Formal & Natural Sciences
The planet as a coupled physical, chemical and biological system operating on deep time.
9 fields · 85 topics · 108 curated works
The rock record and how to read it.
Foundations & Overviews · Mineralogy · Petrology · Structural Geology · Stratigraphy
The physics of the planet's interior and its fields.
Foundations & Overviews · Seismology · Plate Tectonics · Geomagnetism · Gravimetry
Seventy percent of the surface, and most of the heat capacity.
Foundations & Overviews · Physical Oceanography · Ocean Circulation · Chemical Oceanography · Marine Geology
Weather as a fluid dynamics problem with a forecast horizon.
Foundations & Overviews · Atmospheric Dynamics · Weather Systems · Cloud Physics · Numerical Weather Prediction
The long-run energy balance of the planet, and what is perturbing it.
Foundations & Overviews · Paleoclimatology · Climate Modelling · The Carbon Cycle · Radiative Forcing
Where water is, where it goes, and how fast the ice is going.
Foundations & Overviews · Surface Water Hydrology · Groundwater & Aquifers · Watershed Management · Glaciology
Human systems colliding with natural ones.
Foundations & Overviews · Biogeochemical Cycles · Soil Science · Air & Water Pollution · Environmental Toxicology
Low-probability, high-consequence events and how to plan for them.
Foundations & Overviews · Earthquakes · Tsunamis · Hurricanes & Cyclones · Wildfires
Representing the surface of the Earth, and arguing about the projection.
Foundations & Overviews · Physical Geography · Human Geography · Cartography & Map Projections · Geographic Information Systems
No prior grounding assumed.
The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers
John Tyndall · 1872
Explains glacier motion, crevassing and the blue colour of ice as consequences of ice's internal structure, written to make physical glaciology…
+18 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report
IPCC · 2023
The consensus statement of the physical evidence on climate change, with explicit confidence levels attached to each claim.
+24 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno's Dissertation
Nicolas Steno · 1669
Establishes from the layered rock of Tuscany that strata form horizontally and that a lower layer is older than the one above it, the founding logic…
+63 more at this level
12 of 108 works
John Tyndall
Explains glacier motion, crevassing and the blue colour of ice as consequences of ice's internal structure, written to make physical glaciology intelligible to a general reader.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Ellen Churchill Semple
Recasts Ratzel's anthropo-geography for an English-speaking audience, arguing that climate, terrain and coastline shape a people's history, economy and character.
about 15 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Eugene C. Robertson
Explains for a general audience how seismic waves, heat flow and meteorite composition combine as indirect evidence for a layered Earth of crust, mantle and core.
link checked 17 Sept 2026World Commission on Environment and Development
Defines sustainable development as meeting present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs, and argues environment and economic development cannot be treated as separate problems.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Mark Monmonier
Shows that every map necessarily distorts, generalises or omits, so a map's choices about what to include and how to symbolise it are themselves a form of argument that can mislead as easily as inform.
W. Jacquelyne Kious & Robert I. Tilling
Walks a general reader through the evidence — matching coastlines, magnetic stripes, earthquake belts — that persuaded geologists to accept moving plates within a single working generation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Thomas C. Winter, Judson W. Harvey, O. Lehn Franke & William M. Alley
Argues that groundwater and surface water are one interconnected system, not two separate resources, so pumping a well or draining a wetland always shows up somewhere else in the water balance.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Atwater et al.
Draws on survivor accounts and post-event surveys from Chile, Hawaii and Japan to set out what actually determines whether someone survives a tsunami, from wave arrival time to evacuation behaviour.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Spencer R. Weart
Traces how climate science moved from a scattered, doubted hypothesis to a robust consensus over a century of individually unglamorous measurements, arguing the science solidified well before the politics caught up.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Society for Ecological Restoration Science & Policy Working Group
Defines ecological restoration as assisting the recovery of a degraded, damaged or destroyed ecosystem and sets out the attributes a restored ecosystem should exhibit, becoming the field's reference definition.
link checked 17 Sept 2026National Weather Service
Walks a general reader through why weather happens at all — energy balance, fronts, pressure systems, storms — before any of the maths, as the on-ramp NWS built for its own forecasters-in-training and the public alike.
link checked 17 Sept 2026World Health Organization & UNEP
Reviews the global evidence on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and concludes exposure is a growing threat to human and wildlife health that routine chemical safety testing does not adequately capture.
link checked 17 Sept 2026