Seeking Solutions to PFAS Pollution

Chemical Companies Are Churning Out New PFAS. Where in the World Are They Ending Up?

The Persistence of PFAS

A Peculiar Polymer Paired with Sunlight Could Remove PFAS

Tracing the Path of PFAS Across Antarctica

Pollution Is Rampant. We Might As Well Make Use of It.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) have been widely used in thousands of common nonstick, waterproof, or stain-resistant products since the 1950s. These “forever chemicals” do not break down easily: PFAS make their way into the air, soil, and water, as well as into human and animal bloodstreams and to some of Earth’s most pristine environments. They have been detected even in Antarctica, despite its reputation as a relatively untouched landscape far from the types of products—fast-food wrappers, firefighting foam, nonstick cookware—that contain PFAS.

Research into how PFAS arrive in Antarctica is limited, and most tends to focus on the continent’s coasts, rather than its interior. A new study published in Science Advances aimed to fill some of these gaps by examining PFAS accumulation across a 1,200-kilometer stretch of Antarctica, from the snow pits of Zhongshan Station in East Antarctica to the 4,093-meter peak of Dome A. By examining layers of snow collected from the coast to the interior, researchers sought to better track and understand how PFAS levels vary by location and how these forever chemicals have been able to travel long distances through the upper atmosphere to be deposited in remote regions.

“For substances to get there, they have to be able to transport long distances,” said Ian Cousins, a chemist at Stockholm University and one of the study’s authors. “We know PFAS are very persistent, so that helps. By looking at the patterns of the PFAS contamination in the samples, it gives us clues as to how they’re transported.”

PFAS Arrive by Air and by Sea

Along the 1,200-kilometer route, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences collected 39 snow samples at 30-kilometer intervals, scraping the first few centimeters of snow from the surface to analyze for traces of PFAS.

Zhongshan Station sits near Prydz Bay, and there, researchers collected snow from a 1-meter-deep pit, with samples taken every 5 centimeters. At Dome A, the summit of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, samples were collected at 10-centimeter intervals from another snow pit; this one was 3 meters deep, providing information about the past several decades of PFAS use.

“It’s quite interesting that we see the historical production record of PFAS in this pit on the top of this mountain in Antarctica,” said Cousins.

PFAS pollution arrives in Antarctica in two ways: via upper atmospheric transport and sea spray. Some PFAS are formed in the atmosphere when volatile precursor chemicals like fluorotelomer alcohols used in textile and paper products break down through reactions with sunlight and oxidants into more stable compounds. The resulting PFAS are later deposited into the snow and ice through precipitation.

Storm winds near the coast create sea spray. “When you have waves, it makes bubbles in the ocean. When the bubbles burst, these sea spray aerosols can be super enriched with PFAS. This has been shown to be a very important transport route,” Cousins said.

To distinguish between sources, researchers measured sodium in the snow to trace the ocean’s salty influence. Sodium levels decreased farther inland, reflecting the fading influence of sea spray toward the interior of the continent. But surprisingly, PFAS concentrations actually increased moving from the coast into the interior.

“That was kind of a bit counterintuitive to me,” explained Cousins, who said he expected PFAS levels to be highest near the coast. “You see the opposite, actually.”

The inland increase is likely explained by higher snowfall totals in the coastal regions, which lead to PFAS concentrations becoming diluted. Inland, where snowfall is lower, even small amounts of PFAS can result in relatively higher concentrations within snow samples.

Additional factors shape PFAS distribution. PFAS levels are higher at the onset of precipitation events when they are rapidly removed from the air. Temperature inversions, too, can trap chemicals. In coastal areas, PFAS are more influenced by sea spray in the winter, whereas stronger sunlight drives the degradation of atmospheric precursors into PFAS in the summer months.

