Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Large earthquakes are more predictable than smaller ones
Published: 2025-01-29
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Large earthquakes have been viewed as highly chaotic events regardless of their magnitude, making their prediction intrinsically challenging. Here, we develop a mathematical tool to incorporate multiscale physics, capable of describing both deterministic and chaotic systems, to model earthquake rupture. Our findings suggest that the chaotic behavior of seismic dynamics, that is, its sensitivity [...]
Pre-eruptive reservoir conditions of the peralkaline Rungwe Pumice (Tanzania) Plinian eruption from haüyne-hosted melt inclusions
Published: 2025-01-27
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The style and explosivity of volcanic eruptions are primarily governed by the interplay between conduit dynamics (e.g., magma ascent rate and degassing efficiency) and pre-eruptive magmatic conditions, both of which influence magma rheology. In highly alkaline magmas (i.e., agpaitic index > 1), the depolymerising effect of alkaline elements lowers melt viscosity at a given temperature, [...]
Enhanced Oil Recovery using carbon dioxide directly captured from air does not enable carbon-neutral oil
Published: 2025-01-23
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study evaluates the feasibility of producing carbon neutral oil via CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR) coupled with direct air capture. Existing analyses often provide case-specific insights based on short-term operations that do not encompass the full life cycle of reservoir exploitation. In contrast, we propose a novel, top-down approach based on mass and volume conservation, expanding [...]
Basin-scale development of giant collapse structures induced by gypsum diagenesis
Published: 2025-01-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Across buried sedimentary basins, the dissolution-prone nature of evaporite sequences drives the formation of collapse structures (e.g., sinkholes), fundamentally transforming landscapes at large scales. Understanding where, why, and how such structures form is crucial, given they pose geological hazards that may threaten human safety and infrastructure stability, or may affect subsurface [...]
Controls on Runoff Efficiency and its Spatiotemporal Variability in South Asian River Basins
Published: 2025-01-22
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Runoff efficiency (RE) represents the potential of a basin to generate runoff in response to precipitation and it varies based on climatology and physiography. It is a key metric that enables hydrologists to compare the hydrologic responses of basins across diverse climates and landscapes. In the large river basins of South Asia, RE plays a key role in floods and drought dynamics but has not been [...]
Trace Element Analyses of Plagioclase from Troctolite 76535 and Implications for Mg-suite Petrogenesis
Published: 2025-01-21
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences
Certain Mg-suite samples display enrichment in incompatible elements, likely resulting from the assimilation of the material that crystallized at the very late stages of magma ocean (ur-KREEP). This study uses trace element analyses of plagioclase separates from sample 76535 to estimate the Rare Earth Element (REE) concentration of the Mg-suite parental liquid and assess the extent of [...]
Algal lipid distributions and hydrogen isotope ratios reflect phytoplankton community dynamics
Published: 2025-01-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Reconstructions of past changes in algal community composition provide important context for future alterations in biogeochemical cycling. However, many existing phytoplankton proxies are indicative of individual algal groups and are not fully representative of the whole community. Here, we evaluated hydrogen isotope ratios of algal lipids (δ2HLipid) as a potential proxy for phytoplankton [...]
Untangling microfibres: Pervasive plastic pollution in submarine canyons
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Submarine canyons are important conduits for microplastic transport to the deep sea via turbidity currents. However, other near-bed oceanographic flows and sub-seafloor processes may play an important role in the transport and burial of microplastics. We use sediment push-cores for microplastic and sediment grain-size analysis from two transects across the Whittard Canyon, UK, to show that [...]
Influence and Prediction of Planetary Orbital Changes on Earth's Atmospheric Water Vapor Variations
Published: 2025-01-17
Subjects: Education, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A few people have gradually realized that the superposition effect of different planets in the solar system on Earth under high-speed motion and dynamic equilibrium can sometimes trigger extreme natural disasters. Due to the relatively regular changes in the relative positions of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, this study considers these three planets as independent systems. The orbits of other planets [...]
Updated high-resolution climate projections for Ireland
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate change poses a significant risk to Ireland’s economy, society and environment, and therefore it is imperative that planners and policymakers are adequately informed about future climate change so that appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures can be implemented. The main objective of this project was to evaluate the effects of climate change on the future climate of Ireland using [...]
Shallow fault zone structure affects rupture dynamics and ground motions of the 2019 Ridgecrest sequence to regional distances
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seismic faults are surrounded by damaged rocks with reduced rigidity and enhanced attenuation. These damaged fault zone structures can amplify seismic waves and affect earthquake dynamics, yet they are typically omitted in physics-based regional ground motion simulations. We report on the significant effects of a shallow, flower-shaped fault zone in foreshock-mainshock 3D dynamic rupture models [...]
On the Definition of an Independent Stochastic Model for InSAR Time Series
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
InSAR enables the estimation of displacements of (objects on) the Earth’s surface. To provide reliable estimates, both an independent stochastic and functional model are re- quired. However, the intrinsic problem of InSAR is that both are unknown. Here we propose an independent definition of the stochastic model, via an approximation scheme for the variance- covariance matrix for [...]
OceanTracker 0.5: Fast Adaptable Lagrangian Particle Tracking in Structured and Unstructured Grids
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Particle tracking is frequently used to compute particle movements within hydrodynamic ocean models; however, modelling millions of particles is computationally challenging. OceanTracker is designed to minimise the time required to obtain results from particle tracking. Firstly, by being computationally fast, it enables users to scale to large numbers of particles, thus obtaining better [...]
Hypereutrophication, Hydrogen Sulfide, and Environmental Injustices: Mechanisms and Knowledge Gaps at the Salton Sea
Published: 2025-01-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is undergoing significant environmental degradation, which has adverse health effects on nearby rural communities, who are primarily Latinx and Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian. Over the past two decades, the lake’s water levels have steadily dropped. Water conditions in the Sea, characterized by low oxygen and high nutrient levels, favor the [...]
UrbanTALES: A Comprehensive LES Dataset for Urban Canopy Layer Turbulence Analyses and Parameterization Development
Published: 2025-01-14
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The urban canopy layer (UCL) exhibits complex, heterogeneous flow patterns shaped by urban geometry. Traditionally, research has relied on microscale simulations over limited and often idealized building arrays, leaving a need for more extensive datasets to capture the dynamics across diverse urban neighborhoods. Responding to this gap, we developed an extensive dataset, known hereafter as [...]