Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Dye tracing of upward brine migration in snow
Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The presence of salt in the snow overlying seasonal sea ice has profound thermodynamic and electromagnetic effects. However, the way that it arrives and is distributed within the marine snowpack remains poorly understood and modelled. We describe two experiments tracing upward brine movement in snow: one laboratory experiment at Rothera research station, West Antarctica, and a field experiment in [...]
MoonIndex, an Open-Source Tool to Generate Spectral Indexes for the Moon from M3 Data
Published: 2023-12-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Spectral indexes are tools widely used to analyze the composition of planetary surfaces. Many indexes have been formulated over the years to map the lunar surface, but there is no unified database for them. In this work we describe an Open-Source Python package called MoonIndex, that recreates thirty-eight indexes compiled from the literature, using data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3). The [...]
Sensitivity Analysis of Global Kinematics on Mantle Structure Using Automatically Generated Adjoint Thermochemical Convection Codes
Published: 2023-12-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Tectonics and Structure
Within the past 30 years, numerical models of mantle convection have been able to predict observations on Earth and planets, and among them tectonics. The possibility of building inverse problems in global geodynamics became concrete, and often involve the development of adjoint codes. Such tools provide efficient ways to estimate sensitivities of misfit functions relative to control parameters, [...]
Salt Precipitation during Geological CO2 Storage: Effect of Access to Continuous Brine Source
Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences
During CO2 storage, the near-wellbore environment experiences significant chemical, physical, thermal, and mechanical perturbations. Therefore, it is crucial to characterize the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes in this region through representative experimental tests and numerical simulations to maximize the safety and cost-efficiency of CO2 storage. One common [...]
Experimental and Numerical Description of Mineral Precipitation Dynamics on Heterogeneous Substrate Surfaces
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Mineral precipitation reactions are critical in reactive transport studies of porous media due to their significant impacts on flow and transport properties. Understanding the nucleation process, a probabilistic phenomenon that determines the location and distribution of solid formation in space and time domains, is essential for accurately comprehending the effect of mineral precipitation on [...]
Monitoring CO2 Concentrations in Soil Gas: A Novel MRV Approach for Cropland-Based ERW?
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
This paper discusses the challenges we have faced in the past 2.5 years of field experiments trying to measure the speed of Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) in agricultural settings for removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. Traditional measurements that allow quantification of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in laboratory ERW tests include chemical analyses of the leached out soil water and monitoring [...]
Formation of giant Siberian gas emission craters (GECs)
Published: 2023-12-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
The recent discovery of eight giant gas escape craters (GECs) in the Russian Yamal and Gydan peninsulas has challenged researchers for the past decade. Despite numerous proposed models, ranging from meteor impacts to gas explosions, none provide a comprehensive explanation for why the GECs are found only in this specific region. This study proposes a new general model for the formation of GECs in [...]
PHOTOMOB: AUTOMATED GIS METHOD FOR ESTIMATION OF FRACTIONAL GRAIN DYNAMICS IN GRAVEL BED RIVERS. PART 1: GRAIN SIZE
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Particle entrainment intensity is spatially and temporally variable, making it a complex phenomenon to measure. This paper is the first of a pair, in which we present an automated image processing procedure (PhotoMOB) for monitoring the mobility/stability of gravel river beds. The method is based on local comparison of the shape of the grains identified at the same coordinates between successive [...]
PhotoMOB: Automated GIS method for estimation of fractional grain dynamics in gravel bed rivers. Part 2: Bed stability and fractional mobility
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Water Resource Management
Bed mobility and stability are spatially and temporally variable, making it a complex phenomenon to study. This paper is the second of a pair, in which we present an automated image processing procedure for monitoring the mobility/stability of gravel river beds. The method is based on local comparison of the shape of the grains identified at the same coordinates between successive photos to [...]
Never train an LSTM on a single basin
Published: 2023-12-05
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Machine learning (ML) has an increasing role in the hydrological sciences, and in particular, certain types of time series modeling strategies are popular for rainfall-runoff modeling. A large majority of studies that use this type of model do not follow best practices, and there is one mistake in particular that is very common: training deep learning models on small, homogeneous data sets (i.e., [...]
FluxFormer: Upscaled global gross primary productivity from eddy covariance data with multivariate timeseries Transformer
Published: 2023-12-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Accurate terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP) estimates are crucial for developing effective climate change policies. However, quantifying GPP is challenging due to sparse ground observations and the complexity of plant functional types (PFTs). In this study, we address these challenges by evaluating various aspects of a data-driven model, including the architecture of time series deep [...]
The Rhyolite Factory: Insights from rhyolite-MELTS geobarometry of plutonic rocks and associated volcanics
Published: 2023-12-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Magmatic systems feed eruptions to the surface; lead to the formation of ore deposits; provide energy for geothermal systems; and are key to Earth’s differentiation. While it is commonly accepted that silicic magmatic systems span much of the crust, little direct evidence is available for their vertical continuity (or lack thereof), or for the distribution of melt within them. We focus on [...]
On the origin of alkali feldspar megacrysts in granitoids. Part 2: evidence for nucleation and growth under magmatic conditions from crystal size distributions of the Cathedral Peak Granodiorite, California, USA
Published: 2023-12-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The mechanisms whereby alkali feldspar megacrysts form have been debated for several decades; yet, we do not understand well the processes that lead to their formation. We take advantage of glacially polished outcrop surfaces from the Cathedral Peak Granodiorite in the Tuolumne Intrusive Complex, CA to quantitatively characterize alkali feldspar textures, to provide better insight into their [...]
Combining geological and historical archives to reconstruct flood variability in northwestern Italy during the last thousand years
Published: 2023-12-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Understanding Earth’s changing climate is a crucial challenge. However, the available time series of direct measurements are often insufficient to fully capture climatic process that unfolds over centuries and millennia. Combining History and Geology can fill this gap. Focusing on rainfall and flood events, this research proposes a multidisciplinary approach to integrate the sedimentary and [...]
A Compilation of Benchmark Pluvial Flood Datasets
Published: 2023-11-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology
urban pluvial flooding is a dangerous natural hazard that has become more common in recent years, making it a global threat to metropolitan areas. Surface water floods and flash floods are two common types of pluvial flooding that the second one is extremely hazardous and damaging due to both the power of the water and the debris that is frequently swept up in the flow. Buildings and their [...]