Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Misconceptions in the application of the Arrhenius equation to plastics - environmental degradation of plastics unlikely below their glass transition temperature
Published: 2024-05-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The term ‘’plastic’’ is derived from the Greek word ''plastikos'', meaning fit for moulding, highlighting the main feature that makes plastics so useful, i.e., their malleability during manufacture, allowing plastics to be formed into a variety of shapes such as bottles, bags and straws1. However, this malleability is temperature-dependent requiring the constituent polymers to be in the molten [...]
A Review of Machine Learning in Snow Water Equivalent Monitoring
Published: 2024-05-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
In recent years, the scientific community focused on snow dynamics has witnessed a surge in efforts aimed at enhancing Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) monitoring capabilities, largely propelled by the incorporation of Machine Learning (ML) techniques. This comprehensive review delves into the current state of research within this evolving domain, shedding light on the indispensable role of precise [...]
Unique In-situ Measurements from Greenland Fjord Show Winter Freshening by Subglacial Melt
Published: 2024-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The interaction between glacier fronts and ocean waters is one of the key uncertainties for projecting future ice mass loss. Direct observations at glacier fronts are sparse but studies indicate that the magnitude and timing of freshwater fluxes are crucial in determining fjord circulation, ice frontal melt and ecosystem habitability. Particularly wintertime dynamics are severely understudied due [...]
SWOT Data Assimilation with Correlated Error Reduction: Fitting Model and Error Together
Published: 2024-05-01
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission provides high-resolution two-dimensional sea surface height (SSH) data with swath coverage. However, spatially correlated errors affect these SSH measurements, particularly in the cross-track direction. The scales of errors can be similar to the scales of ocean features. Conventionally, instrumental errors and ocean signals have been [...]
Dynamics of Aggregates and Sinking Carbon Fluxes in a Turbulent Ocean
Published: 2024-04-23
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The sinking of particulate matter from the upper ocean dominates the export and sequestration of organic carbon by the biological pump, a critical component of the Earth's carbon cycle. Controls on carbon export are thought to be driven by ecological processes that produce and repackage sinking biogenic particles. Here, we present observations during the demise of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean [...]
Pleistocene shifts in Great Basin hydroclimate seasonality govern the formation of lithium-rich paleolake deposits
Published: 2024-04-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Paleobiology, Sedimentology
Southwestern North America is currently experiencing a multidecadal megadrought, with severe consequences for water resources. However, significant uncertainty remains about how precipitation will change in the 21st century in this semi-arid region. Paleoclimatic records are essential for both contextualizing current change, and for helping constrain the sensitivity of regional hydroclimate to [...]
Estimating microphysical properties of ice clouds for climate modeling and remote sensing applications
Published: 2024-04-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ice clouds pose crucial challenges in climate model simulations and remote sensing retrievals due to complicated mechanisms of ice cloud formation that span from micro scale to planetary wave scale. Despite numerous attempts to parameterize these processes, many questions remain unanswered. This technical note provides a summary of the most common and recent studies on ice clouds and compiles [...]
Progress in Understanding North American Monsoon Using a Climate Model
Published: 2024-04-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The North American Monsoon is a seasonal shift in the large-scale circulation that supplies 60-80% of annual rainfall in northwestern Mexico and 30-40% in the US southwest. Regional climate models have shown that summer precipitation prediction over North America is the poorest in the Monsoon region. Most climate models do not account for a crucial mechanism of Monsoon: the boundary layer [...]
Sink of eddy energy by submesoscale sea surface temperature variability in a coupled regional model
Published: 2024-03-20
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Air-sea interaction impacts ocean energetics via modifications to the exchange of momentum and buoyancy. Prior work at the submesoscale has largely focused on mechanisms related to the eddy kinetic energy (EKE), such as the current feedback on stress, which generates negative wind work, or variations in sea surface temperature (SST) that modify surface winds. However, less is known about the [...]
Turbulence and mixing from neighbouring stratified shear layers
Published: 2024-03-13
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Studies of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) have typically modeled the initial mean flow as an isolated stratified shear layer. However, geophysical flows frequently exhibit multiple layers. As a step towards understanding these flows, we examine the case of two adjacent stratified shear layers {\color{black} using both linear stability analysis and direct numerical simulation}. With [...]
Linking local climate scenarios to global warming levels: Applicability, prospects and uncertainties
Published: 2024-03-08
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Global warming levels (GWLs) are increasingly becoming a central concept in climate change studies. In recent years, their integrative quality for climate change impact analysis has been demonstrated, and methodological advancements have helped to compensate for some inherent shortfalls of the concept. However, their applicability at the regional level is debatable, and no study to date has [...]
Reconstructing Global Ocean Color Data at High Temporal Resolution Using an Improved DINEOF Algorithm
Published: 2024-02-27
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Global studies on phytoplankton phenology remain challenging primarily because of sparse observations. The Data Interpolation Empirical Orthogonal Function (DINEOF) algorithm has been used successfully to reconstruct datasets of geophysical and biological variables such as sea surface temperature (SST) and Chlorophyll a (Chl a). We propose an improved version of DINEOF, DINEOF+, based on a [...]
The effect of global and regional solar shading on climate: A simulation study
Published: 2024-02-23
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The potential climate impact of solar geoengineering is examined using climate model simulations by artificially reducing the incoming solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Climate scenario simulations indicate that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (2xCO2) induces a surface temperature rise which is amplified over the poles primarily during the respective winter. The warming also [...]
The Potential for Fuel Reduction to Offset Climate Warming Impacts on Wildfire Intensity in California
Published: 2024-02-21
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Statistics and Probability, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Increasing fuel aridity due to climate warming has and will continue to increase wildfire danger in California. In addition to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, one of the primary proposals for counteracting this increase in wildfire danger is a widespread expansion of hazardous fuel reductions. Here, we quantify the potential for fuel reduction to reduce wildfire intensity using [...]
Bad science and good intentions prevent effective climate action
Published: 2024-02-17
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Although the 2015 Paris Agreement climate targets seem certain to be missed, only a few experts are questioning the adequacy of the current approach to limiting climate change and suggesting that additional approaches are needed to avoid unacceptable catastrophes. This article posits that selective science communication and unrealistically optimistic assumptions are obscuring the reality that [...]