PFAS Presence at Both Poles

This new study also offers implications for the way that PFAS circulate globally. Though industrial activity in the Northern Hemisphere contributes most heavily to PFAS emissions, large-scale atmospheric circulation allows these compounds to reach polar regions. Rapid transport in the upper troposphere may act as an efficient pathway to shuttle PFAS across both hemispheres before they are deposited in the cold, remote regions at both ends of Earth.

Even though PFAS levels are higher in the Arctic, both polar regions show similar trends in PFAS concentrations since the 1990s. “It really matches decades of the same records that have been reported from the Arctic,” said Cora Young, an atmospheric chemist at York University, who was not involved in the new study.

“This completes the global picture with agreeing measurements at both poles, solidifying our understanding of the global distribution and drivers of PFAS contamination. The role of CFC [chlorofluorocarbon] replacements, changes in regulation, all of these things are important in the Northern Hemisphere and also the Southern Hemisphere,” said Young.

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2026), Tracing the path of PFAS across Antarctica, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260129. Published on 27 April 2026.

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Abrupt temperature swings between consecutive days, referred to as day-to-day temperature variability, have far-reaching impacts on human health, ecosystems, and economic activity. However, how these fluctuations vary from year to year, and what drives them, has remained unclear.

Using observations, reanalysis, and CMIP6 simulations from 1961 to 2014, Liu and Fu [2026] identify a coherent large-scale pattern of variability across Eurasia and North America. This variability is primarily driven by the north–south movement of warm and cold air masses.

The dominant drivers also vary by season: large-scale meteorological patterns prevail in winter, whereas local land–atmosphere feedbacks become more influential in summer. Together, these processes reshape temperature gradients and modulate storm activity and broader weather systems.

Overall, the findings provide new insights into the mechanisms of temperature variability and offer a scientific basis for improving seasonal climate risk prediction and adaptation strategies.

Citation: Liu, Q., & Fu, C. (2026). Interannual variations in the day-to-day temperature variability in the northern hemisphere and possible causalities. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 131, e2025JD045754. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JD045754

—Yun Qian, Editor, JGR: Atmospheres

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Water Resources Research

Evapotranspiration is a critical link between water, energy, and carbon. Scientists need to understand it well to accurately predict weather, droughts, streamflows, and even carbon emissions.

Eddy covariance towers, which measure changes in the atmosphere, are one of the primary ways that scientists measure evapotranspiration in an ecosystem. But these measurements often have a problem with energy imbalance, in which the measured fluxes of sensible heat and latent heat add up to less than they should. (Sensible heat refers to measurable temperature changes occurring via conduction or convection, whereas latent heat refers to water in the atmosphere changing phases.) There’s something missing—up to 30% of the system’s energy—in the math, and that can cause problems for later uses of the measurements, from forecasts to climate policies.

Scientists can adjust evapotranspiration measurements to try to correct for this problem, but a commonly used method to do so assumes that the Bowen ratio, or the ratio between sensible and latent heat, remains constant. However, this assumption may be flawed.

Raghav and Kumar present a new way of tackling this old problem without making assumptions about the Bowen ratio. It’s based on water use efficiency, which is how effectively plants use water to produce biomass.

The method first uses a suite of data from an eddy covariance tower to estimate evapotranspiration and energy balance through time. Then it derives the underlying water use efficiency potential while accounting for the influence of atmospheric dryness. In general, for a given vegetation type, this potential underlying efficiency is considered to be relatively stable over a growing season. The statistically smoothed potential underlying water use efficiencies is then compared to reference values derived during periods when the energy balance is well constrained. The ratio of the two is then used to correct evapotranspiration.

The new method is more consistent and more tied to the physics of plant physiology than current methods when results from each are compared, the authors found.

The new method is appropriate for use with any eddy covariance tower location or dataset because the authors used data from more than 250 towers around the world, in a range of ecosystem and climate types, to build their approach. However, they add, it may be less reliable in environments where evaporation dominates transpiration, such as wetlands. Nevertheless, the authors say, this work marks an important advance in measuring evapotranspiration, with broad implications for water management, agriculture, and adapting to climate extremes and drought. (Water Resources Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025WR042766, 2026)

—Rebecca Dzombak (@rdzombak.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Dzombak, R. (2026), Improving eddy tower evapotranspiration estimates, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260163. Published on 20 May 2026.

Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: AGU Advances

In low Earth orbit (typically below about 700 kilometers altitude), atmospheric drag is the primary source of uncertainty when predicting the trajectories of satellites. These prediction errors largely arise from limitations and inaccuracies in the models used to estimate the density of the upper atmosphere, particularly within the thermosphere.

Mutschler et al. [2026] introduce a new method for estimating atmospheric density along the path of an individual satellite by using Energy Dissipation Rates (EDRs). The derived single-satellite density measurements provide valuable insight into variations in thermospheric density and can help characterize how the upper atmosphere responds to disturbances such as geomagnetic storms. Incorporating these observations can contribute to ultimately improving the accuracy of satellite orbit predictions.

Citation: Mutschler, S., Pilinski, M., Zesta, E., Oliveira, D. M., Delano, K., Garcia-Sage, K., & Tobiska, W. K. (2026). First results of a new inversion tool for thermospheric neutral mass density computations during severe geomagnetic storms. AGU Advances, 7, e2025AV002079. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002079

—Alberto Montanari, Editor-in-Chief, AGU Advances

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: AGU Advances

The Sun continuously blasts charged, magnetic field–carrying particles, or plasma, in all directions. This solar wind interacts with the magnetic fields and atmospheres of several of our solar system’s planets and other bodies, sculpting long magnetic tails of charged particles—magnetotails—that stretch into space behind them.

Magnetotails contain thin layers of electric current–carrying plasma sheets, which sometimes “flap” in an up-and-down waving motion. Spacecraft observations have revealed that flapping in Earth’s magnetotail can be driven by a process called magnetic reconnection, in which magnetic field lines rapidly break and then snap together in a new configuration, releasing stored energy. However, whether reconnection plays this same role beyond Earth has thus far been a mystery.

Wen et al. report the first evidence that magnetic reconnection may also trigger magnetotail flapping at Mars.

Unlike Earth, Mars lost its global magnetic field billions of years ago. But it still sports a magnetotail, thanks in large part to interactions between the solar wind and charged particles in its upper atmosphere. Strong magnetic fields embedded in certain patches of the Martian crust—remnants of its lost planet-wide field—also influence the magnetotail.

Until recently, Mars’s magnetotail could only be studied using observations from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft. MAVEN showed that the Martian magnetotail is highly dynamic, with a structure that twists, shifts, and flaps—and from which charged particles may escape into space. But because MAVEN can observe only one part of the magnetotail at a time, it couldn’t identify what processes might trigger flapping.

Another spacecraft, China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, has now provided a second set of eyes. The researchers analyzed simultaneous observations from the two spacecraft, finding that signatures of magnetic reconnection detected by MAVEN in the upstream part of the magnetotail tended to coincide with flapping events detected downstream by Tianwen-1.

Before or during flapping, the spacecraft also detected temporary, twisted plasma structures known as flux ropes. A similar link has previously been observed on Earth, and it suggests that flux ropes generated by magnetic reconnection upstream might propagate downstream, driving instabilities in the magnetotail’s plasma sheets and triggering flapping.

Though more research is needed to confirm these findings, they shed new light on how energy moves and is released in space around Mars—and possibly other planets and celestial objects. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026AV002343, 2026)

—Sarah Stanley, Science Writer

Citation: Stanley, S. (2026), What makes Mars’s magnetotail flap?, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260123. Published on 20 April 2026.

Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

Explosive volcanic eruptions inject gases and ash into the atmosphere, posing major hazards for human health, infrastructure, and aviation. A new article in Reviews of Geophysics examines recent advances in estimating Eruption Source Parameters (ESPs), the key conditions at the volcanic vent that are a necessity for modeling the behavior of volcanic plumes. Here, we asked the authors to explain what ESPs are, what technologies are used to observe eruptions, and which scientific challenges and future research directions remain for improving volcanic plume monitoring and modeling.

