story of tourists caught on the volcanic island of Whakaari when it erupted in 2019

It took a lot of meat to feed even one species of large carnivorous dinosaur, so how did several survive side-by-side in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods without starving? We might finally have the answer

There is more melted rock under Yellowstone Caldera – a volcano in Wyoming – than was previously estimated, but that doesn’t change the likelihood of an eruption

For the first time in nearly 40 years, the world’s largest active volcano is erupting in Hawaii, after weeks of increased activity at the caldera

Light pollution disrupts animals and has also been linked to human ailments. Bat scientist Johan Eklöf has some useful fixes in his new book

We knew earthquakes and heavy rain could initiate landslides, but now it seems alterations in atmospheric pressure can do it too if combined with certain conditions on the ground

The plume ejected by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in January entered the mesosphere, the layer of atmosphere above the stratosphere, twice during the eruption

A new season of the BBC Earth Podcast kicks off with Safari, an episode that encourages us to engage with nature, whether it is in the Scottish rainforests or just the scruffy green patch outside your office

From bees hunting for a mate to a giant sea star procreating, these incredible images are some of the winners in the prestigious wildlife photography competition

This image of a flock of galahs taking off from a tree was captured by artist and photographer Christian Spencer, while out driving in Australia's Strzelecki desert

Melting ice has increased how fast Arctic waters are absorbing carbon dioxide, making them more acidic faster. The change could disrupt entire marine ecosystems

These arresting images of industrial developments in Senegal, South Africa and Namibia were taken by Edward Burtynsky, who spent four years capturing African landscapes using aerial photography

The spectre of climate change hangs over David Attenborough’s follow-up to Frozen Planet, while two new nature documentary series, Epic Adventures With Bertie Gregory and Super/Natural, are no match for the veteran presenter

A machine learning algorithm can assess how likely it is that a large earthquake will hit a region over the next few years, which could one day help mitigate damage from future quakes

A possible impact crater under the sea off West Africa might have been made by a smaller piece that broke off the asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs

Geologist Ludovic Ferrière travels the world in search of undiscovered impact craters left behind by asteroids and comets striking Earth. He tells us how he finds them

Some scientists suggest minerals should be reorganised by the methods that make them, which would increase the known number of minerals on Earth by 75 per cent

An earthquake near the city of Khōst in south-east Afghanistan has killed nearly a thousand people and injured hundreds

To make sense of the fact that adaptation can happen quickly and yet true evolutionary change seems to take forever, biologists suggest that evolution runs on two very different clocks

Increasing numbers of space launches will put more black carbon high in the atmosphere, where it can trap heat from the sun

Picture of a salt lake in southern Ukraine is shortlisted for Earth Photo 2022, a competition that aims to celebrate the environment and its inhabitants

Ice streams in Antarctica carry ice from the continent’s centre to the ocean, and there appears to be a huge amount of water buried beneath one, which may affect its flow

For decades, planetary scientists have been trying to understand the origins of two colossal geological anomalies inside our planet. New insights suggest they could be leftovers from a cosmic collision

We have now discovered all four building blocks of DNA in meteorite samples, suggesting that space rocks may have delivered the compounds to Earth, contributing to the origin of life

The sounds of cities can make it hard to discern the underground signals that indicate an earthquake is happening, but deep learning algorithms could filter out this noise

Negotiators are hammering out a bold plan to set aside 30 per cent of global land and sea area for nature by the end of the decade. But can they succeed – and will it work?

River, a new film narrated by Willem Dafoe with music by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Jonny Greenwood and Radiohead, documents Earth's waterways from stunning new perspectives

Fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field that repeat every seven years can be used to probe the inner workings of our planet

DNA sequencing has revealed that a bright pink lake on an island off Western Australia gets its colour from a mix of salt-loving bacteria and algae

The Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago saw a huge variety of animals evolve – and also led to carbon being buried in the seabed and ultimately carried into the planet’s mantle

The first evidence of a respiratory infection in a dinosaur suggests that a 15-year-old diplodocid suffered from coughing, sneezing and fever before dying

It is time for geology to embrace our sustainable future and, in turn, be accorded the respect it deserves as a discipline crucial to understanding the world and our relationship to it

Whether we are in a new geological epoch is still up for debate, but geologists have almost decided where on Earth should be the official birthplace of the Anthropocene

The underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption has already triggered a tsunami, a sonic boom and thousands of lightning bolts, and could now lead to acid rain

Geologists may need to come up with a new explanation for the sources of volcanic activity in places like Iceland and Hawaii

The movement of seawater in a tsunami generates a magnetic field that travels ahead of changes in sea level, which could help us predict and prepare for it

Netflix disaster-satire film Don’t Look Up is a cathartic and hilarious allegory of humanity's hapless efforts to deal with climate change.

Once eclipsed by wind and solar, £20 million worth of UK government subsidies mean tidal power may finally begin to make waves

Tanzania's Ol Doinyo Lengai spews out bizarre black lava, which could help solve mysteries of the planet's mantle.

Humans have affected every aspect of life on Earth – from hunting prehistoric beasts to changing the climate – and the illusion that pristine nature still exists undermines our efforts to make a better world, says environmental writer Emma Marris

Evidence from asteroids shows that charged particles from the sun can turn dust grains into water – a process that could be useful for space exploration too

Small modular reactors are being pitched as an affordable and fast way to decarbonise power grids but questions about the technology abound

Tanzania's Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only volcano known to spew out carbonatite lava, which could offer fresh clues about Earth's mysterious mantle – but getting hold of a sample is no simple matter

Ecosystems such as forests and peatlands are vital stores for carbon, but less than a quarter of these areas worldwide have protected status

Trapped inside a tiny diamond, there are tinier crystals of a never-before-seen mineral that makes up 5 per cent of the lower mantle

Earth observation satellites have detected leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the US, Algeria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

As the COP26 summit in Glasgow meets to discuss global action on climate change, atmospheric scientist Betsy Weatherhead explains what the science says about greenhouse gases and global warming

Saildrone has captured footage from inside Hurricane Sam.

Thousands of synthetic substances have leaked into ecosystems everywhere, and we are only just beginning to realise the devastating consequences