NEW – Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires ✍️ @giulianaviglione.bsky.social and @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org 💬 With comments from @calxcunningham.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/pDQGTR3
James Dinneen
@jamesdinneen.bsky.social
Science journalist reporting on Earth for @nature.com; writing book about the deep interior of Earth for @vikingbooks.bsky.social. Send tips via Signal @jamesnesw.44. Email is easy to find. Newsletter: northeastsouthwest.substack.com
Fire suppression in Europe has led to an overall decline in wildfire since the 80s, despite a global warming-fueled rise in risky fire weather. That can't last. "This is the kind of trend that is unstoppable." New in @nature.com:🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Fires in Europe are breaking records: here’s what the future holds
Countries such as Spain and France can expect fire regimes more like those of California as climate change favours hot, dry conditions, scientists suggest.
nature.com
Quanta hitting it out of the park with this here cow
Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · last wk.Cows can eat up to 100lbs daily, thanks to the bustling microbiome in their gut pouch. All that digestion results in a whole lot of cow burps. And all those cow burps are warming our planet. Scientists are exploring new ways to squelch the belch. www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-way-th...
Latest inventory of pyrocumulonimbus events suggests that the past three years (2023-25) saw more fire clouds than any year back to 2013. But researchers told me record is still to short and sketchy to detect any trend, climate-related or otherwise.
James Dinneen@jamesdinneen.bsky.social · last wk.But data on this pyroCb smoke remains sparse. With only a single sample of fresh smoke collected from the upper air. That leaves wider consequences of these clouds (which are likely to get more common with climate change) uncertain...
Shoutout to @alexwitze.bsky.social for glamour shot of NCAR Gulfstream V jet waiting in hangar in Broomfield.
James Dinneen@jamesdinneen.bsky.social · last wk.Enter INSPYRE. This massive NASA-led campaign is gearing up to fly through pyroCb exhaust to study the global consequences of these fire storms. @nature.com got an inside look at this mission taking off tomorrow in Colorado...🧪🌍 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Firefighters in Oregon, Spain, and now France (?!) are battling wildfires big enough to generate pyrocumulonimbus clouds. These fire storms are treacherous on the ground. But scientists are concerned about the *planetary* consequences of injecting so much smoke into the upper atmosphere...🌍🔥🧵
Wowza. Look at this chart on wildfires in France from @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social EFFIS. Red line is cumulative area burned this year; blue line is average since 2006...
Somebody might want to show this to Colorado-Utah-Arizona-California-Mexico...
Eliza Barclay @elizabarclay.bsky.social · 2w ago"Also driving the rewetting...are changes to the land surface, ranging from the internationally funded Great Green Wall project to the revival of traditional water harvesting methods and...abandonment of irrigation projects that once emptied rivers of their flows" e360.yale.edu/features/sah...
It's not quite "gobsmackingly bananas" but monster forecasts for the record El Nino brewing the Pacific Ocean get pretty close. Here's what to make of it in my first for @nature.com: 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This El Niño is set to be the largest on record by a ‘mind-blowing margin’
Forecasters predict that the monster climate pattern will combine with global warming to push global temperatures in 2027 to new heights.
nature.com
There's gold in them thar......subducted seamounts?? This is cool from @gernon.bsky.social etal. www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Seamount subduction drives bonanza-grade gold mineralization
A “start button” for the formation of giant gold deposits on Earth is the subduction of plume-related seamounts.
science.org
Earth’s core may be as much as 1000°C cooler than thought, according to a new technique for measuring the temperature of molten iron under extreme pressures. Story in @science.org. 🧪⚒️🪐 www.science.org/content/arti...
Earth’s core may be far cooler than scientists thought
New measurements could help explain how the planet’s magnetic dynamo churned for billions of years
science.org
Lake Mead and Lake Powell have fallen to their lowest combined levels on record, a grim milestone in the Colorado River's deepening crisis www.latimes.com/environment/...
'A five-alarm fire': Western reservoirs that supply California fall to record low levels
The Colorado River's largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have declined to the lowest combined levels on record. Researchers say this underscores the urgent need to cut water use.
latimes.com
"Placing China’s raw data off-limits could impede studies of earthquake hazards, fault systems, and Earth’s interior, and make Chinese findings harder for outsiders to reproduce, say the seismologist and others."... www.science.org/content/arti...
China’s detention of U.S. seismologist and data-sharing crackdown alarm researchers
Youlin Chen analyzed earthquake data that can also aid nuclear-test monitoring
science.org
Hello friends. I'm starting a new job today reporting for @nature.com on all things climate and Earth science, energy, and beyond.🌍Please get in touch if you're a researcher/gov staffer/startup with results/projects that deserve attention--or are facing problems we should know about. Contact in bio.