In simple terms, what are Eruption Source Parameters?

Eruption Source Parameters (ESPs) describe the key conditions at the volcanic vent during an eruption, such as the mass eruption rate, exit velocity, temperature, and particle size distribution. These parameters define how material is injected into the atmosphere and are essential inputs for models that simulate plume rise and subsequent dispersal of volcanic gases and ash in the atmosphere. In simple terms, ESPs represent the boundary conditions that control the behavior of volcanic plumes. Because they cannot usually be measured during an eruption, they must be estimated from indirect observations and models, which introduces significant uncertainty.

Why is it important to understand how volcanic ash and gases disperse after an eruption?

Volcanic ash and gases can travel long distances and affect aviation safety, human health, infrastructure, and even climate. Fine ash particles are particularly hazardous for aircrafts, while ash fallout can disrupt communities and critical services on the ground. Gas emissions may also impact air quality and alter the atmospheric radiative budget. Understanding volcanic dispersion is therefore essential for forecasting the movement of volcanic clouds and issuing timely warnings. Reliable forecasts support risk mitigation strategies and enable more effective responses by civil protection agencies and aviation authorities.

What technologies are used to observe volcanic plumes?

Volcanic plumes are observed using a combination of satellite, ground-based, and, more rarely, airborne measurements. Satellite observations are crucial for tracking ash and gas clouds over large spatial scales and in near real time. Ground-based instruments, such as radar, cameras, and infrasound sensors, provide detailed information on plume dynamics close to the source. Increasingly, these observations are integrated with numerical models to infer eruption conditions. The combination of multiple data streams is essential for constraining ESPs and improving the reliability of plume simulations.

What are some of the recent advances in estimating Eruption Source Parameters?

Recent advances have focused on combining observations with numerical models to better constrain ESPs. Multi-sensor approaches, data inversion techniques, and improved plume models have significantly enhanced our ability to estimate eruption rates and plume dynamics. At the same time, high-resolution computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations provide deeper insights into the complex fluid dynamic processes governing plume behavior. However, these models are computationally expensive and unsuitable for real-time applications, highlighting the need for approaches that bridge the gap between physical realism and operational efficiency.

What strategies do you propose in your review to improve Eruption Source Parameters estimation?

A central contribution of this review is the proposal of a new class of operational models for volcanic plumes. These models integrate the physical realism of high-fidelity CFD simulations with the efficiency of simplified models used in forecasting. In particular, the review highlights the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to “learn” from CFD results and optimally calibrate the key variables controlling plume dynamics. This hybrid approach allows complex physical processes to be represented in a computationally efficient framework, making it suitable for real-time applications while retaining improved accuracy.

How does improved volcanic plume monitoring lead to more effective volcanic hazard assessment?

Improved monitoring leads to more accurate estimates of ESPs, which directly translate into better forecasts of plume rise and ash dispersion. This reduces uncertainty in hazard assessments and supports more reliable decision-making. For example, more accurate forecasts can help aviation authorities minimize disruptions while maintaining safety and enable civil protection agencies to issue targeted warnings. Ultimately, better integration of observations and models enhances the capacity to respond effectively during eruptions and to mitigate their societal and economic impacts.

What are the remaining questions or knowledge gaps where additional research is needed?

Despite progress, significant challenges remain. ESPs are still difficult to constrain in real time, and uncertainties in both observations and models propagate into forecasts. The integration of diverse data sources is not yet fully optimized, and different estimation methods can yield inconsistent results. Further research is needed to improve the coupling between observations, physics-based models, and data-driven approaches. In particular, developing robust hybrid frameworks that combine CFD, simplified models, and machine learning represents a key direction for advancing both scientific understanding and operational forecasting.

—Antonio Costa (antonio.costa@ingv.it, 0000-0002-4987-6471), Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy

Editor’s Note: It is the policy of AGU Publications to invite the authors of articles published in Reviews of Geophysics to write a summary for Eos Editors’ Vox.

