Jackson School of Geosciences

How dare he sign on to a bill to keep the government from shutting down?

A new attempt to predict earthquakes with the aid of artificial intelligence has raised hopes that the technology could one day be used to limit earthquakes' impact on lives and economies. Developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, the AI algorithm correctly predicted 70% of earthquakes a week before they happened during a seven-month trial in China.

The layer, located 100 miles below the Earth's surface, could help shed light on how the tectonic plates move.

Comet strikes on Jupiter's moon Europa could help transport critical ingredients for life found on the moon's surface to its hidden ocean of liquid water—even if the impacts don't punch completely through the moon's icy shell.

Climate change is shrinking the difference between the daily high temperature and the daily low in many parts of the world. The gap between the two, known as the diurnal temperature range (DTR), has a significant effect on growing seasons, crop yields, residential energy consumption and human health issues related to heat stress. But why and where the DTR shrinks with climate change has been something of a mystery.

Using a method that works backward from a set of observed earthquakes to test seismic models that fit those observations, researchers working in the Delaware Basin were able to determine whether earthquakes in the region since 2017 were caused by oil and gas operations.

Researchers from the Oden Institute and Jackson School of Geosciences have developed an improved model for planet-wide groundwater flow prediction on Mars that is not only more accurate but, according to its author, more elegant too.

The climate pattern El Niño varies to such a degree that scientists will have a hard time detecting signs that it is getting stronger with global warming. That's the conclusion of a study that analyzed 9,000 years of Earth's history. The scientists drew on climate data contained within ancient corals and used one of the world's most powerful supercomputers to conduct their research.

An unnoticed network of channels is cutting across the coastal plain landscape along the Gulf Coast and influencing how water flows, according to new research that could help predict flooding from major storms in the future.

A collection of fossil shells from marine snails and clams is challenging a theory that says the world's deadliest mass extinction was accompanied by severe ocean acidification.

A team led by scientists from The University of Texas at Austin has unveiled the first-ever Jurassic vertebrate fossils discovered in Texas, filling a significant gap in the state's fossil history. These ancient bone remnants, found to be from the extremities and spine of a plesiosaur, offer a gl

UT Austin researchers discover the bones of a Jurassic plesiosaur in Texas for the first time.

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. The molten layer is located about 100 miles from the surface and is part of the asthenosphere, which is important for plate tectonics because it forms a relatively soft boundary that lets tectonic plates move through the mantle. The researchers found,…

The surprising discovery of mammoth fossils in a paleontologist's backyard have led to an even more unexpected finding.

The world's coastal glaciers are melting faster than ever. New research gives scientists a way to unravel the causes of glacial retreat, and in turn, reveal how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Attributing the human role for coastal glaciers -- which melt directly into the sea -- could pave the way to better predictions about sea level rise.

The climate pattern El Niño varies over time to such a degree that scientists will have difficulty detecting signs that it is getting stronger with global warming.

Climate change can affect life on Earth. According to new research, it can also affect the dead. A study of exceptionally preserved fossils has found that rising global temperatures and a rapidly changing climate 183 million years ago may have created fossilization conditions in the world's oceans that helped preserve the soft and delicate bodies of deceased marine animals.

Thanks to 20 years of seismic data processed through one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, scientists have created the first complete, 3D visualization of a mountain-size rock called the Kumano Pluton buried miles beneath the coast of southern Japan. They now see the rock could be acting like a lightning rod for the region's megaquakes, diverting tectonic energy into points along its sides where several…

A newly discovered mechanism for the flow and freezing of ice sheet meltwater could improve estimates of sea level rise around the globe.

The effect of urbanization on temperature is relatively well-known: cities are often measurably warmer than their surrounding rural areas. This is called the urban heat island effect. What fewer people know is that the urban heat island has a twin counterpart with similarly important consequences: the urban precipitation anomaly, where the presence of urban development measurably affects the amount of rainfall in…