Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Intensifying risk of mass human heat mortality if historical weather patterns recur
Published: 2025-01-15
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The potential death toll of worst-case extreme heat events is crucial for climate risk analysis and adaptation planning. We estimate this quantity for Europe using machine learning to calculate the intensity of historical heat waves if they occur at present or future global temperatures, combined with empirical exposure-response functions to quantify the resulting mortality. Each event is [...]
Observation-based estimate of Earth's effective radiative forcing
Published: 2025-01-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Human emissions continue to influence Earth's climate. Effective radiative forcing quantifies the effect of such anthropogenic emissions together with natural factors on Earth's energy balance (Soden et al. 2018; Gregory et al. 2020; Forster et al. 2021, 2024). Evaluating the exact rate of effective radiative forcing is challenging, because it can not be directly observed. Therefore, estimating [...]
Dynamic earthquake source inversion with Generative Adversarial Network priors
Published: 2025-01-10
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Dynamic source inversion of earthquakes consists of inferring frictional parameters and initial stress on a fault consistent with recorded seismological and geodetic data and with dynamic earthquake rupture models. In a Bayesian inversion approach, the nonlinear relationship between model parameters and data requires a computationally demanding Monte Carlo (MC) approach. As the computational cost [...]
Divergent Paradigms of Porphyry Cu Deposits in Subduction and Collision Zones
Published: 2025-01-09
Subjects: Geochemistry, Geology, Natural Resource Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The prevailing view suggests that the formation of porphyry Cu deposits involves differentiation of water-rich, metal-bearing juvenile magmas, with subduction of oceanic slabs supplying the necessary volatiles. However, the occurrence of significant porphyry Cu deposits in continental collision zones, where such volatile sources are absent, challenges this paradigm. We analyze a global dataset of [...]
Rethinking the Anatomy and Architecture of the Neoproterozoic Gneiss Domes in the Nubian Shield: Are they Extensional Metamorphic Core Complexes?
Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Nubian Shield features amphibolite-grade, gneiss-cored domes surrounded by greenschist-grade island arc and ophiolitic assemblages. These structures exhibit anomalous intense ductile deformation and higher metamorphism than the surrounding rock units; yet, their nature, geometry, and origin remain controversial. The present study integrates field data, remote sensing, and detailed structural [...]
Grain size evolution in mantle convection models promotes continuous rather than episodic tectonics
Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
A long-persistent caveat of geodynamic models with Earth-like tectonic behavior is the need of an ‘ad hoc’ yield stress lower than any laboratory-inferred rock strength. Grain size reduction due to dynamic recrystallization provides local weak zones in the lithosphere thereby promoting lithospheric breakdown and continuous mobile-lid tectonics. Grain growth should instead (re-)strengthen the [...]
Rotational Flow Dominates Abrupt Seasonal Change in Zonally Asymmetric Tropical Meridional Circulation
Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
By defining a pseudo meridional overturning streamfunction (Ψpseudo) at any zonal sector and defining a new vector-type, dual-component index (Abrupt Seasonal Change Index, ASCI), we diagnose zonally asymmetric abrupt seasonal change (ASC) of tropical meridional circulation. Ψpseudo converges to traditional, meridional overturning streamfunction (Ψm) after being averaged over a zonal circle [...]
2027: Waking the AKU-- A Cosmic Hyperobject View of the Ancient Giant Palm Forest on Rapa Nui
Published: 2025-01-07
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Other Astrophysics and Astronomy, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences, The Sun and the Solar System
Can a repeating climate event be termed as a cosmic hyperobject? Even if it is dynamically changing within hundreds of thousands of years? At the center of this paper is the science: observable data, 15,000 years of climate change on Rapa Nui. Reaching into the past however we begin with a much broader mathematical view from the eyes of Milankovitch theories of the cosmos that stretches a million [...]
Evaluation of the InSightSeers and DART Boarders mission observer programmes
Published: 2025-01-05
Subjects: Education, Higher Education, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Encouraging diversity in planetary science requires making a particular effort to bring a broader range of people onto the mission teams that are the backbone of the field. Observer programmes, which offer early-career researchers the chance to embed within a mission team during a science meeting, are one way of doing this. Here we present a quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of two [...]
Is the Suez Rift in its post-rift phase?
Published: 2025-01-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Failed rifts are widely assumed to enter post-rift quiescence after termination of intracontinental rifting. However, this remains largely untested and a comprehensive evaluation of the rates and patterns of post-rift tectonic (in)activity is lacking. Our novel, rift-scale geomorphic analysis reveals “post-rift” rifting across the archetypal failed rift of Suez, in Egypt. Stacked topographic [...]
Disentangling impact ejecta dynamics using micro–X-ray fluorescence (µ-XRF): a case study from the terrestrial Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary
Published: 2025-01-01
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study presents a non-destructive geochemical and petrographic workflow to generate high-resolution chemostratigraphic records across key stratigraphic intervals, here exemplified by a terrestrial Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary sequence. The geochemical records fingerprint specific Chicxulub related impact ejecta products and thereby further constrain the timeline of ejecta deposition. [...]
Site Planning for a Network of Government-operated Weather Stations in the Dominican Republic Using Zonal Statistics from Geospatial Sources, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making, and Neighborhood Analysis
Published: 2024-12-30
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Many weather station networks lack sufficient representativeness, and their station density is often inadequate to capture spatial and climatic variability effectively. Optimal site selection is therefore essential to enhance spatial coverage and improve data quality. This study proposes a methodology for identifying optimal sites for a meteorological station network in the Dominican Republic, [...]
Beyond Boundary Lines: Emerging Innovative Trends in Geospatial Data for Decision-Making
Published: 2024-12-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
As technology and the use of data innovates and iterates by the second, so does the use and implementation of geospatial data into decision-making processes across the globe. The use of geospatial data is intertwined in every part of life with technology, from accessing bank transactions to adaptive navigational systems. This literature review identifies new and evolving trends in the use of [...]
The effects of stress gradients on faulting and dike emplacement, with applications to Santorini and Iceland
Published: 2024-12-28
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
All tectonic rock fractures develop in response to local stresses. The stress conditions for fracture formation has been analysed theoretically and experimentally and used to explain fracture patterns and activity in the field. How the local stresses themselves are generated, and then modified through fracture development, has received less attention. Here I show how local stress fields arise [...]
Emulator-based Bayesian calibration of a subglacial drainage model
Published: 2024-12-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Subglacial drainage models, often motivated by the relationship between hydrology and ice flow, sensitively depend on numerous unconstrained parameters. We explore using borehole water-pressure timeseries to calibrate the uncertain parameters of a popular subglacial drainage model, taking a Bayesian perspective to quantify the uncertainty in parameter estimates and in the calibrated model [...]