Citation: Costa, A. (2026), From volcanic vents to safer skies, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265022. Published on 27 May 2026.

This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s).

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

Atmospheric rivers act like “rivers in the sky,” shuttling intense bands of warm, heavy moisture from lower to higher latitudes. When an atmospheric river encounters cold air or mountainous terrain, the moisture it carries condenses and falls as heavy rain or snow. In Antarctica, the arrival of an atmospheric river can help build surface ice mass. Much of Antarctica is very dry; an atmospheric river can bring the moisture needed to potentially offset some ice loss.

Antarctica’s varied topography and dry conditions have made detecting atmospheric rivers over the continent challenging. Previous efforts to do so have suggested that atmospheric rivers contribute up to 30% of Antarctica’s total annual precipitation, but these methods may not be capturing the full picture of atmospheric river activity.

Takahashi et al. developed a new 3D atmospheric river detection algorithm to better capture how atmospheric rivers affect Antarctica’s complex terrain. Previous methods have mostly been 2D, meaning they do not accurately account for the vertical variations within an atmospheric river.

To evaluate the algorithm, the researchers applied it to two datasets: (1) daily snowfall totals measured during the 44th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE44) at Dome Fuji from February 2003 to January 2004 and (2) the ERA5 (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts atmospheric reanalysis) dataset of daily weather patterns and conditions in Antarctica from 1979 to 2023.

The results of the study’s new algorithm showed 16 significant snowfall events during the JARE44 expedition, all of which were not detected by the older 2D method. The new 3D method identified 17 days of atmospheric river activity, which corresponded with 10 heavy snowfall events and accounted for approximately 40% of the total precipitation. Between 1979 and 2023, atmospheric rivers occurred about 10% of the time yet contributed 30%–60% of total precipitation in the Antarctic interior.

The 3D method in the new study suggests that atmospheric river events contribute a greater proportion of total snowfall than previously thought—between 30% and 90%, depending on the Antarctic region. The researchers also suggest that long-term changes in Antarctic snowfall are closely linked with the changes in atmospheric river activity. This connection is especially apparent in East Antarctica, where the link between snowfall increases and atmospheric rivers had not yet been clearly identified in previous studies. (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL120986, 2026)

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2026), Rivers in the Antarctic sky, captured in 3D, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260179. Published on 2 June 2026.

Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: AGU Advances

The albedo change of marine clouds is achieved by targeted additions of aerosols, and in particular, sea salt. To assess the viability of Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) requires a fundamental understanding of the impact of aerosols on cloud evolution and properties, and on the cloud environment.

Doherty et al. [2026] propose a framework for studying MCB across scales. This includes small- to large-scale studies aimed at systematically characterizing the life-cycle of aerosols and the diurnal cycle of cloud processes, how these change with the magnitude, duration and type of aerosol applied, and monitoring potential harmful direct or indirect consequences of aerosol injection, such as regional changes in temperature or precipitation.

Citation: Doherty, S. J., Diamond, M. S., Wood, R., & Hirasawa, H. (2026). Defining scales of field studies and experiments to assess marine cloud brightening. AGU Advances,7, e2025AV001939. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001939

—Ana P. Barros, Editor, AGU Advances

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The Camp Fire spread extremely rapidly, driven by strong winds and dry fuels, but also by organized long-range spotting, i.e. lofting and downwind fallout of burning embers to ignite new fires.

Using operational Doppler radar and satellite observations, Lareau [2026] provides the first high resolution depiction of spotting behavior during an extreme wildfire. Observations show that spot fire events for the Camp Fire occurred 5-10 kilometers ahead of the fire front, quickly merging into new fire lines. Spot fires are not random but aligned within coherent fallout zones that are shaped by plume dynamics and background winds. These results show that operational weather radar can identify lofting and fallout regions in real time, providing a new way to anticipate spotting-driven fire spread and improve early warnings for fast-moving wildfires.

