Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
The role of glacier retreat for Swiss hydropower production
Published: 2017-12-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Glaciology, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
High elevation or high latitude hydropower production (HP) strongly relies on water resources that are influenced by glacier melt and are thus highly sensitive to climate warming. Despite of the wide-spread glacier retreat since the development of HP infrastructure in the 20th century, little quantitative information is available about the role of glacier mass loss for HP. We provide the first [...]
Topographic modulation of fault kinematics in the Himalaya and Tibet
Published: 2017-12-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
In many locations in the Himalaya and Tibet, extensional stepovers on strike-slip faults occur beneath pre-existing topographic highs. An influential physical model of orogens, explaining contemporaneous high-elevation normal faulting and low-elevation reverse faulting, holds that horizontal tectonic compression is invariant across the orogen while vertical stress varies with topography, [...]
Exogenic forcing and autogenic processes on continental divide location and mobility -- preprint
Published: 2017-12-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
The position and mobility of drainage divides is an expression of exogenic landscape forcing and autogenic channel network processes integrated across a range of scales. At the large scale, represented by major rivers and continental drainage divides, the organization of drainage patterns and divide migration reflects the long-wavelength gradients of the topography, which are exogenically [...]
Slope-fan depositional architecture from high-resolution forward stratigraphic models
Published: 2017-12-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Submarine fans in tectonically active continental-slope basins are targets of petroleum exploration and production. These slope fans commonly comprise compensationally stacked sandy and muddy architectural elements, including mass-transport deposits, weakly confined to distributary channel-and-lobe deposits, and leveed-channel deposits. The lateral continuity and vertical connectivity of these [...]
The joint influence of break and noise variance on the break detection capability in time series homogenization
Published: 2017-12-16
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Instrumental climate records of the last centuries suffer from multiple breaks due to relocations and changes in measurement techniques. These breaks are detected by relative homogenization algorithms using the difference time series between a candidate and a reference. Modern multiple changepoint methods use a decomposition approach where the segmentation explaining most variance defines the [...]
Recycling of archaeal biomass as a new strategy for extreme life in Dead Sea deep sediments
Published: 2017-12-15
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Organic Chemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Archaea and Bacteria that inhabit the deep subsurface (known as the deep biosphere) play a prevalent role in the recycling of sedimentary organic carbon. In such environments, this process can occur over millions of years and requires microbial communities to cope with extremely limited sources of energy. Because of this scarcity, metabolic processes come at a high energetic cost, but the ways [...]
The spectrum of slip behaviours of a granular fault gouge analogue governed by rate and state friction.
Published: 2017-12-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The exact principles of earthquake recurrence and magnitude are currently unknown which is why earthquake hazard assessment relies on statistical models combined with numerical simulations. A component of seismic and aseismic slip is the frictional character of a fault. We shear fused glass beads with a narrow particle size distribution of 300-400µm at stresses of 5-20kPa and with low shear rates [...]
The Apparent Stratification at the Top of Earths Liquid Core
Published: 2017-12-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Earths magnetic field is generated by turbulent motion in its fluid outer core. Although the bulk of the outer core is vigorously convecting and well-mixed, some seismic, geomagnetic, and geodynamic evidence suggests that a global stably stratified layer exists at the top of Earths core. Such a layer would strongly influence thermal, chemical, and momentum exchange across the core-mantle boundary [...]
Stratigraphic modeling of the Western Taiwan foreland basin: sediment flux from a growing mountain range and tectonic implications
Published: 2017-12-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Sediment flux signals in foreland basins preserve a record of tectonics, sea level and climate through erosion and sedimentation. However, longitudinal sediment transport often occurs in foreland basin, thus removing part of the orogenic material flux from foreland basins. Here we use mass balance calculation and stratigraphic simulations of sediment fluxes for the Taiwan orogen to provide a [...]
Gender Representation of Speaking Opportunities at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
Published: 2017-12-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Implicit and explicit biases impede the participation of women in geoscience. Documented biases include the quality of postdoctoral recommendation letters and opportunities to review research articles. Across career stages, attending conferences and presenting research are ways to spread scientific results, find job opportunities and funding, and gain awards and recognition. However, biases in [...]
Criteria and Tools for Determining Drainage Divide Stability
Published: 2017-12-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Watersheds are the fundamental organizing units in landscapes and thus the controls on drainage divide location and mobility are an essential facet of landscape evolution. Additionally, many common topographic analyses fundamentally assume that river network topology and divide locations are largely static, allowing channel profile form to be interpreted in terms of spatio-temporal patterns of [...]
Structural signatures of igneous sheet intrusion propagation
Published: 2017-12-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
The geometry and distribution of planar igneous bodies (i.e. sheet intrusions), such as dykes, sills, and inclined sheets, has long been used to determine emplacement mechanics, define melt source locations, and reconstruct palaeostress conditions to shed light on various tectonic and magmatic processes. Since the 1970’s we have recognised that sheet intrusions do not necessarily display a [...]
Multiphase flow characteristics of heterogeneous rocks from CO2 storage reservoirs in the United Kingdom
Published: 2017-12-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We have studied the impact of heterogeneity on relative permeability and residual trapping for rock samples from the Bunter sandstone of the UK Southern North Sea, the Ormskirk Sandstone of the East Irish Sea, and the Captain Sandstone of the UK Northern North Sea. Reservoir condition CO2-brine relative permeability measurements were made while systematically varying the ratio of viscous to [...]
Tropical cyclones shift poleward more over Land than over Ocean
Published: 2017-12-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The latitudes of all Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclones (TCs) from the National Hurricane Center (NHC)/Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) best track data are used to investigate their poleward migration from 1970 to 2017. The annual means of the track latitudes are calculated for tropical storms, hurricanes/typhoons, and all storms over land and ocean, respectively. The analysis of the annual [...]
Characterising Drainage Multiphase Flow in Heterogeneous Sandstones
Published: 2017-12-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In this work, we analyse the characterisation of drainage multiphase flow properties on heterogeneous rock cores using a rich experimental dataset and mm-m scale numerical simulations. Along with routine multiphase flow properties, 3D sub-metre scale capillary pressure heterogeneity is characterised by combining experimental observations and numerical calibration, resulting in a 3D numerical [...]