This is a truly astonishing image. The yellow spot is a planet (WISPIT-2b) orbiting a star (its light blocked by a coronagraph) carving out a 'lane' in the dusty ring-shaped planetary nebula from which it was born. A snapshot of our own solar system, as it probably looked 4.5 billion years ago.

Maps on the ballot? It's about time.

The $3 billion Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was scrapped by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, who called it “the green new scam.” In its place: efforts aligned with Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda.

I’m always saying this…

New in Geoderma: "Cover crops alter soil physicochemical properties: A global meta-analysis" by Fulai Yan & Emmanuel Arthur. doi.org/10.1016/j.ge... @AarhusUni_int

⚒️ Article: Mid-Holocene and the future warming induces a North Pacific response resulting in sustained winter precipitation deficits and drought over the Southwestern United States. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Energy conversions never cease to amaze

📢🌍 Fascinating soil research alert! This publication is a perfect example of how technology and process-based models can deepen our understanding of soil dynamics. 📖 Worth a read for anyone into erosion modelling or soil mapping: doi.org/10.5194/soil... #SoilScience #Erosion #OpenScience #EGU-SSS

In the interest of celebrating good things, former lab postdoc David Fastovich (and new Assistant Prof at University of Georgia!) has a new paper looking at rates of ecosystem change in response to past climate change: press release: phys.org/news/2025-07... Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Guilty as charged.

"at least I owned the libs" - the last words from a man who dies from sepsis during the 90-mile drive to the closest hospital

The results of my 2024-25 academic job market experiment are in, and the numbers should be instructive to anyone considering university employment these days: don't. It's not worth your time, even if you've done all the work to get a PhD, even if it seems like a dream job. Results breakdown below.

All I’m asking, as an American, is for another set of Americans on a hill to have the moral courage and tenacity to fight for the Republic At the end of the day, this is the experiment of democracy

In addition to that, and just thinking ahead here, a startling number, if not vast majority, of education degree programs are slated for the chopping block. Bleak future for the education environment in Indiana.

Hydrology Paper of the Day @christina-hn.bsky.social on determining water uptake depth by stable isotopes: species differences and contributions of water from the subsoil and organic layer; how some trees are more resilient to drought; natural isotopes; and tracer experiments in northern Germany.

How to attack every intro to geology prof.

See that orange blob? That's probably a Saturn-mass planet orbiting its parent star, the light from which has been blocked. A whole other planet in a system only a few million years old, possibly still undergoing formation and developing its own ring and satellite system. 111 lightyears away.

The news is downright bad, and weird, lately. But my research team arrived back home from an excellent field season in Central Europe. With some surprises: iron accumulations (tech term=plinthite) in buried soils! Usually found in much warmer/humid areas. We’re excited to see what the IRSL ages say!

Getting stung by one of these colonies is painful, yet endlessly fascinating. They’re like little pirate ships cruising the ocean with their 10s of meters long tentacles.

Off to a great start…

I’m never going to see precedented times

Strait of Hormuz blockade seems highly likely…

I wrote an article ("The Weather Amplifier") about the phenomenon of resonant amplification of the jet stream & impact of climate change six years ago in @sciam.bsky.social (for the physics nerds, there's a discussion of the tie-in with quantum mechanics): www.scientificamerican.com/article/drou...

Absolutely amazing results!

Old trees sequester more carbon. This paper clearly refutes the US Forest Service's unscientific insistance about the need to keep cutting old growth trees. They lie about it so they can use your taxdollars to cut your trees on your publiclands. 🧪🧪🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excited to share our new Nature Geoscience paper on how persistent Rossby waves patterns are triggering simultaneous hot-dry extremes across western Europe, Asia, and the U.S., severely reducing vegetation productivity and carbon uptake. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

LEEEEEERRRRROOOOOOYYY JJEEEEEEEENNNNNNNKKKIIIINNS

"Study finds planetary waves linked to wild summer weather have tripled since 1950" | Great piece by @borenbears.bsky.social for @apnews.com on our new @pnas.org article (w/ thoughtful comments from @jfrancisclimate.bsky.social): vancouver.citynews.ca/2025/06/16/s...

A research team used fossils to study early ape environments in Kenya and learn more about how human ancestors evolved.

🌳☁️Tree restoration has greater climate mitigation potential when atmospheric chemistry such as organic aerosols and cloud effects are considered Read more here 👉: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

A well needed perspective

1. After getting some further insight into changes at NSF (thanks to those who reached out), I deleted a previous post where I tried to make sense of Cheatham's memo as reported in the Science story below.

Who the fuck wants this

This is a seismic gut punch to the weather enterprise. It is impossible to overstate how important @unidata.bsky.social is in implementing many datasets/libraries (LDM, netCDF, THREDDS, metPy) we currently use in meteorological research & operations. www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/e...

Just let AI do whatever the bees do, amirite? 🫠

Welp…

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie Dr. Normal apathy: Or, how I learned to worry and fear the bomb

I just can’t even anymore with these Silicon Valley tech bros

🧪 Tip: You have the right to contest a grant termination, even though NSF says you don't. 🧵 On Friday, NSF terminated 402 grants (per Musk's DOGE). The notification letters had one of the most egregious violations of fed regulations I've seen so far in these cases: "not subject to appeal"

All the soils of the world put together in one image! They are categorized into their main defining traits. Do you have a favourite one?

This isn’t the quicksand I knew, and lived in mortal fear of, as a child…

It’s giving “we’re entering a new dark age” vibes, along with *waves vaguely at everything else*

"Effective today, sources tell Science, NSF’s division of grants & awards is returning all grant proposals previously approved for funding and awaiting final signoff to program officers who oversaw the initial review. In the meantime, according to those sources, NSF will not make any new awards."

The CAUT (the main Canadian association of academic faculty and staff) now advises against non-essential travel to the US

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” ― Annie Proulx #WritingSky #AcademicSky

"Many of the world’s largest shipping nations decided on Friday to impose a minimum tax of $100 for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted by ships...effectively the first global tax on greenhouse gas emissions." apnews.com/article/ship...

For so many years have I existed on this hulk of rock, bereft of the knowledge that such a sandwich could exist. Braise be.

Many living have their own "tree rings", including fish; the magnificient otolith! Learn more about this fantastic structure in this @theconversation.com article, written by our dear @otolithgirl.bsky.social #otolith #fish #treering #dendrochronology theconversation.com/most-animals...

Must read from @jvl.bsky.social . www.thebulwark.com/p/the-americ...