Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Three gaps for foundation models to address in satellite remote sensing of inland waters
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Long-term Earth observation of inland waters depends on continuity between satellite missions, adequate combinations of spectral, spatial and temporal resolution, and representative calibration and validation datasets. Discontinuities and trade-offs in these components constrain the records available for studying inland waters and their change. We examine three gaps affecting inland water remote [...]
Improvement of Daily Temperature Forecasts from a Prediction Market
Published: 2026-10-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Natural Resource Economics, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Prediction markets aggregate and distill the collective views of participants who have a financial stake in being correct. They have been shown to produce more accurate forecasts in realms like election results, which are not easily amenable to mechanistic modeling because they entail forecasting human behavior. It is far less clear that prediction markets should improve the accuracy of [...]
Assessment of adjacency effect correction methods for Sentinel-2 MSI observations over mid-latitude lakes
Published: 2026-10-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Accurate retrieval of remote-sensing reflectance (Rrs) from lakes requires separating water-leaving radiance from atmospheric, surface and adjacency contributions. We assessed adjacency effect correction (AEC) methods for Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) imagery using 329 satellite--insitu matchups from four mid-latitude lakes: Greifensee, Lake Geneva, Lake Garda and Lake Trasimeno. The [...]
On the pattern, magnitude, and timing of anthropogenic heat uptake in the Southern Ocean
Published: 2026-10-01
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Most of the anthropogenic heat absorbed by the ocean enters through the Southern Ocean, yet the processes that set the pattern, magnitude, and timing of this uptake remain unclear. Using a climate model (CESM1) under abrupt 4xCO2, we show that uptake by the preindustrial ocean circulation alone accounts for more than half of the Southern Ocean uptake and reproduces its slow decline. We isolate [...]
Forecasting the moisture content of live forest fuels with a transformer machine learning model and Sentinel-2 satellite data
Published: 2026-09-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Plant Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Live fuel moisture content (LFMC) provides an indicator of vegetation flammability, the potential for canopy dieback from drought, and habitat quality for arboreal fauna. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have increased the potential in meteorological forecasts for Earth surface forecasting. Combining weather forecasts with remotely sensed LFMC offers a promising avenue for short and [...]
Three thresholds and a computer-assisted phase diagram for the spectral stability of periodic hydroelastic Whitham waves
Published: 2026-09-26
Subjects: Glaciology, Non-linear Dynamics, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Partial Differential Equations
We study the spectral stability of 2π-periodic travelling waves of the hydroelastic Whitham equation, a scalar model with the full linear dispersion relation of water waves under a thin elastic sheet (e.g. a floating ice cover), as a function of the flexural rigidity T. Besides the modulational cluster at the origin, the zero-amplitude spectrum has, on an interval of T, a collision of opposite [...]
Interface Habitats: An Integrated Observing Strategy for Earth’s Most Dynamic and Consequential Aquatic Boundaries
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Climate, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
One line, no hard line breaks — safe to copy and paste: Interface Habitats – the dynamic boundaries where water meets land, the seafloor, the atmosphere, and ice, and where fronts, eddies, and filaments draw comparably sharp boundaries within the water itself – are among Earth's most productive, diverse, and rapidly changing ecosystems, and the site of most human interaction with aquatic [...]
Transient Events: A Rapid-Response, Multi-Platform Observing Strategy for Detecting and Understanding Abrupt Change in Aquatic Ecosystems
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Extremes, not average conditions, increasingly govern the state of aquatic ecosystems and the risks they carry for people. Events far outside normal variability can reshape ecosystem structure and function within hours to weeks, and both the observational record and climate projections indicate such extremes are growing more frequent, more intense, and longer lasting. Whether an extreme becomes a [...]
Carbon and the Elements of Life: Integrated Observing and Modeling of Marine Biological Carbon Cycles
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry, Biology, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The global ocean acts as a massive reservoir for carbon dioxide, establishing ocean biogeochemistry as a primary driver of global carbon distributions [1-3]. This dynamic system is mediated by living organisms that cycle carbon and other elements through the ocean interior and air-sea interface, and is already being altered by warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and shifting nutrient supply [...]
The Influence of Large-Scale Weather Patterns on Potential Wind Energy Fields over Mexico
Published: 2026-09-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistics and Probability
The assessment of wind energy resources in large regions presents a substantial challenge for energy system operators due to the intricacies involved in accurately describing all atmospheric circulation patterns and, even more so, modeling their inherent dynamics. This research primarily aimed to identify the prevailing synoptic weather patterns over continental Mexico and its surrounding [...]
Ocean surface currents directly imaged from space
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
For more than four decades, satellite images of ocean temperature and colour have revealed jets, swirling eddies, and filaments. Yet the currents that shape these structures have never been directly imaged from space. This observational gap limits our understanding of the ocean's impact on climate and marine ecosystems, as these currents modulate exchanges between the coast and open ocean, [...]
Escalating Heatwave Activity and Return Periods Across the Climatic Zones of Ghana
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Heatwaves are an increasing public health concern in West Africa, yet their characteristics and recurrence across Ghana’s climatic zones remain poorly quantified. Previous assessments in Ghana have largely focused on individual cities and percentile-based thresholds, which characterize extremes relative to the local climatology but do not explicitly account for recently experienced thermal [...]
Intensifying salinity intrusion in the Barataria Basin, 2010 to 2026: a coastward gradient in the rate of change
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The Barataria Basin, a shallow microtidal estuary in coastal Louisiana, has lost a substantial part of its wetland area and is exposed to increasing salinity intrusion as the Mississippi River remains leveed and relative sea level rises. Salinity conditions in this basin have been described, but whether the rate at which salinity changes varies spatially across the basin has not yet been [...]
Changes to the Madden-Julian Oscillation with Surface Temperature Warming in Aquaplanet Simulations
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Interactions between waves and the mean-state in the tropics are of fundamental importance for reliable future projection of tropical waves and their impacts under anthropogenic climate change. The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the dominant source of weather variability over many parts of the globe on intraseasonal timescales. In this study, we investigate the influence of mean-state changes [...]
Encouraging Wildfire Mitigation Action Via National Weather Service Fire Weather Products
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
Wildfire mitigation actions intend to reduce the probability and consequences (risk) of wildfire to critical assets by protecting the life and property of the public and emergency responders during and after a wildfire event. Given mitigation activities span a continuum of timescales from minutes to years and multiple orders-of-magnitude in terms of costs, an opportunity exists to encourage [...]