Earth
What storm waves do to a salt marsh
A marsh can keep its ground while damage to its plants weakens part of its wave protection.
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Earth & Oceans
Follow water, weather and a changing planet, from ocean depths to the clouds above.
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The Periodic Landscape
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Earth
How groundwater moves through solid-looking rock
Groundwater usually does not travel through hidden rivers. It follows connected pores and fractures, driven by differences in water level and pressure.
Earth
Why rivers make their own bends
A river bend is not merely a curve in the bank. The curve reorganises pressure, flow and sediment, then those changes move the curve itself.
Climate
How scientists discovered the greenhouse effect
No one saw the whole mechanism at once. A planetary puzzle became a cylinder experiment, then a measurement of invisible radiation, then a calculation about climate.
Weather
Why deserts can become cold at night
The ground does not wait until sunset to lose heat. Darkness changes the balance. Dry air, clouds, wind and stored warmth decide what happens next.
Oceans
How sea ice differs from an iceberg
Both float in the ocean, but one freezes there while the other arrives from land. Their different beginnings change their salt content, behaviour and place in the climate system.
Oceans
How scientists map a seafloor they cannot see
A depth map begins with an echo, but making it trustworthy requires clocks, water profiles, ship-motion corrections and an honest account of what remains unknown.
Earth
Earth's magnetic field: a moving source beneath our feet
A compass appears calm, but its direction is maintained by turbulent, electrically conducting metal thousands of kilometres below. The result is always changing.
Oceans
How rogue waves become unusually large
A North Sea measurement turned an extraordinary wave into evidence. Understanding it means looking at the surrounding sea, the timing of crests, and the limits of a forecast.
Oceans
Why oceans look blue, green or brown
Ocean colour is a record of which wavelengths entered the water, which were absorbed, and which escaped again after meeting water molecules, plankton, sediment and dissolved material.
Weather
How clouds stay aloft while holding water
Gravity never switches off inside a cloud. Its droplets remain overhead because they are extraordinarily small, fall slowly through air and live inside a constantly moving system.
Oceans
Life powered by chemistry at hydrothermal vents
Far below sunlight, seawater circulates through hot rock and returns carrying chemical fuel. Microbes turn the resulting reactions into an ecosystem.
Weather
Why some places get far more lightning
A lightning map is also a map of heat, moisture, rising air and terrain. The ingredients are widespread, but geography assembles them very unevenly.
Oceans
How ocean currents move heat
The ocean does not merely store solar energy. Winds, rotating basins and density differences carry it across latitudes and exchange it with the atmosphere.
Oceans
How tiny animals build coral reefs
A reef is not a single organism or a pile of dead rock. It is a living construction site where growth, cementing and erosion never stop.
Weather
Sprites and blue jets: electrical flashes above storms
Lightning is not confined beneath a cloud. Brief red and blue discharges can reach upward through atmospheric layers most storms never touch.
Oceans
Why a tsunami is not an ordinary wave
A tsunami can cross an ocean almost unnoticed, then drive water far inland. Its extraordinary behaviour begins with the amount of ocean set in motion.
Oceans
The organisms that make the sea glow
A blue flash in a breaking wave is a biological event. Beneath the surface, living light can attract a meal, announce danger or conceal its maker.
Weather
Lightning rods: a history of protection
The small metal point on a roof is only the visible beginning of a much larger idea: give a dangerous discharge a controlled route.
Oceans
Life under extraordinary ocean pressure
A fragile-looking animal can live where an air-filled chamber needs a strong hull. The difference begins with what is inside.
Oceans
Why the sea rises and falls
The Moon sets a rhythm, the Sun changes its strength, and every coastline gives the tide a different response.
Weather
Why thunder arrives after lightning
The pause is a travel time. The rolling sound is a clue to the shape of the flash and the atmosphere carrying its voice.
Weather
Before the flash: how a storm builds lightning
The bolt lasts an instant. Its preparation takes a cloud full of moving ice, separated charges and air pushed beyond its insulating limits.
Oceans
Why seawater is salty and rivers mostly are not
The sea keeps a chemical record of rain on rocks, water returning to the sky and reactions beneath the ocean floor.