Citation: Lareau, N. P. (2026). Plume-coupled long-range spotting drove the explosive spread of the 2018 Camp Fire. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 131, e2025JD045798. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JD045798

—William Randel, Editor, JGR: Atmospheres

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

A Colorado judge has granted a preliminary injunction to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The move temporarily blocks the federal government from moving forward with one part of its effort to dismantle UCAR’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) by transferring stewardship of a state-of-the-art supercomputing facility.

Together, UCAR—a nonprofit consortium of universities and colleges—and the National Science Foundation (NSF) operate and maintain the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) in Cheyenne, Wyo. The facility provides scientists with enormous computational power necessary to run sophisticated analyses of weather, climate, and other Earth systems.

In February, as another step in a chain of actions taken to dismantle NCAR, the NSF informed UCAR and NCAR that it would transfer management and operations of NWSC to a third-party operator.

In turn, UCAR filed a lawsuit alleging that the action violated federal law under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). To halt NSF’s action under the act, the agency’s attempt to remove UCAR’s stewardship of the facility must be shown to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

Judge Richard Brooke Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado wrote in a 1 June court order that the action was both arbitrary and capricious “for at least two reasons.” First, NSF didn’t offer an explanation for its decision, and second, it didn’t follow an outlined process to consider public feedback.

The decision means that UCAR will temporarily retain its stewardship of NWSC. 

“NSF’s failure to provide any explanation for its decision—let alone a reasonable one—thwarts meaningful judicial review and renders the challenged action arbitrary and capricious,” Jackson wrote.

He went on to note that efforts to transfer stewardship of UCAR assets, including the supercomputing center, to other institutions, pose the risk of “irreparable harm” to UCAR. One of the chief harms would be brain drain, the judge noted multiple times, writing that “UCAR cannot easily replace employees with the level of education, specialized training, and institutional knowledge necessary to operate and maintain the NWSC’s ‘highly integrated, high-performance supercomputing system.'”

In addition to brain drain, Jackson cited financial injuries to UCAR that would be “difficult, if not impossible” to quantify, as well as an overall threat to the consortium’s mission.

“Any degradation in forecasting, modeling, or related scientific capabilities carries real-world consequences, including potential harm to property and human life. Given those stakes, the public interest strongly favors maintaining the status quo unless and until NSF demonstrates that its transfer decision complies with the APA,” he concluded.

In a statement posted to the UCAR website, the consortium’s interim president, Eric Barron, said UCAR was pleased that Judge Jackson recognized how harmful the proposed transfer would be for the the nation’s scientific enterprise.

“UCAR’s top priority is to advance Earth system science in service to society,” he wrote. “Today’s decision ensures that the NWSC will be able to continue its vital work on behalf of the United States and its stakeholders without interruption.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer, and Emily Gardner, (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Scientists use tools ranging from models to microscopes to make sense of the world around them. Some might say artists do the same thing using tools such as paintbrushes and musical instruments.

“I’ve just always felt like art and science are flip sides of the same coin, with maybe different outcomes or different processes, but they’re both just getting at the truth of the world,” said Sara Bouchard, a sound artist and composer and adjunct faculty member in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) School of Art.

A recent National Science Foundation–funded collaboration between scientists and artists brought this principle to life.

The scientist-artist pairs worked together in yearlong residencies and produced art pieces—ranging from music compositions and video installations to ceramic works and paintings—that they presented at the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts in Corvalis, Ore., in early 2026.

“The metaphor that people use to describe what this science network measures, or does, is that it’s monitoring the breath of the biosphere,” said Maoya Bassiouni, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who directed and developed the residency. “Those fluxes are sort of this giving and receiving between the land and the atmosphere, and it’s exactly what the scientists are doing in the community. So, part of the framing of the residency was around flux as this metaphor for connection and belonging and relationships.”

Bassiouni, who also created artworks in the residency, presented a lecture about the series alongside two other fluxART artists in late May at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Mesa Lab in Boulder, Colo.