My latest, on four techs I've been wanting to write about: sea-bottom mantle mapping, drilling to the Moho, hydrophone tsunami alerts, and internet-cable seismology www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The race to explore the deep ocean: four technologies transforming research
Deep-sea drilling ships, sea-floor sensors and repurposed Internet cables are helping scientists to study the last unmapped area on Earth.
nature.com
My latest for @science.org: Scientists have discovered a new record-breaking ancient meteorite from Mars, formed more than 4.1 billion years ago. Dubbed Teghaza 001, it provides an unprecedented view of the martian crust from this time, suggesting it was much more complex than once thought.
Oldest known Mars rock offers glimpse of planet’s watery youth
Ancient Teghaza meteorite hints at granitelike crust and shows Mars was already losing its water 4.1 billion years ago
science.org
New type of intraplate volcano discovered on Atlantic seafloor? I took a look for @science.org at #goldschmidt 🧪⚒️ www.science.org/content/arti...
Undersea lava flows named after Game of Thrones dragon may reveal a new type of volcanism
The Atlantic Ocean’s Balerion Lava Field doesn’t fit any established model of volcanic eruptions
science.org
Thanks to the New York Public Library for the chance to talk about my research on the history of deep Earth geoscience. The library has been such a fantastic place to work. Can't beat the feeling of opening books that seem as though they haven't been read for a century. www.nypl.org/blog/2026/06...
nypl.org
Congressional pushback has apparently worked to pause the NSF from dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Fascinating that this didn't work re NSF's plans to dismantle NCAR. Perhaps because the ocean constituency in Congress is larger & more powerful & more bipartisan? 🧪
Trump Administration Backs Off Plan to End Ocean Monitoring
nytimes.com
Rising temperatures are set to drive up emissions from wildfires, wetlands, and permafrost, but these “feedback loops” are poorly captured in climate models. Scientists are racing to make sense of these emissions to gauge how much warming may lie ahead.
A Missing Piece in Climate Models: Nature’s Own Emissions
Rising temperatures are set to drive up emissions from wildfires, fermenting wetlands, and melting permafrost, but these “feedback loops” are poorly captured in climate models. Scientists are racing to make sense of these emissions to gauge how much warming may lay ahead.
e360.yale.edu
Forty years ago this month the ecologist George Woodwell told the US Senate that warming feedbacks due to ecosystems emitting more GHGs were "at the edge of what science knows." For @yalee360.bsky.social I wrote about the climate scientists scrambling to catch up: e360.yale.edu/features/war...
A Missing Piece in Climate Models: Nature’s Own Emissions
Rising temperatures are set to drive up emissions from wildfires, fermenting wetlands, and melting permafrost, but these “feedback loops” are poorly captured in climate models. Scientists are racing t...
e360.yale.edu
We need a new imagination for the whole Earth, linking the power of the deep planet with the vitality of the surface. An Essay by @jamesdinneen.bsky.social
How does the deep Earth see humanity? | Aeon Essays
We need a new imagination for the whole Earth, linking the power of the deep planet with the vitality of the surface
aeon.co
For @sciam.bsky.social I wrote about how powerful new x-rays and lasers are revealing an “explosion” of new minerals from Earth‘s mantle trapped in super-deep diamonds.🧪⚒️ www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep...
Deep-Earth diamonds are revealing a trove of never-before-seen minerals
Flecks of minerals captured in diamonds show hidden connections between Earth’s surface and its deep interior
scientificamerican.com
New essay out in @aeon.co in which I consider the deepest ways in which humans have changed the planet in the Anthropocene (hint: it’s not that super deep hole in Russia). 🧪⚒️🌍 aeon.co/essays/how-d...
"From the planet’s perspective, we’re actually quite a shallow species. Our future scraping by up here on the surface depends on coming to terms with that." A cracking new @aeon.co essay from @jamesdinneen.bsky.social about the deep Earth aeon.co/essays/how-d...
Not that I would want to live on Mars, but I hear the aeolian geology is unparalleled.
James Dinneen@jamesdinneen.bsky.social · 4mo agoThe martian atmosphere is currently 200 times thinner than that of Earth. A 3 billion-year-old sandstorm recorded in the rocks could be the first direct evidence that wasn't always so. My latest for @science.org.🧪⚒️ 🚀🪐
The martian atmosphere is currently 200 times thinner than that of Earth. A 3 billion-year-old sandstorm recorded in the rocks could be the first direct evidence that wasn't always so. My latest for @science.org.🧪⚒️ 🚀🪐
Relics of an ancient sandstorm on Mars point to Earth-like winds
Curiosity rover finds what may be the first direct evidence that Mars once had a thick atmosphere
science.org
To me, this shows the how genetic connections 🧬 between peoples can go beyond our shared ancestry. We also have similar or even identical genetic changes because of our shared lifestyles - that is, separate groups of modern humans evolved in similar ways 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2518...
Human populations evolved in similar ways after we began farming
An analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests the extent of convergent evolution in different peoples around the world is even greater than we thought
newscientist.com
How was our patch of the Milky Way born? Microscopic grains older than the sun are providing clues. @jamesdinneen.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/what-crystal...
What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine
Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.
quantamagazine.org