New research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has uncovered chemical signatures in zircons, the planet’s oldest minerals, that are consistent with subduction and extensive continental crust during the Hadean Eon, more than 4 billion years ago. The findings challenge models that have long considered Earth's earliest times as dominated by a rigid, unmoving “stagnant lid” and no continental crust, with potential implications for the timing of the origin of life on the planet.  

Chemicals brought in to help protect our ozone layer have had the unintended consequences of spreading vast quantities of a potentially toxic ‘forever chemical’ around the globe, a new study shows.

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows how many tropical cities are predicted to warm faster than expected under 2°C of global warming.

Cities are often warmer than rural areas due to a phenomenon known as the urban heat island, which can be influenced by various factors, such as regional climate and vegetation cover. This can lead to increased heat-related health risks for some urban populations.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study combined state-of-the-art climate change projections with machine learning models to show how these urban heat islands can be amplified in many tropical and subtropical cities under climate change - mostly in monsoon regions such as India, China and Western Africa.

Research led by the University of Liverpool has identified magnetic evidence that two immense, ultra-hot rock structures located at the base of Earth’s mantle, around 2,900 kilometres beneath Africa and the Pacific, affect the underlying liquid outer core. The study shows that these enormous blobs of solid, superheated material — encircled by a pole-to-pole ring of cooler rock — have been shaping Earth’s magnetic field for millions of years.