Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Megathrust Earthquakes Amplify Coastal Wave Hazards in Cascadia Under Rising Sea Levels
Published: 2026-09-01
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, destructive megathrust earthquakes represent a significant coastal hazard. These events generate abrupt, meter-scale coseismic subsidence, instantaneously increasing relative sea level, inundation extent, and the reach of ocean waves. In the coming decades, eustatic sea level rise will continue to shift baseline coastal conditions, with the potential to change [...]
The four-vector potential of equatorial shallow water waves from Hamilton’s principle
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Linear shallow water waves on an equatorial β-plane can be represented as the states of a charged particle minimally coupled to a four-vector potential whose analogue magnetic field is uniform and proportional to β/c_g. There the potential is written down and verified rather than derived. We show that it need not be assumed. In the Eulerian variational principle for rotating flow the Coriolis [...]
A particle representation of tropical shallow water waves
Published: 2026-08-31
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The linearized shallow water equations on a general β-plane reduce to a single meridional structure equation for the meridional velocity. We show that this equation is exactly the Schrödinger equation for a “charged” particle minimally coupled to a four-vector potential whose analogue magnetic field, B_W=-(β/c_g ) x ̂, is uniform and westward. No ad hoc term is required: every term is generated [...]
Exploring the Signal Content of Continuous Seismic Recordings at Station NKC (West-Bohemia/Vogtland) With a Self-Supervised Vision Transformer
Published: 2026-08-30
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Continuous seismic recordings contain a wide variety of signal types (earthquakes, quarry blasts, induced events, and diverse background and anthropogenic noise) but sorting them into meaningful categories usually relies on manual inspection. Here we take an exploratory approach and ask a deliberately simple question: what kinds of signals are actually present in the continuous record of station [...]
Super El Niño Winters and the Arctic Polar Vortex: Response Heterogeneity, QBO Modulation, and a Prospectively Defined Test for Winter 2026/27
Published: 2026-08-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In the three strongest El Niño winters of the instrumental record (1982/83, 1997/98, 2015/16) the Arctic polar vortex did not collapse in a major midwinter sudden stratospheric warming (SSW). This study starts from the premise that the observation is not a paradox: 58% of El Niño winters contain at least one major SSW, so the chance probability of three consecutive SSW-free winters is 0.42³≈0.07, [...]
Upper-Scale Structural Evaluation of the Forearc Weak Suture Zone and the Pacific Plate Interface — An Analysis Based on Precursor Data (No.1778) —
Published: 2026-08-30
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study reinterprets precursor data (No.1778) published by the Yatsugatake South Base Observatory using the framework of seismology and tectonics, in order to evaluate the upper-scale structural potential of the forearc weak suture zone and the Pacific Plate interface beneath the Kanto Basin. The precursor data are not used for earthquake prediction; instead, they are treated as aggregate [...]
Deep Learning-Based Meteorological Data Downscaling: A Comparative Study with Physics Informed CNN and a Component-Level Ablation Analysis
Published: 2026-08-29
Subjects: Computer Engineering, Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Meteorological statistical downscaling is a critical technique for deriving high-resolution climate information from coarse global reanalysis products. This experiment investigates the application of five representative deep learning architectures for downscaling ERA5 reanalysis 2m temperature fields from 1° to 0.25° spatial resolution (4x upscaling factor) over the China region, spanning the [...]
Climate change has intensified exceptional El Niño events like the 2026/27 forecast
Published: 2026-08-29
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
Extreme El Niño events disrupt weather across much of the globe, with adverse effects on agriculture, fisheries and economic output that persist for several years. Event attribution routinely quantifies the human influence on individual heatwaves, droughts and floods, but its application to the El Niño events that drive many of them has been much more limited. Here we investigate the 2026/27 El [...]
Space-based InSAR with sub-daily temporal baselines
Published: 2026-08-29
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) underpins the Surface Deformation and Change observable prioritized by the 2018 decadal survey, yet the temporal sampling of current assets aliases many transient geophysical processes. For single-satellite repeat-pass InSAR, satellite orbits accommodate temporal baselines at integer nodal day intervals down to a single nodal day. Processes that [...]
System openness governs detectable signals of enhanced rock weathering in soils: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Substantial heterogeneity in enhanced rock weathering (ERW) outcomes is often attributed to dissolution controls. However, we show that experimental boundary conditions – especially system openness – provide a primary explanation because dissolution products can be redistributed or exported beyond the sampled pool. We synthesise 81 peer-reviewed ERW studies (205 comparisons) using [...]
Topographic control on ice anisotropy in Antarctic ice rises inferred from phase-sensitive radar
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Raymond effect within ice rises and underneath ice divides of ice sheets arises from the non-linear rheology of the ice and steady-flow conditions. The resulting Raymond arches seen in radargrams have been associated with crystal orientation fabric (COF) that produces ice optical anisotropy, detectable with radar. We use data collected with a phase-sensitive radar across two ice rises, [...]
A Reduced-Order Dynamical Model for the Ignition of Diver-Induced Cohesive Silt-Out on Sloping Beds
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Dynamical Systems, Dynamic Systems, Non-linear Dynamics, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Ordinary Differential Equations and Applied Dynamics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A downward fin thrust near a cohesive seabed lofts sediment. Whether this cloud settles or organizes into a self-sustaining down-slope current determines if a diver loses visibility briefly or catastrophically. We reduce the layer-averaged balances of fluid mass, sediment mass, and momentum to a temporal slab of fixed thickness in the weakly entraining limit. This yields an autonomous planar [...]
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 (𝑇) 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 [...]