Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Python workflow for segmenting multiphase flow in porous rocks
Published: 2023-07-25
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The need for accurate, consistent and fast image processing has become an important part of the investigation of multiphase flow through porous media. We describe an open-source image processing workflow written in python, using the sci-kit toolbox. We demonstrate the methodology to segment multiple fluids (gas and brine), and the rock grains for a Bentheimer sandstone. This workflow can be [...]
Coherent subsiding structures in large eddy simulations of atmospheric boundary layers
Published: 2023-07-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Coherent structures are characterized in high-resolution simulations of three atmospheric boundary layers: dry convection, marine cumulus, and stratocumulus. Based on radioactive-decaying tracers emitted at different altitudes (surface, top of well-mixed layer, and cloud top), a object-oriented methodology allows individual characterization of coherent tridimensional plumes within the flow. [...]
Adaptation to climate damages is not inevitable
Published: 2023-07-21
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Understanding how climate change will affect human welfare must account for how humans will adapt to the changing environment. Adaptations are often local, unobserved, or will only emerge in the future, posing a challenge for attempts to empirically derive climate damage functions and leading to claims that such empirically based functions overestimate the future economic costs of warming. By [...]
Effect of basal friction on granular column collapse
Published: 2023-07-19
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The collapse behaviour of granular materials is influenced by many factors, such as aspect ratio and inter-particle friction. However, the specific impact of basal to grain friction on column collapse remains poorly understood. In this study, we systematically analyse the effect of basal friction on gravity-driven granular column collapse using a validated smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) [...]
An adjoint-based optimization method for jointly inverting heterogeneous material properties and fault slip from earthquake surface deformation data
Published: 2023-07-19
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Analysis of tectonic and earthquake-cycle associated deformation of the crust can provide valuable insights into the underlying deformation processes including fault slip. How those processes are expressed at the surface depends on the lateral and depth variations of rock properties. The effect of such variations is often tested by forward models based on a priori geological or geophysical [...]
Commercial-Scale Demonstration of a First-of-a-Kind Enhanced Geothermal System
Published: 2023-07-18
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Fervo Energy has completed construction of a commercial enhanced geothermal system (EGS) project and has qualified full functionality of the system through production testing at commercially relevant operating conditions. The project site is located in a nearfield setting adjacent to an operating geothermal power station in north-central Nevada and is designed to deliver an uplift in [...]
Recent increase in a recurrent pan-Atlantic wave-pattern driving concurrent wintertime extremes
Published: 2023-07-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Wintertime extremes such as cold spells and heavy precipitation can have severe socioeconomic impacts, disrupting critical infrastructures and affecting human wellbeing. Here, we relate the occurrence of local and concurrent cold or wet wintertime extremes in North America and Europe to a recurrent, quasi-hemispheric wave-4 Rossby wave pattern. We identify this pattern as a fundamental mode of [...]
Discovery of a new 12-km impact crater candidate at As Sail Al Kabeer, Saudi Arabia
Published: 2023-07-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences
The Arabian shield of Saudi Arabia likely has many impact craters due to the old age of its rocks, however many of them have not yet been discovered due to their resemblance to plutons. Using satellite imagery, a 12-km wide circular structure with a central peak was identified at As Sail Al Kabeer, 40 kilometers north of the city of Taif in western Saudi Arabia. Fieldwork has shown that this [...]
Satellite-derived shorelines for monitoring of sandy beaches: a benchmark study
Published: 2023-07-09
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Satellite remote sensing is becoming a widely used monitoring technique in coastal sciences. Yet, no benchmarking studies exist that compare the performance of popular satellite-derived shoreline (SDS) mapping algorithms against standardized sets of inputs and validation data. Here we present a new benchmarking framework to evaluate the accuracy of shoreline change observations extracted from [...]
Transporting Heat Flux From the US and Europe to Antarctica Guided by Regional Seismic Structure
Published: 2023-07-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Subglacial geothermal heat flux affects the dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheet but is poorly known. We estimate heat flux across West Antarctica and the interior of East Antarctica by transporting heat flux observations from the contiguous US and Europe, based on seismic structure with a lateral resolution of about \qty{100}{km}. We transport with three Machine Learning models across a hierarchy [...]
Sequence stratigraphy of the Eocene-Miocene Mrayt Group, North-Western Rif (Morocco)
Published: 2023-07-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Detailed sequence stratigraphy of the Eocene-Miocene Mrayt Group in North-Western Rif (Morocco), allow identifying the nature and the sources of the sediment supplies, the sedimentary facies and the depositional environments as well as the factors that controlled the sedimentation. This work made it also possible to identify 16 facies sequences that have never been described before. facies [...]
Improved representation of laminar and turbulent sheet flow in subglacial drainage models
Published: 2023-07-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Subglacial hydrology models struggle to reproduce seasonal drainage patterns that are consistent with observed subglacial water pressures and surface velocities. We modify the standard sheet-flow parameterization within a coupled sheet--channel subglacial drainage model to smoothly transition between laminar and turbulent flow based on the locally computed Reynolds number in a physically [...]
Demystifying the Dynamics of Global and Regional Sea Level Trends from 1993 to 2021
Published: 2023-07-07
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Models
As global sea levels rise, questions persist about the robustness of trends and their dynamics. Here, we offer a fresh perspective by examining the dynamics of global and regional mean sea-level trends using a probabilistic framework applied to the altimetric record. We show that the global mean sea-level (GMSL) rise accelerated from 2.5 mm/yr (1993-2000) to 4.2 mm/yr (2014-2021) with an average [...]
Theoretical and experimental modeling of local scale CO2 flushing of hydrous rhyolitic magma
Published: 2023-07-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Flushing of hydrous silicic magmas with crustal carbonic fluid may be an important factor controlling the explosiveness of rhyolitic eruptions. We present combined theoretical and experimental study of the interaction of carbonic fluid with a hydrous silicic melt. The process of diffusional equilibration of a CO2 bubble with a silicic melt was simulated numerically in the spherical approximation. [...]
ANSEICCA: a Python package for seismic ambient noise source inversion by cross-correlation modelling
Published: 2023-07-06
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present ANSEICCA, an open-source package for forward and inverse modelling of seismic ambient noise cross-correlations at local scales, where the effects of Earth's sphericity are negligible. The package implements a nonlinear finite-frequency inversion technique wherein measurements of cross-correlation energy are used to invert for the spatial distribution of ambient noise sources, under the [...]