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Groundbreaking research that used a NASA-equipped plane to fly over thunderclouds has described a new kind of radiation New research into the causes of lightning strikes, which could lead to better understanding and real-time forecasting of thunderstorms in the future, has been released today. Two studies published in Nature conclude that gamma ray generation from thunderstorms may be more common and take more forms than previously thought.

A UK team of researchers including UCL's Professor Lucie Green are working on the launch of a spacecraft mission which will allow us to view the Sun's atmosphere in more detail than ever before. The proposed MESOM mission will enable researchers to study the conditions that create solar storms, leading to improvements in forecasts of space weather on Earth.

Mount Everest is about 15 to 50 metres taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift caused by a nearby eroding river gorge, and continues to grow because of it, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The study, published in Nature Geoscience , found that erosion from a river network about 75 kilometres from Mount Everest is carving away a substantial gorge.

Sophisticated analysis of tiny bubbles of ancient gas trapped in volcanic rocks combined with new geophysical modelling has cast new light on long-held assumptions about the deep Earth. An international team of scientists led by researchers from SUERC and the University of Glasgow's School of Geographical & Earth Sciences, have uncovered surprising results in a new study of volcanic lavas which erupted in the Red Sea from the Afar mantle plume.

Small marine crustaceans are as valuable as key coastal habitats for storing carbon and should be similarly protected, according to new research. The study shows that a single species, Antarctic krill, store similar amounts of carbon to key 'blue carbon' habitats such as mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrasses.

A landslide in a remote part of Greenland caused a mega-tsunami that sloshed back and forth across a fjord for nine days, generating vibrations throughout Earth, according to a new study involving UCL researchers. A landslide in a remote part of Greenland caused a mega-tsunami that sloshed back and forth across a fjord for nine days, generating vibrations throughout Earth, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have effectively simulated how bubbles grow in volcanic magma thanks to a novel pressure vessel that can mimic the eruption process in a laboratory setting. With most volcanic activity taking place underground unobserved, for the first time scientists have been able to capture vesiculation kinetics in basaltic magmas in real time.

Pollutants preserved in Antarctic ice document historic fires in the Southern Hemisphere, offering a glimpse at how humans have impacted the landscape and providing data that could help scientists understand future climate change. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey tracked fire activity over the past 150 years by measuring carbon monoxide trapped in Antarctic ice.

Older trees have important carbon capture role - countering existing theories that mature woodland has no capacity to respond to elevated carbon dioxide levels Mature forests have a key role to play in the fight against climate change - extracting carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and locking it into new wood, a new study reveals.

Scientists have recovered the first long section of rocks that originated in the Earth's mantle, the layer below the crust and the planet's largest component. The rocks will help unravel the mantle's role in the origins of life on Earth, the volcanic activity generated when it melts, and how it drives the global cycles of important elements such as carbon and hydrogen, according to the team which includes researchers from Cardiff University.

Earth systems could be 'tipped' into unstable states if warming overshoots 1.5C target, but impacts could be minimised if warming is swiftly reversed. The Paris Agreement target to keep global warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels was set to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

A new study has revealed that changes in the ocean floor impacts currents, giving new insight into the deep-sea pathways of nutrients and pollutants. The study, published in Nature Geoscience by scientists at The University of Manchester and led by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), has found that currents sped up, slowed down, changed direction, and sometimes reversed direction completely, depending on the varying and uneven surfaces and features found on the ocean floor.

Microbes hidden within tree bark can absorb methane - a powerful greenhouse gas - from the atmosphere. Tree bark surfaces play an important role in removing methane gas from the atmosphere, according to a study published in Nature. While trees have long been known to benefit climate by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, this new research reveals a surprising additional climate benefit.

The capacity of Mozambican woodlands to capture and store carbon is underestimated and potentially undervalued for their protection and restoration, finds new research from an international team of scientists including UCL researchers. The research, led by carbon data provider Sylvera and published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment , found that miombo woodlands, which span large areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, store 1.5 to 2.2 times more carbon than had previously been estimated by standard methods.

New evidence of changes to the Gulf Stream during the last ice age could indicate additional sensitivity to future climatic changes, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The research, published in Nature, found that during the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, the Gulf Stream was stronger than today because of more powerful winds across the subtropical North Atlantic.

An antenna on ExoMars' Trace Gas Orbiter has been given a new lease of life, helping researchers delve into the Martian atmosphere like never before. Using the repurposed equipment, a team including Imperial College London researchers have measured parts of the Martian atmosphere that were previously impossible to probe.

A massive balloon, designed to measure the background radiation left over from the 'Big Bang' and help scientists better understand the infancy and evolution of our Universe, has just moved to the next stage of development Thirty years after the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum was first precisely characterised by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission, a new experiment - known as BISOU (for Balloon Interferometer for Spectral Observations of the Universe) - is expected to significantly advance these measurements, gaining a factor of ~25 in sensitivity.

The carbon stored globally by plants is shorter-lived and more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, according to a new study. The findings have implications for our understanding of the role of nature in mitigating climate change, including the potential for nature-based carbon removal projects such as mass tree-planting.

Video footage of Iceland's 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption is providing researchers from the University of Cambridge with rare, up-close observations of volcanic ash clouds - information that could help better forecast how far explosive eruptions disperse their hazardous ash particles. When Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010, it ejected roughly 250 million tonnes of volcanic ash into the atmosphere: much of which was blown over Europe and into flight paths.

Scientists have used volcanic ash and ocean models to track the journey of huge mats of seaweed floating across the Atlantic and causing chaos in the Caribbean. They found chemical traces of volcanic ash from the eruption of a volcano on St Vincent, in St Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, on sargassum seaweed that washed up four months later in Jamaica - 1,700 kilometres away.