Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Satellite-Derived Approaches for Coal Mine Methane Estimation: A Re-view
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Methane emissions from coal mines, especially surface operations, are spatially diffuse, presenting signif-icant challenges for accurate quantification. Satellites such as TROPOMI, GHGSat, PRISMA, Gaofen-5, and GOSAT have been extensively used for detecting methane emissions at various scales, from individual point sources to regional and global assessments. Despite various advancements, methane [...]
Paleoecology indicates wave climate as key factor in coral reef development
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Stratigraphy
The Last Interglacial (∼125,000 years ago) experienced global temperatures warmer than today, making it a natural analog for future climate scenarios. Contemporary coral reefs preserve ecological signals that offer valuable insights into past climate dynamics. Here, we examine the fossil reefs of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao to reconstruct wind and wave conditions during this period. While modern [...]
The implications of overshooting 1.5°C on Earth system tipping elements - a review
Published: 2025-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Other Planetary Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Sustainability
Due to insufficient emission reductions in recent years, it is increasingly likely that global warming will exceed the 1.5 °C temperature limit in the coming decades. As a result, several Earth system tipping elements could, at least temporarily, have their tipping points surpassed, posing risks of large-scale and profound structural change. Tipping does not always occur immediately upon crossing [...]
Global hyper-resolution groundwater dataset for assessing historical and future groundwater dynamics
Published: 2025-09-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Sciences
Sustainable management of global groundwater is a key societal challenge and central to Sustainable Development Goals. To address limited observations and coarse global models, we present a global hyper-resolution dataset of monthly groundwater heads and water table depth at 30 arc-seconds (~1 km), simulated by GLOBGM, a global groundwater flow model. The data set follows ISIMIP protocols and [...]
Efficient Self-Attention Based Joint Optimization for Lithology and Petrophysical Parameter Estimation in the Athabasca Oil Sands
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology
Accurately identifying lithology and petrophysical parameters, such as porosity and water saturation, are essential in reservoir characterization. Manual interpretation of well-log data, the conventional approach, is not only labor-intensive but also susceptible to human errors. To address these challenges of lithology identification and petrophysical parameter estimation in the Athabasca Oil [...]
FLOCCULATION, GRAVITY FLOWS, AND TOTAL ORGANIC CARBON HOTSPOTS IN LAKE: INSIGHTS FROM FLUME EXPERIMENTS
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lakes serve as one of the significant sinks for organic carbon. For lake deposits, it is generally accepted that water depth is a primary control on the spatial distribution of total organic carbon (TOC) accumulation because the deeper part of a lake potentially has a higher organic population to be settled. However, lake TOC distribution is often spatially variable regardless of water depth, and [...]
Coastal groundwater level trends reveal global susceptibility to seawater intrusion
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Coastal groundwater is a vital freshwater source threatened by overabstraction and sea-level rise, yet global patterns of declining groundwater levels (GWLs) and susceptibility to seawater intrusion (SWI) remain poorly constrained. Here, we present the first global assessment based on in-situ observations from ~480,000 coastal monitoring locations. From 1990 to 2024, 21% of grid-cell aggregates [...]
A Hybrid Iron/Green-Rust-Urea Model for Prebiotic Chemistry: A Synthesis of Testable Pathways for Planetary Astrobiology
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Sciences
We propose a quantitative, testable framework for abiogenesis that links submarine alkaline vents, which supply H₂, ΔpH, and Fe/Fe–S catalysis, to subaerial hot-spring fields that provide wet–dry concentration and UV-driven photoredox chemistry. To bridge dilution between environments, we specify mobile “holding pens” (green-rust/iron flocs, silica mats, pumice rafts, and sea-surface [...]
South Atlantic Anomaly Influence on Jet‑Stream Dynamics and Surface Climate
Published: 2025-09-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physics
This work proposes a novel causal framework for recent climate change, departing fundamentally from greenhouse-gas-centric models. The central hypothesis is that the primary driver of global warming and biospheric stress is the degradation of Earth’s magnetic shielding—most clearly manifested in the progressive enlargement of the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), expanding ~5% per two decades within [...]
Sudden freshening and cooling of western North Atlantic slope water at the onset of the Little Ice Age based on Magnesium-to-Calcium ratio and oxygen stable isotope record.
Published: 2025-09-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Little Ice Age (LIA), a period from ~1400 CE to 1850 CE, was characterized by colder winters and more frequent extreme weather events, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. While the exact causes of the LIA remain a topic of ongoing research, evidence suggests that changes in ocean circulation likely contributed to the observed global cooling, although the specific mechanisms and drivers [...]
Strategic crop relocation could substantially mitigate nuclear winter yield losses
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science
Nuclear war could inject millions of tonnes of soot into the stratosphere, cooling the Earth and devastating crop yields. We assess crop relocation—switching which crops are grown where—as an adaptation strategy. Using the Mink crop model, we simulate six major crops under three nuclear winter scenarios (16, 47, and 150 Tg of soot). Without adaptation, global caloric production falls 23%, 53%, [...]
Unraveling Southern Ocean Diatom Diversity Across the Eocene/Oligocene Transition
Published: 2025-09-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Paleobiology, Paleontology
The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) was a critical interval of global cooling and circulation change that reshaped marine ecosystems. However, current knowledge of diatom diversity and community dynamics during this interval relies mainly on biostratigraphic compilations, which largely document common species and thus likely underestimate true diversity. This study provides a more complete [...]
The Largest Crop Production Shocks: Magnitude, Causes and Frequency
Published: 2025-09-04
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Risk Analysis
Food is the foundation of our society. We often take it for granted, but stocks are rarely available for longer than a year, and food production can be disrupted by catastrophic events, both locally and globally. To highlight such major risks to the food system, we analyzed FAO crop production data from 1961 to 2023 to find the largest crop production shock for every country and identify its [...]
The role of thermal pressurization in driving deep fault slip during the 2021 Mw 8.2 Chignik, Alaska megathrust earthquake
Published: 2025-09-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The 2021 Mw 8.2 Chignik earthquake ruptured a weakly coupled portion of the deep slab in the eastern Aleutian-Alaska subduction zone, with no significant shallow slip. The underlying physics driving such large earthquakes nucleating at large depth and their impact on seismic and tsunami hazards remain poorly understood. We perform 3D dynamic rupture simulations that couple thermal [...]
Some new Models of Earth’s Temperature Anomaly across various Epochs Predicting Present Warming with Ice Age Validity Testing and a Data set Bias examination.
Published: 2025-09-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The need for methods to assess earth’s temperature anomaly are briefly discussed together with shortcomings of existing climate models. The geomagnetic or Pole shift method of climate sensitivity is briefly reviewed. The hypothesis that the previous two warm periods shared a common driver is tested and proven. Granger causality tests have been made and indicate that Pole Shift is the driver of [...]