Earth sciences

Dryline

A dryline is a boundary separating moist Gulf of Mexico air from dry desert air, typically running north to south across the Great Plains in spring.

DSV Alvin

DSV Alvin, also known as RV Alvin, is a U.S. Navy-owned research submersible operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution since 1964, reaching depths of 6,500 meters.

DSV Limiting Factor

The DSV Limiting Factor is a two-person submersible rated to 11,000 m, built for Victor Vescovo's Five Deeps Expedition and sold in 2022 to Gabe Newell's Inkfish.

Dual carbon goals

The dual carbon goals (双碳目标) are China's climate commitments, announced by Xi Jinping in 2020, to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

The dual-porosity model is a mathematical representation of a fractured porous medium treating rock as two overlapping continua, fractures and porous matrix, introduced by Barenblatt and colleagues in 1960.

Dualite

Dualite is a rare yellow zircono-titanosilicate mineral of the eudialyte group, approved by the International Mineralogical Association in 2005 and found at Mount Alluaiv, Russia.

Dugald River mine

The Dugald River mine is an underground zinc, lead, and silver mine about 65 km north-west of Cloncurry, Queensland, wholly owned by MMG Limited and ranked among the world's top 10 zinc mines.

Dune

A dune, also called a sand dune, is a mound or ridge of wind-blown sand with a steep slipface, formed mainly in deserts and along sandy coasts.

Dunite

Dunite is a coarse-grained ultramafic igneous rock of more than 90 percent olivine, named by Ferdinand von Hochstetter in 1859 after New Zealand's Dun Mountain.

Duplex (geology)

In structural geology, a duplex is an array of thrust faults splaying up from a floor thrust and recombining onto a roof thrust, stacking slices called horses.

Oct 21, 2026

Durango Volcanic Field

Durango Volcanic Field (Campo Volcánico de Durango), a Pliocene-Quaternary monogenetic basaltic field of ~100 cinder cones and maars covering 2,100 km2 northeast of Durango city, Mexico, with the young La Breña-El Jagüey maar complex and mantle xenolith localities.

Durban Platform

The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action is a UNFCCC decision adopted at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011, launching negotiations that produced the Paris Agreement.

Duricrust

Duricrust is a hard, near-surface crust formed by low-temperature weathering that cements minerals in soil, sediment, or bedrock, shaping landscapes especially in arid and tropical regions.

Dust

Dust, also known as beggar's velvet, is mineral particulate matter lifted from dry land surfaces by wind and carried in the air, reducing visibility and degrading air quality.

Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, also called the Dirty Thirties, was a 1930s period of drought and dust storms on the Great Plains that drove farming families to migrate.

Dust devil

A dust devil is a small, rapidly rotating whirlwind made visible by dust, formed by surface heating on hot, dry afternoons rather than by a storm cloud.

Dust storm

A dust storm, or sandstorm, is a weather event where strong winds lift sand and dust from dry soil, often forming a miles-long wall of dust.

Duvernay Formation

The Duvernay Formation is an organic-rich Upper Devonian shale in Alberta that is both a major oil and gas source rock and an unconventional reservoir.

Dvorak technique

The Dvorak technique is a method for estimating tropical cyclone intensity from satellite imagery, developed by Vernon Dvorak at NOAA in the early 1970s and still the worldwide standard.

Dye tracing

Dye tracing is a hydrogeology technique that injects fluorescent dye, typically uranine, into water and measures it downstream to reveal underground flow paths and velocities.

Dylan Dreyer

Dylan Dreyer, full name Dylan Marie Dreyer, is an American television meteorologist with NBC News who joined Weekend Today in 2012 and co-hosts the 3rd Hour of Today.

Dynamic global vegetation model

A dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) is a process-based ecosystem model simulating vegetation dynamics and carbon, water, and energy fluxes between land and atmosphere, used in climate modeling.

Dynamic rupture simulation

Dynamic rupture simulation is a computational seismology method that numerically models spontaneous earthquake fault rupture by solving for stress, friction, and wave propagation, unlike kinematic models.

Dynamic topography

Dynamic topography is the height of the sea surface relative to the geoid, produced by ocean currents, or the solid-Earth deformation caused by flow in the convecting mantle.

Dynamical downscaling

Dynamical downscaling is a climate modeling technique in which a regional model driven at its boundaries by coarse global simulations produces higher-resolution regional climate projections.

Dynamo model

A dynamo model is a mathematical and numerical description of how convecting, electrically conducting fluid in a planetary core or star generates and sustains a magnetic field.

E3SM

E3SM (Energy Exascale Earth System Model) is a coupled Earth system model developed by the U.S. Department of Energy to simulate atmosphere, ocean, land, sea ice, rivers, and land ice.

Eady model

The Eady model is an idealized analytical model of baroclinic instability, introduced by Eric Eady in 1949, which with Charney's 1947 model founded the study of extratropical circulation.

Eagle Ford Shale

The Eagle Ford Shale is a Late Cretaceous hydrocarbon-bearing formation in South Texas, developed since 2008 as one of the largest US tight-oil and shale-gas plays.