Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Constructing statutory energy goal compliant wind and solar PV infrastructure pathways
Published: 2019-10-30
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Concerns over climate change have led governments around the world to establish a range of renewable, low-carbon energy goals. Plans for meeting these targets vary widely in their ambition, specificity, and time horizons. Wind and solar electricity generation will feature prominently in future energy systems that meet these renewable, low-carbon energy goals. Implementing large-scale wind and [...]
Observing Rivers with Varying Spatial Scales
Published: 2019-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The NASA/CNES Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will estimate global river discharge using remote sensing. Synoptic remote sensing data extends in situ point measurements, but, at any given point, is generally less accurate. We address two questions: 1)What are the scales at which river dynamics can be observed, given spatial sampling and measurement noise characteristics? 2) Is [...]
Did deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet cause a large earthquake and tsunami around 10,600 years ago?
Published: 2019-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Due to their large mass, ice sheets induce significant stresses in the Earth’s crust. Stress release during deglaciation can trigger large-magnitude earthquakes, as indicated by surface faults in northern Europe. Although glacially-induced stresses have been analyzed in northern Europe, they have not yet been analyzed for Greenland. We know that the Greenland Ice Sheet experienced a large melting [...]
Crustal structure of Sri Lanka derived from joint inversion of surface wave dispersion and receiver functions using a Bayesian approach
Published: 2019-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We study the crustal structure of Sri Lanka by analyzing data from a temporary seismic network deployed in 2016--2017 to shed light on the amalgamation process from a geophysical perspective. Rayleigh wave phase dispersion curves from ambient noise cross-correlation and receiver functions were jointly inverted using a transdimensional Bayesian approach. The Moho depths in Sri Lanka range between [...]
Does fluvial channel belt clustering predict net sand to gross rock volume? Architectural metrics and point pattern analysis of a digital outcrop model
Published: 2019-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Spatial point-pattern analyses (PPAs) are used to quantify clustering, randomness, and uniformity of the distribution of channel belts in fluvial strata. Point patterns may reflect end-member fluvial architecture, e.g., uniform compensational stacking and avulsion-generated clustering, which may change laterally, especially at greater scales. To investigate spatial and temporal changes in fluvial [...]
A Speed Limit on Ice Shelf Collapse through Hydrofracture
Published: 2019-10-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Increasing surface melt has been implicated in the collapse of several Antarctic ice shelves over the last few decades, including the collapse of Larsen B Ice Shelf over a period of just a few weeks in 2002. The speed at which an ice shelf disintegrates strongly determines the subsequent loss of grounded ice and sea level rise, but the controls on collapse speed are not well understood. Here we [...]
Surface faulting earthquake clustering controlled by fault and shear-zone interactions
Published: 2019-10-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Surface faulting earthquakes are known to cluster in time, from historical and palaeoseismic studies, but the mechanism(s) responsible for clustering, such as fault interaction, strain-storage, and evolving dynamic topography, are poorly quantified, and hence not well understood. We present a quantified replication of observed earthquake clustering in central Italy. Six active normal faults are [...]
Verifying pore network models of imbibition in rocks using time-resolved synchrotron imaging
Published: 2019-10-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
At the pore scale, slow invasion of a wetting fluid in porous materials is often modelled with quasi-static approximations which only consider capillary forces in the form of simple pore filling rules. The appropriateness of this approximation, often applied in pore network models, is contested in literature, reflecting the difficulty of predicting imbibition relative permeability with these [...]
Another look at the treatment of data uncertainty in Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion and other probabilistic methods
Published: 2019-10-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In probabilistic Bayesian inversions, data uncertainty is a crucial parameter for quantifying the uncertainties and correlations of the resulting model parameters or, in transdimensional approaches, even the complexity of the model. However, in many geophysical inference problems it is poorly known. Therefore, it is common practice to allow the data uncertainty itself to be a parameter to be [...]
On the difficulties of being rigorous in environmental geochemistry studies: some recommendations for designing an impactful paper
Published: 2019-10-25
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
There have been numerous environmental geochemistry studies using chemical, geological, ecological and toxicological methods but each of these fields requires more subject specialist rigour than has generally been applied so far. Field-specific terminology has been misused and the resulting interpretations rendered inaccurate. In this paper, we propose a series of suggestions, based on our [...]
Machine Learning for Inferring CO2 Fluxes: The New Metaphysics of Neural Nets
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The advent of direct high-resolution global surface measurements of CO2 from the recently launched NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite offers an opportunity to improve the estimate of Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) over land. Long-term measurements of CO2flux obtained from eddy covariance instruments on Flux towers show large annual differences with NEE calculated by inverse methods [...]
PYRENAIC ROCK GLACIERS: AN AIRBORNE AND MULTITEMPORAL LiDAR MONITORING CASE STUDY IN THE BESIBERRI AREA
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The monitoring of rock glaciers is a current subject of interest because of its application as permafrost indicator and its sensitivity to climatic changes (especially temperature and precipitation). Alpine rock glaciers in the Pyrenees have been described by various authors, but to study them regionally has been a challenge since most of these studies are based on ground-based techniques. Two [...]
Inheritance of penetrative basement anisotropies by extension-oblique faults: Insights from analogue experiments
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
During rifting, pre-existing penetrative basement fabrics can affect new faults in cover rocks by a mechanism that does not appear to involve reactivation. This subtle form of inheritance can significantly impact fault network architecture in rift basins above laterally variable basement domains with geomechanical anisotropies. Here we use multi-layer, brittle-ductile, crustal-scale analogue [...]
Intermittent fluid connectivity during two-phase flow in a heterogeneous carbonate rock
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Subsurface fluid flow is ubiquitous in nature, and understanding the interaction of multiple fluids as they flow within a porous medium is central to many geological, environmental, and industrial processes. It is assumed that the flow pathways of each phase are invariant when modelling subsurface flow using Darcys law extended to multiphase flow; a condition that is assumed to be valid during [...]
Major-element composition of sediments in terms of weathering and provenance: Implications for crustal recycling
Published: 2019-10-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The elemental composition of a sediment is set by the composition of its protolith and modified by weathering, sorting, and diagenesis. An important problem is deconvolving these contributions to a sediment’s composition to arrive at information about processes that operate on the Earth’s surface. We approach this problem by developing a predictive and invertible model of sedimentary [...]