Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Application of the authigenic 10Be/9Be dating to constrain the age of a long-lived lake and its regression in an isolated intermontane basin: The case of Late Miocene Lake Turiec, Western Carpathians
Published: 2023-07-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
The depositional record of intermontane basins provides a valuable archive of the temporal evolution of orogenic belts; their common isolated nature may, however, hinder the efficient usage of standard approaches to constrain the age of a basin fill. In this paper the authigenic 10Be/9Be dating method is employed and tested to construct an age model of the existence and regression of Lake Turiec, [...]
Physically based Probabilistic Rainfall Intensity-Duration (ID) Thresholds for Runoff-Generated Debris Flows
Published: 2023-07-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology
Runoff-generated debris flows are common hazards in mountainous regions, causing millions of dollars lost and hundreds of casualties yearly. Early warning systems based on rainfall thresholds have been implemented to reduce the impact of these hazards. These thresholds tend to be based on short monitoring periods, which cannot fully capture the varying responses of catchments to rainfall. As a [...]
Separating Internal and Forced Contributions to Near Term SST Predictability in the CESM2-LE
Published: 2023-07-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
An open question in the study of climate prediction is whether internal variability will continue to contribute to prediction skill in the coming decades, or whether predictable signals will be overwhelmed by rising temperatures driven by anthropogenic forcing. We design an interpretable neural network that can be decomposed to examine the relative contributions of external forcing and internal [...]
Integrating Climate Risk into Long-Term Energy Planning: A Critical Review
Published: 2023-07-14
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Power and Energy, Risk Analysis
Electricity systems face substantial and growing climate risks which are escalating due to electrification, renewable energy intermittency, population changes, and the intensifying impacts of climate change such as extreme temperatures and weather-induced infrastructure damage. This critical review investigates climate risks to the electricity sector and scrutinizes the methodologies used to [...]
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 [...]
Data Cubes for Earth System Research: Challenges Ahead
Published: 2023-07-10
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Progress in Earth system science is accelerating rapidly, due to the increasing availability of multivariate datasets, often global, with moderate to high spatio-temporal resolutions. Turning these data into knowledge presents interoperability, technical, analytical, and other challenges. Earth System Data Cubes (ESDCs) have surfaced as essential tools, offering analysis-ready, cloud-optimised [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Assessing Precipitation Trends that may inform Aging Dam Overtopping across the USA
Published: 2023-07-07
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Risk Analysis
In many cases, persistent or recurrent synoptic circulation patterns lead to multiple wet days that precede an extreme rainfall event. The joint occurrence of high antecedent rainfall and extreme rainfall defines a compound event that may pose a high risk for overtopping of aging dams. Our novel analysis assesses whether there are significant trends across the conterminous United States (CONUS) [...]
360-day to Gregorian calendar climate model output conversion
Published: 2023-07-05
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Data from some climate model simulations is in a 360 days per year format, that is, every month is 30 days long. The main reason for this is analytical convenience in creating seasonal, annual and multi-annual means which are an integral part of climate model development and evaluation. This work illustrates a method to convert daily-mean, 360-day calendar climate model data into 'real', [...]
Mountains of plastic: Mismanaged plastic waste along the Carpathian watercourses
Published: 2023-07-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Plastic waste poses numerous risks to mountain river ecosystems due to their high biodiversity and specific physical characteristics. Here, we provide a baseline assessment for future evaluation of such risks in the Carpathians, one of the most biodiverse mountain ranges in East-Central Europe. We used high-resolution river network and mismanaged plastic waste (MPW) databases to map MPW along the [...]
Cosmogenic nuclide dating conundrum for retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the critical roles of geomagnetic and heliomagnetic modulation of cosmic ray flux
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences
What we regard as anomalously old 10Be exposure dates reported from the terminal moraine of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) in northeastern North America, such as recently published for Allamuchy NJ, ostensibly point to the start of deglaciation at 25 thousand calendar years before present (cal. ka). These dates are well within the conventional age span of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and are in [...]
Sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy of shallow-marine, coarse-grained siliciclastic deposits in the southern Utsira High: the Late Jurassic intra-Draupne Formation sandstones in the Johan Sverdrup Field (Norwegian North Sea).
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Thin, condensed coarse-grained shallow-marine successions can be difficult to describe and interpret, especially in the subsurface because they commonly lack finer grained intervals which are typically associated with sequence stratigraphic surfaces. This lack of mudstones and siltstones means that they also typically make excellent reservoir intervals. The Oxfordian to Volgian intra-Draupne [...]