An installation at NCAR’s Mesa Lab Library featuring all four fluxART projects also opened on 27 May and will be on display through the end of 2026.

En Masse

Bouchard, the sound artist, was paired with Chris Gough, a biogeochemist who serves as the executive director of the Rice Rivers Center at VCU.

The result was a composition for choir and percussion called En Masse, which explores the connections between communities and ecosystems in a time of climate crisis. The piece’s five movements represent the movement of carbon through the environment: “Air,” “Wood,” “Soil,” “Fire,” and “Breath.”

In addition to vocals and instruments, the composition features birdsong, recordings from a compost pile, sonified data from Gough’s lab, and spoken words gathered from real people sharing their climate anxieties. An excerpt from the “Fire” movement reads,

Both Bouchard and Gough said they were moved by the piece as it was performed in Corvalis and by seeing the mix of artists and scientists who attended, many traveling from other states.

“I was struck by how engaged both the scientific and artistic communities were,” Gough said. “We walked out, and it was a full room of people. It was energizing, and I think it felt meaningful in a way that stepping up on a conference stage to deliver the traditional convention talk [isn’t].”

September: Orange

In another pairing, video artist Julia Oldham partnered with Christopher Still, a plant ecophysiologist at Oregon State University.

At the top of the tower, a PhenoCam takes photos of the surrounding Deschutes National Forest every half hour. Still uses data from these images to examine how the greenness of the canopy changes over time because such changes can provide information about fluxes in carbon, water, and energy.

“I learned more about what Chris uses the PhenoCam for and got superexcited about the fact that Chris is using color data to understand forests,” Oldham said. “I thought that that was a really beautiful point of overlap for us as a scientist and an artist, to think about color and forests and what we can learn from color as a scientific tool.”

The pair created two pieces. 18//Flux shows how the colors and light from one PhenoCam site changed from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. throughout the year for 13 years. Each frame is divided into 13 strips, with each strip representing 1 hour of the monitoring period.

The two had conversations throughout the duration of the project about the growing role of wildfires in the area. In fact, one of the FLUXNET towers they were using in the project burned down.

Their conversations led to September: Orange, a three-channel video showing footage from 24 different PhenoCams in the northwestern United States and Canada. When all of the landscapes are the same shade, the video briefly pauses. In September, when wildfires sweep through Cascadia, orange becomes the dominant color. The piece is accompanied by field recordings from Oregon forests and sonified canopy greenness data.

“I think the installation was a wild success, and I had a lot of people tell me how much they enjoyed it and appreciated it,” Still said. “Most people don’t respond to a 2D graph of data…whereas I think almost everyone responds to images, and photographs are really meaningful to people. So I think that is a really brilliant way to draw people into the science.”

—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), Artists and scientists partner to bring atmospheric data to life, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260178. Published on 3 June 2026.

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news that impacts science and scientists today.

The key word here is could. Experts including Ken Graham, the director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, all emphasize that no two El Niños are alike.

“Each one is unique with its own imprint on our weather,” Graham said in a NOAA press release. However, scientists have learned a few things from watching the ways that this warm phase of a natural climate cycle over the tropical Pacific has affected our weather patterns in the past.

“Advanced monitoring and an improved understanding of El Niño patterns allow the NWS to better predict and better prepare the public and our core partners for what is to come,” Graham said.

This morning, NOAA released an El Niño Advisory, announcing that the climate phenomenon (the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation) has officially arrived in the tropical Pacific. The agency forecasts a 63% chance of a “very strong” El Niño from November 2026 to January 2027 that “would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record.”

NOAA defines a “very strong” El Niño as when the Pacific’s surface waters are more than 2°C warmer than average. The agency doesn’t use the phrase “Super El Niño,” but there have only been three such “super” or “very strong” El Niño events since 1980. The last one was in 2015.

What does this mean for climate, for humans, and marine species? Here’s a roundup of some potential forecasted effects—some good, some bad—of the weather pattern that’s been making headlines over the past few months.

