Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Engineering
Net energy analysis reveals sectoral strategies to mitigate derailment risks of electrification.
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mitigating climate change largely relies on substituting fossil fuels with low-carbon, electricity-producing energy sources. Resulting electrification alters sectoral energy demand and efficiency, and therefore also affects the amount of energy required to build energy transition infrastructure such as solar and wind farms, or grid extensions. As these transition energy requirements are [...]
HIGH-RESOLUTION DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL FOR THE ITALIAN TERRITORY
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
High-resolution digital terrain models are essential for environmental planning and territorial analyses, and provide foundations for geomorphological and hydrological applications, including flood and landslide modelling and geo-hydrological hazard and risk assessments. In Italy, airborne LiDAR surveys have improved the representation of terrain morphology in the last decade, but their coverage [...]
Estimation of the water table position in unconfined aquifers with MODFLOW 6
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
The numerical estimation of the position of the water table in unconfined aquifers is important for many practical applications. Its determination through observations or analytical methods is restricted to a few cases. Therefore, it is often estimated through numerical simulations, which may be affected by numerical artifacts and/or poor stability. We use MODFLOW to estimate the position of the [...]
Remote Forcing of Internal Waves in Regional Ocean Models
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Regional oceanic general circulation models with nested grids are an essential approach to allow the use of higher grid resolutions. High resolution is required for the study of smaller scale processes, such as submesoscale currents and the internal wave field, in particular the baroclinic tide. Limits of available computing power determine the size of the computational grid, setting the [...]
Rethinking Hydroclimatic Extremes: Occurrence of abrupt Drought-to-Heavy-Precipitation transition events
Published: 2026-03-10
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Drought-to-heavy-precipitation abrupt transitions (sometimes called dry-to-wet extremes, whiplash events, or drought–flood transitions) are an emerging research focus. These are rapid shifts from a period of sustained drought (rainfall deficits, soil moisture stress, low streamflow) to intense precipitation or flooding over short timescales. Also described as climate whiplash events, they reflect [...]
Harnessing naturally occurring sodium carbonate and bicarbonate for gigatonne-scale carbon dioxide removal
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Engineering
Ocean alkalinity enhancement is a promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approach, but scaling up to gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 per year will require safe, sustainable, and abundant alkaline feedstocks. Here, we propose the use of a relatively unexplored resource for OAE, namely naturally occurring sodium (bi)carbonates. We identified and mapped 109 such deposits globally, although quantitative [...]
From environmental observation to shared narratives through human-AI interaction
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
A structural bottleneck limits sustainability practices: many people can participate in environmental observation, but far fewer can participate in the synthesis work that turns observations into shared narratives that guide action. We term this disparity "synthesis inequality". Citizen-science programs have expanded public access to data collection, yet data interpretation largely remains [...]
Hydrological modeling in a highly urbanized watershed using explainable machine learning and sub-hourly data: A case study in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Published: 2026-03-04
Subjects: Engineering
Hydrological modeling of urbanized watersheds is a highly challenging task due to the complexity and non-linearity of the rainfall-runoff relationship in these areas. Many data-driven models have been proposed in the literature to address this problem. However, in this field, there is a need not only for performance but also for explainability and comprehension of the impacts of [...]
vathra.xyz — Crowdsourced Monitoring of Greece's Geodetic Heritage: Architecture, Empirical Results, and Legal Framework
Published: 2026-03-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Greece's national trigonometric network comprises 25,258 geodetic survey points established by the Hellenic Military Geographical Service (HMGS/GYS). This paper presents vathra.xyz, an open-source web platform for crowdsourced condition monitoring of these points using Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) methods. We describe the system architecture (React, PostGIS, Leaflet, browser-based AR [...]
High-resolution interactive global flood forecast for past, present, and future
Published: 2026-03-04
Subjects: Engineering
Globally operating modelling approaches for flood dynamics have shown significant increases in usage, quality and availability in recent years. Flood modelling at global scale stretches the computational demand, due to combinations of spatial scale and resolution, limiting to static pre-computed maps and prohibiting interactivity. Particular high-resolution global models are only available as [...]
The Solar Paradox: Pure Social Diffusion and Competitive Resource Capture in Semi-Arid Irrigated Land Expansion
Published: 2026-03-01
Subjects: Agriculture, Engineering, Life Sciences
Solar-powered irrigation is expanding rapidly across semi-arid regions, but the mechanisms through which this technology diffuses in informal groundwa- ter economies—where the majority of wells operate without permits—remain poorly understood. We address this gap through a spatiotemporal analysis of 3,201 solar wells identified via satellite census in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, combined with 10,000 [...]
Quantifying Wave Setup Climatology along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts using a Coupled Hydrodynamic-Wave Model
Published: 2026-02-28
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Wave setup, the increase in coastal mean water level due to wave breaking, is an important but understudied component of coastal sea-level long-term variability. This study quantifies the wave setup climatology along the U.S. East and Gulf of Mexico coasts using high-resolution hydrodynamic (ADCIRC) and wave (SWAN) models. The models are forced with hourly surface pressure and wind fields, total [...]
WITHDRAWN: Accelerating community research applications of the NextGen water modeling framework through CUAHSI HydroShare linked with CIROH-2i2c JupyterHub
Published: 2026-02-28
Subjects: Engineering
WITHDRAWN to comply with NOAA rules.
A Scalable Borehole Thermometry Framework for Process-Based Monitoring of Near-Surface Thermal Dynamics Across Polar and High-Mountain Cryosphere Systems
Published: 2026-02-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
Rapid climate warming is fundamentally altering the thermal structure and stability of glaciers, ice sheets, and ice shelves across polar and high-mountain environments. While satellite remote sensing and surface meteorological networks provide essential observations of atmospheric forcing and surface conditions, the near-surface subsurface layer (approximately 0–3 m depth)—where energy is [...]
Real-time Forecasting and Operational Control of Perceivable Induced Seismicity in Geo-Energies
Published: 2026-02-25
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Geo-energies, including enhanced geothermal systems, geological carbon storage, and underground hydrogen storage, are essential for decarbonizing the energy and heavy industry sectors. However, their widespread implementation is hindered by the risk of perceivable induced seismicity. This review begins by evaluating existing seismic hazard mitigation schemes, particularly the traffic light system [...]