Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Simplified heat budgets can yield misleading diagnoses of ocean temperature change
Published: 2026-08-27
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Temporal changes in upper ocean temperature (đ) are crucial indicators of climate variability, change, and its environmental impacts. Ocean heat budgets (OHBs) used to understand these changes are a standard tool across multiple disciplines, but the vast majority of OHBs in published research rely on approximations that are rarely documented and tested. Here, we use output from the CESM2 model to [...]
Numerical modeling and hazard analysis of Kuwait dust storm events using WRF Chemistry model
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Dust storms have a negative impact on socio-economic events in Kuwait, including traffic accidents, seaport closures, airport shutdowns, and flight delays, and agriculture degradation. From the diurnal analysis of weather parameters, it was noticed that dust storms were more severe from noon to late evening hours and gradually slowed down during the night hours. Sometimes, these strong dust [...]
What can satellite embedding fields tell us about shallow coral-reef habitats? A decodability survey of AlphaEarth over the Great Barrier Reef
Published: 2026-08-25
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Annual satellite embedding fields compress a year of multi-sensor observation into a 64-dimensional vector per 10 m pixel, globally; whether they retain ecologically meaningful information about the submerged reef benthos is untested. We conducted a registered decodability survey of the AlphaEarth Foundations embedding over shallow (< 10 m) Great Barrier Reef habitats: every candidate output [...]
Silicate Weathering Dynamics in the KasaĂŻ Basin and Implications for Enhanced Rock Weathering Applications in the Tropics
Published: 2026-08-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Silicate weathering is one of the ultimate geologic sinks of atmospheric CO2. Enhanced rock weathering (ERW), aiming at accelerating this natural process to mitigate anthropogenic warming, has received significant attention due to high projected CO2 removal potential and possible agricultural co-benefits applications in the tropics. Yet, the natural baseline of chemical weathering in low-relief, [...]
Linking Atmospheric Transport Resistance to Extreme Snowfall Risk Using Non-Stationary Extreme Value Models
Published: 2026-08-25
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study develops a hybrid physical--statistical framework for evaluating extreme snowfall risk along the Sea of Japan coast by integrating causal-network analysis, Dijkstra-based atmospheric transport physics, and non-stationary extreme value theory. Using a 135-year record (1889--2024) of annual maximum snow-depth anomalies from 23 meteorological stations, we first quantify atmospheric [...]
Seasonal Estimates of Instream Nitrogen & Phosphorus Loads from New England Watersheds Discharging to Long Island Sound, 2000 through 2020
Published: 2026-08-25
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seasonally dynamic estimates of total nitrogen and total phosphorus loads delivered to Long Island Sound from New England watersheds are estimated by use of seasonally dynamic SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) models. These models are part of the larger Long Island Sound Study (LISS) a coordinated effort by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the States [...]
Early warning signals of tipping points: A deep learning approach to direction and timing
Published: 2026-08-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The crossing of climate tipping points poses serious risk to life on Earth due to the impacts they cause, and their irreversibility. These systems generally exhibit critical slowing down on their approach to tipping point, or bifurcation, which can be detected by looking for changes in statistical properties of a time series from the system, such as an increasing lag-1 autocorrelation or [...]
Mass-Transport Complex Top Surface Morphology Controls Turbidity Current Evolution Over Millennial Timescales
Published: 2026-08-22
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Slope failures and related gravity currents are key mechanisms by which sediment is remobilized, transported, and deposited on most of continental margins. Their deposits, which include mass-transport complexes (MTCs) and turbidites, are commonly deposited in close spatial and temporal association and constitute key depositional elements filling sedimentary basins. Previous studies have revealed [...]
A differential linear perturbation method for apparent I.P. calculations
Published: 2026-08-22
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
3-D induced polarization (I.P.) surveys are widely used in exploration of minerals particularly those that contain conductive minerals sulfides that frequently occur in areas with complex geology. The linear perturbation method is frequently used to calculate the apparent resistivity and I.P. values. This method treats the I.P. effect as a linear change of a base conductivity model. The apparent [...]
State-Dependent Biophysical Processes Prevented a Late Paleozoic Snowball Earth
Published: 2026-08-21
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Terrestrial vegetation modulates Earthâs climate through two distinct pathwaysâbiogeochemically drawing down CO2 through enhanced organic carbon burial [1, 2] and silicate weathering [3, 4], and biophysically altering surface energy and water balances through potentially competing albedo and evapotranspiration changes [5, 6]. Although the biogeochemical pathway is widely invoked to explain the [...]
Tsunami wavefront backprojection to locate sources of dispersive waves imaged by SWOT during the 2025 M8.8 Kamchatka Earthquake
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The 29 July 2025 M8.8 Kamchatka earthquake generated a Pacific-wide tsunami that the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission imaged about 70 minutes later, about 600 km from the source, as a leading crest trailed by a train of short-wavelength dispersive waves. Rather than matching an assumed source forward to the observations, as prior studies of this wavefield have done, we [...]
Abiotic Oxygen and the Limits of Earth Analogy in Exoplanet Biosignature Interpretation
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The detection of atmospheric oxygen on a rocky exoplanet is widely regarded as a strong indicator of biological activity. This expectation derives from a single observational precedent: Earth. We argue that this extrapolation conflates two epistemologically distinct categories of knowledge â universal physical laws, which apply to any rocky planet under any conditions, and contingent terrestrial [...]
Explicit Structural Modeling of Geological Horizons Near Fault Networks
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This article extends the approach of constructing a geological horizon surface near a single tectonic fault to the case of a system of arbitrary, including intersecting, faults. The generalization requires solving four subtasks: formalization of the fault system as a simplicial complex, construction of the modeling domain as a gamma-neighborhood of the cut graph on the triangulation, replacement [...]
What Can We Learn from a Reduced-Dimensional Groundwater Representation for Diagnosing GroundwaterâLand Interactions? Insights from the Water Table Ratio
Published: 2026-08-20
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater exerts an important control on landâatmosphere interactions, yet its explicit representation in Earth system models remains computationally prohibitive. Reduced-dimensional metrics, such as the Water Table Ratio (WTR), have been proposed to represent groundwater influences on landâatmosphere interactions. However, their uncertainty, classification stability, and correspondence with [...]
Mapping Ice Slabs over Antarctic Ice Shelves using Quad-Polarization L-band Radar Backscatter
Published: 2026-08-16
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Nearly 3 months of enhanced-resolution, quad-polarization, L-band (1.26 GHz) radar backscatter (Ďo) image time series are used to map the ice slab extent over the percolation facies of Antarctic ice shelves for the first time from space. Distinctive spatial trends in Ďo, incidence angle, and polarization signatures mapped via principal component analysis (PCA) are used to develop a [...]