1. More rain and snow in the southern U.S.

In a typical year, a warm pool of water in the equatorial Pacific would be transported westward—away from the western coast of the Americas—by trade winds. But during an El Niño event, those trade winds weaken, and the warm pool of water extends east, explained Ariel Cohen, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles and Oxnard Office in a press briefing at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif.

This warm water “causes jet energy in the atmosphere to bring disturbed weather southward across the southern United States, which can bring wetter than normal conditions to our area with drier conditions farther to the north,” Cohen said.

The southward shift of the storm track could also lead to drier conditions over the northern Rockies and as far east as the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

2. More shark and whale sightings off the Southern California coast

In the past, strong El Niños have led to decreased amounts of plankton in the Pacific, particularly the open ocean, forcing species that rely on plankton (and the species that rely on the species that rely on plankton, and so forth) to widen their net when searching for food.

“[Plankton] is important because that’s the base of the food web,” explained Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at NOAA, at the Aquarium of the Pacific. “Marine mammals and other migratory species end up being closer to shore, because they’re going to where their food is.”

Whales in particular rely on the upwelling of cold water to bring them krill to eat. As they are driven nearer to the coast in search of food, they also grow more likely to become entangled in fishing nets.

3. A milder Atlantic hurricane season

Warm water is a key ingredient in a hurricane, so it might seem, at first thought, that the Pacific’s unusually warm waters might augur a more extreme hurricane season. But another effect of El Niño is that it strengthens vertical wind shear over the Atlantic. When winds are too strong, they can tear a storm apart before it picks up the momentum to become a hurricane.

“Wind shear is good for us, bad for the hurricanes,” Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University and lead author of the university’s 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Forecast, told Eos.

NOAA’s 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Forecast suggests that the 2026 season has a 55% chance of being below normal, and will likely include 8 to 14 named storms with winds of at least 39 miles per hour.

4. Fewer squid along the California coast

Past El Niño events have shown that warmer Pacific waters can increase the likelihood of harmful algal blooms. Among other effects, these blooms can lead to a lower abundance, and a northward shift, of market squid. Market squid and Dungeness crab bring the most volume and value to California’s commercial fisheries.

In 2014, a large mass of hot water in the Pacific known as the Blob was followed up by an El Niño event. That year, “we had several closures of crab and shellfish fisheries due to harmful algal blooms,” Leising said.

However, Leising also explained that the warm patch of water in the Pacific this year is much smaller and farther from shore than the Blob was in 2014. So, though we may see effect similar those in 2014, they’re likely to be less extreme.

In addition, the same conditions driving sharks and whales toward the coast could also drive tuna toward the coast, leading to increased opportunities for that fishery.

5. More high-tide flooding on U.S. coasts

With El Niño shifting the Pacific jet stream south of its usual position, sea levels along the U.S. West Coast may rise, exacerbating the existing sea level rise linked to climate change. On the East Coast, the jet stream shift can lead to more storm surges, which combine with higher-than-typical precipitation levels.

“It usually ends up being a double whammy,” said NOAA oceanographer and high tide flooding expert William Sweet, in a NOAA news story. “The first punch is decades of sea level rise, which has waters close to the brim in many coastal communities. And now with this second punch—a strong El Niño—coastal communities face more frequent, deeper and widespread high tide flooding along both the West and East Coasts.”

6. A bad year for sea lions

El Niño events can have harmful effects on sea lions. Algal blooms can lead to severe illness, or even death, for the pinnipeds. Algal blooms can also kill off fish and cephalopod species (such as market squid) that sea lions rely on for food. During past El Niño events, California sea lions have also experienced lower rates of reproduction and produced smaller pups, Leising said.

“California sea lions are indicator species, meaning they will be one of the first species which may show signs of domoic acid toxicity, respond to changes in their ecosystem, and signal to the public how our oceans and ecosystem are doing,” said Brett Long, vice president of animal care at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about science or scientists? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.