Atmospheric moisture transport is an essential component of the Earth's water cycle, carrying water vapor thousands of miles and controlling which regions receive precipitation and which do not. Here, we employ atmospheric moisture tracking, applied to 35 years of reanalysis data to investigate decadal trends in atmospheric moisture transport for moisture precipitating in various watershed regions within the contiguous United States of America (CONUS). We find that across portions of CONUS water vapor is traveling farther over longer periods of time before precipitating, and less of it is coming from terrestrial sources. These findings confirm a trend that has been predicted by theory and models and have implications for future water resource governance.

We investigate interseismic locking on the Kamchatka megathrust, source of the 2025 Mw 8.8 earthquake, using a data-driven probabilistic framework. Horizontal GNSS velocities constrain a boundary element model on a triangulated megathrust geometry, while an algorithmic sampling strategy estimates the locking probability for fault elements without prescribing asperity locations a priori. The resulting probability distribution reveals a locked region whose cumulative slip deficit since the previous megathrust earthquake (Mw 9.0, 1952) yields a moment deficit comparable to the 2025 release. Hierarchical clustering of the locking models identifies smaller asperities that coincide with the 2025 rupture initiation zone. Slip in the 1952 and 2025 events shows strong spatial correspondence with high locking probabilities, indicating that persistent asperities dominate moment release. Lower shallow slip in 2025 contrasts with the greater near-trench slip inferred for the 1952 tsunami, highlighting variable shallow slip as a major source of uncertainty for tsunami hazard estimation.

Isolating glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) signals from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations of vertical land motion (VLM) in Greenland requires removal of elastic solid Earth response to contemporary ice mass change. This elastic correction depends on ice-surface elevation changes derived from satellite altimetry and firn corrections, which differ substantially across available products, yet these uncertainties are rarely accounted for in GNSS-based GIA inferences. Here we quantify the sensitivity of elastic VLM at 53 Greenland stations to six contemporary ice-loading products derived from altimetry and firn-height corrections provided by three processing centers. Inter-product spreads in elastic VLM predictions exceed 1 mm/yr at 34 stations and exceed 5 mm/yr at several sites in northwestern and southeastern Greenland. These regions also exhibit persistent underprediction of modeled uplift relative to GNSS observations, even after accounting for uncertainties associated with contemporary loading and contributions from peripheral glaciers and paleo and historical ice mass change.

Edges of sedimentary basins generate complex seismic wavefield effects and localized amplification. Characterizing these effects and incorporating them into hazard models is difficult because tomographic models are often smooth and wavefield observations are often aliased. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) transforms telecommunication fibers into ultra-dense strainmeter arrays, enabling inferences of precise velocity structure, recordings of wavefields at the meter scale over large areas, and measurements of dynamic strain, a quantity with distinct implications for buried infrastructure. With a DAS array in Arcata, California, we resolve a fine-scale shallow velocity model and compare it to observed wavefields from local earthquakes. We find evidence for multiple basin edges and observe a spatial correlation between these features and locally scattered surface waves that amplify dynamic strain. Two-dimensional synthetic tests verify that sharp velocity contrasts at basin edges induce these waves and also illustrate how dynamic strain and ground velocity behave differently at these boundaries.

In the Ross Sea, sea-ice processes such as coastal polynya formation and fast-ice breakouts are often driven by strong winds associated with storms. In this study, a storm index derived from air pressure and air temperature anomalies observed at 13 weather stations in the Ross Sea region was used to investigate storm behavior between 1964 and 2024. It was found that both the frequency and intensity of winter storms have increased in the southern Ross Sea. Storm activity followed a low-frequency oscillation in phase with the Southern Annular Mode. Since 2016 the inter-annual variability in mean winter storm activity has reached unprecedented levels. This increase is reflected in the recent increasing variability in winter fast-ice formation and breakout in McMurdo Sound, which is documented in this study for the period 2019 to 2024 for the first time, with extensive fast-ice in calm years and late fast-ice formation in stormy years.