An integrated campaign of drilling around Asia and Australia was conducted from 2013 to 2016 to reconstruct the monsoon climate. The results provide relatively continuous records spanning the last 24 myr. Asia has shown a steady drying since the late Miocene, while Australia has become wetter. The monsoons are affected by the tectonics of Asia and surrounding seas, as well as orbital forcing, resulting in diachronous evolution of continental climate, ocean currents, and the marine biosphere.

The newly established geodynamic laboratory aims to develop modern, comprehensive, multiparameter observations at depth for studying earthquake swarms, crustal fluid flow, mantle-derived fluid degassing and processes of the deep biosphere. It is located in the West Bohemia–Vogtland (western Eger Rift) geodynamic region and comprises a set of five shallow boreholes with high-frequency 3-D seismic arrays as well as continuous real-time fluid monitoring at depth and the study of the deep biosphere.

Previous glaciations eroded below the ice deep valleys in the Alpine foreland, which, with their sedimentary fillings, witness the timing and extent of these glacial advance–retreat cycles. Drilling such sedimentary sequences will thus provide well-needed evidence in order to reconstruct the (a)synchronicity of past ice advances in a trans-Alpine perspective. Eventually these data will document how the Alpine foreland was shaped and how the paleoclimate patterns varied along and across the Alps.

We report a new method of obtaining representative samples of drill core with an example from the lower oceanic crust in the Hess Deep rift. Sawing drill core in half produces 1.3 g of rock per centimeter of core cut – material usually discarded. We show that when collected and analyzed properly, these samples reveal both the chemical composition of lower oceanic crust and the reactions that change the mineralogical and chemical composition of that crust.

Fold parameters such as fold axis, axial plane, interlimb angle, and their depth are very useful for geological and structural geological interpretation. In this paper, we report on a simple method to evaluate fold parameters from borehole image logs. The method is validated using a simulated fold model to test its practical limitations. The results suggest that the fold parameters derived by the proposed method are sufficient for practical interpretation.

BlackGate seeks to MSP drill a transect to study the impact of dramatic hydrologic change in Mediterranean–Black Sea connectivity by recovering the Messinian to Holocene (~ 7 Myr) sedimentary sequence in the North Aegean, Marmara, and Black seas. These archives will reveal hydrographic, biotic, and climatic transitions studied by a broad scientific community spanning the stratigraphic, tectonic, biogeochemical, and microbiological evolution of Earth’s most recent saline and anoxic giant.