EurekAlert! News by Subject: Earth Science

Earth Science

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 8-May-2026 08:16 ET (8-May-2026 12:16 GMT/UTC)

8-May-2026

New research proposes Dante’s Inferno modelled a planetary impact 500 years before modern science!

European Geosciences Union
Reports and Proceedings

What if Dante’s Inferno wasn’t just poetry? New research suggests the 14th-century epic may have quietly mapped the mechanics of a planetary impact, centuries before modern meteoritics existed.

7-May-2026

Predicting the carbon cost of land-use change in Bangladesh’s Chittagong hill tracts

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study warns that continuing forest loss and land-use change in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts could steadily reduce the region’s ability to store carbon, with measurable environmental and economic consequences by 2043.

Journal: Carbon Research

7-May-2026

Wildfire smoke risks understudied, review paper warns

University of California - Riverside
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A review paper by scientists at the University of California, Riverside argues that the health risks of wildfire smoke, while widely acknowledged, remain poorly understood at a biological level, and calls for a major shift in research priorities.

Journal: Frontiers in Public Health

7-May-2026

[Research Article] A tool for crop phenology metrics analysis from big Earth observation data

Big Earth Data
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study published in Big Earth Data presents phenological metrics derived from Earth observation (EO) satellite time series—such as greening onset, senescence, and growing season length—which are essential for crop monitoring but challenged by the massive scale of EO data exceeding local processing capacities, and introduces a free, open-source Web Crop Phenology Metrics Service (WCPMS) built on the Brazil Data Cube platform for server-side extraction from large datasets. It further demonstrates the tool’s effectiveness by estimating soybean sowing dates in Brazil using phenological metrics and validating the results against field data.

Journal: Big Earth Data

7-May-2026

What a devastating earthquake revealed about future quake risk

University of Southern California
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A study of the 2025 Myanmar earthquake, published in Science, found that seemingly “simple” faults can behave in surprisingly complex ways. Small differences in how parts of a fault move over time may influence where quakes start and how far they spread. The findings could improve risk estimates for major faults, including California’s San Andreas.

Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China

7-May-2026

Thawing Arctic soil awakens only half of soil microbes, new study reveals

Queen Mary University of London
Peer-Reviewed Publication

As Arctic temperatures rise, frozen soils are thawing for longer periods—but new research shows this doesn’t fully activate the life hidden underground. Instead, only about half of soil microbes “wake up,” meaning greenhouse gas release depends on which microbes respond, and how quickly, rather than warming alone.

Journal: mSystems

7-May-2026

Asst Prof Gianmarco Mengaldo appointed to AI Advisory Group at World Meteorological Organization

National University of Singapore College of Design and Engineering
Grant and Award Announcement

The appointment recognises his expertise at the intersection of AI, weather and climate science, and strengthens Singapore’s contribution to international efforts in this space.