Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Large variation in Mekong river plastic transport between wet and dry season
Published: 2023-02-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Plastic pollution in rivers is of increased global concern. Rivers act both as pathways for land-based plastic waste into the ocean, and as plastic reservoirs for long-term retention. Reliable observations are key to designing, optimizing and evaluating strategies to prevent and reduce plastic pollution. Several measurement methods have been developed to quantify macroplastic ($>$0.5 cm) storage [...]
Extrapolation-based regionalized re-evaluation of the global estuarine surface area
Published: 2023-02-24
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology
At the interface between the continental and oceanic domains, estuaries are essential components of the land–ocean aquatic continuum. These coastal ecosystems play a significant role in biogeochemical cycles, as they transform and export large amounts of terrigenous carbon and nutrients from rivers to marine waters. Because of this intense biogeochemical processing, they are significant [...]
Eclogites and basement terrane tectonics in the northern arm of the Grenville orogen, NW Scotland
Published: 2023-02-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The presence of eclogites within continental crust is a key indicator of collisional orogenesis and they have been used worldwide to assist in the delineation of ancient collisional sutures. Eclogites within the Eastern Glenelg basement inlier of the Northern Highland Terrane (NHT) have been re-dated in order to provide more accurate constraints on the timing of collision within the northern arm [...]
Did hydroclimate conditions contribute to the political dynamics of Majapahit? A preliminary analysis
Published: 2023-02-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Majapahit was the largest Hindu-Buddhist empire that ruled the Indonesian archipelago from the late 13th to mid-16th centuries CE. Only now there is still a lot of history surrounding the Majapahit era that has yet to be revealed. One is about how environmental factors influenced the political dynamics at that time. This study tries to discuss the influence of hydroclimate regimes using the Paleo [...]
Sub- and super-shear ruptures during the 2023 Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.6 earthquake doublet in SE Türkiye
Published: 2023-02-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
An earthquake doublet (Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.6) occurred on the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) on February 6th, 2023. The events produced significant ground motions and caused major impacts to life and infrastructure throughout SE Türkiye and NW Syria. Here we show the results of earthquake relocations of the first 11 days of aftershocks and rupture models for both events inferred from the kinematic [...]
False positives are common in single-station template matching
Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Sciences
Template matching has become a cornerstone technique of observational seismology. By taking known events, and scanning them against a continuous record, new events smaller than the signal-to-noise ratio can be found, substantially improving the magnitude of completeness of earthquake catalogues. Template matching is normally used in an array setting, however as we move into the era of planetary [...]
Quantifying fire-specific smoke severity
Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Rapidly changing wildfire regimes across the Western US has driven more frequent and severe wildfires, resulting in wide-ranging societal threats from the wildfires themselves and the smoke that they generate. However, common measures of fire severity focus on what is burned and do not account for the societal impacts of the smoke generated from each fire. We combine satellite-derived fire scars, [...]
Transformation of dense shelf water cascade into turbidity currents: insights from high-resolution geophysical datasets
Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Sedimentology
Dense shelf water cascade (DSWC) is a common oceanographic phenomenon on many continental shelves. Previous studies indicate that the DSWC could shape seabed physiography and carry seawater, sediment, and organic carbon a long distance from the continental shelf to the basin floor. However, it remains enigmatic how these DSWC’s interact with seabed geomorphology and travel long distances from the [...]
Identifying analogues for Melimoyu, a long-dormant and data-limited volcano in Chile, through hierarchical clustering
Published: 2023-02-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Volcanology
Melimoyu is a long-dormant and data-limited volcano in the Southern Volcanic Zone (SVZ) in Chile with only two confirmed Holocene eruptions (VEI 5). Determining the frequency-magnitude relationship for Melimoyu is challenging due to data scarcity. To supplement the eruption records, we identify analogue volcanoes for Melimoyu (i.e., volcanoes that behave similarly and are identified through [...]
Temporal evolution of under-ice meltwater layers and false bottoms and their impact on summer Arctic sea ice mass balance
Published: 2023-02-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Low-salinity meltwater from Arctic sea ice and its snow cover accumulates and creates under-ice meltwater layers below sea ice. These meltwater layers can result in the formation of new ice layers, or false bottoms, at the interface of this low-salinity meltwater and colder seawater. As part of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of the Arctic Climate (MOSAiC), we used a [...]
Evidence of Early Supershear Transition in the Feb 6th 2023 Mw 7.8 Kahramanmaraş Turkey Earthquake From Near-Field Records
Published: 2023-02-15
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Mw7.8 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake was larger and more destructive than what had been expected for the tectonic setting in Southeastern Turkey. By using near-field records we provide evidence for early supershear transition on the splay fault that hosted the nucleation and early propagation of the first rupture that eventually transitioned into the East Anatolian fault. We also find, for the [...]
Coseismic Coulomb Stress Changes on Intraplate Faults in the Western Quebec Seismic Zone, Canada: Implications for Seismic Hazards
Published: 2023-02-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences
There is currently no active fault map for the intraplate western Quebec seismic zone (WQSZ) in eastern Canada, and consequently, no detailed finite-fault source models which are critical for seismic hazard assessments in this region with a rapidly growing population. While previous numerical stress modelling studies have shown that mostly NNW-SSE to NW-SE-striking faults exhibit the highest [...]
Soil moisture modulation of midlatitude heat waves
Published: 2023-02-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Heat waves are broadly expected to increase in severity and frequency under climate change. Case studies highlight a number of physical mechanisms that play a role in present-day heat waves, which typically occur during a coalescence of anomalous atmospheric and land surface conditions. However, a unified model of heat wave physics is lacking, primarily owing to difficulty in disentangling the [...]
A Comparison of Contemporaneous Airborne Altimetry and Ice-Thickness Measurements of Antarctic Ice Shelves
Published: 2023-02-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Estimates of ice shelf mass loss are typically based on surface height measurements, assuming hydrostatic equilibrium and estimated firn thickness. Recent investigations, however, challenge the assumption that ice shelves are freely floating, particularly in proximity to narrow structures such as basal channels and shear margins. We compare contemporaneous measurements of Antarctic ice shelf [...]
A new mechanism for brittle failure in garnets
Published: 2023-02-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Garnet is a high-strength mineral and preserves structures that can consequently be used to understand the flow strength and evolution of stress within the lower crust. Yet, the deformation mechanisms at the brittle¬-ductile transition of garnet remain ambiguous. Here, we study garnet porphyroclasts from an eclogite facies mylonite (central Australia) to investigate the mechanisms by which garnet [...]