Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Climate
Pakistan's Orographic Ladder: Terrain-Constrained Water Potential and the Atmospheric Mechanism Suppressing It
Published: 2026-05-14
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Hydrology
Pakistan's north-south topographic gradient, 0 m at the Arabian Sea coast rising to 8,611 m at K2 across five distinct ridge systems, represents one of the largest orographic condensation machines on the planet. The terrain's theoretical water yield, set by Arabian Sea moisture flux and ridge geometry alone, far exceeds what Pakistan currently captures. We show that a single atmospheric variable, [...]
Spatiotemporal Evolution of Urban Thermal Conditions, Vegetation Dynamics, and Built-up Expansion in Ahmedabad, India (2000–2025) Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Analysis.
Published: 2026-05-11
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Rapid urban expansion has substantially altered urban thermal conditions across many semi-arid cities. This study examined spatiotemporal variation in land surface temperature (LST), vegetation cover, and built-up intensity across Ahmedabad, India, between 2000 and 2025 using multi-temporal Landsat imagery and the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Spatial analysis revealed progressive expansion [...]
Wet and Dry Hydrological Conditions Reduce Chlorophyll-a at River-Lake Interfaces
Published: 2026-05-10
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Fresh Water Studies, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Water Resource Management
Hydrological variation is intensifying under climate change, yet its net effects on lake water quality remain uncertain. Wet and dry hydrological conditions are commonly assumed to exacerbate eutrophication by increasing nutrient inputs during wet conditions or concentrating nutrients during dry conditions. However, these events can also activate counteracting processes—such as dilution, or [...]
Sustained Decline of Annual Snow Cover Area in the Sikkim Himalaya (1987–2025): Multi-Sensor Remote Sensing on Google Earth Engine, Machine Learning, and Projections to 2100
Published: 2026-05-03
Subjects: Climate, Glaciology, Hydrology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Remote Sensing
Snow cover is a critical component of the Himalayan cryosphere, providing freshwater to millions of people across South Asia and regulating regional climate through albedo feedbacks. Sikkim, a small but ecologically significant state in the Eastern Himalaya, has experienced accelerating glacial retreat and mounting hydrological stress in recent decades. This study presents a comprehensive, [...]
Long-term future Greenland ice loss determined by peak global warming
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Glaciology
The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is known to be very sensitive to climate change, and persistent global warming only slightly higher than today could be enough to completely melt it. However, the implications of a temporary crossing of this temperature threshold for future GrIS mass loss remain unknown. Here we present simulations of the next 10,000 years under different future anthropogenic [...]
Scale-dependent controls on forest carbon uptake across hydroclimatic extremes
Published: 2026-04-29
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Sciences, Sustainability
Conifer forests span some of the most climatically contrasting environments on Earth, from energy-limited Boreal systems to water-limited semi-arid ecosystems. Whether their carbon uptake is governed by universal drivers or by site-specific boundary conditions remains unresolved. Using more than two decades of eddy-covariance and multi-depth soil moisture measurements from two climatic [...]
Exploratory MPAS Sensitivity Experiments on Rainforest Biogenic Salt Aerosols, Tropical Rainfall, and Poleward Moisture Transport
Published: 2026-04-25
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Planetary Hydrology
Rainforest ecosystems emit biologically influenced aerosol particles, including potassium-rich and other hygroscopic components that may affect warm-rain microphysics. While tropical biogenic aerosols have been studied extensively, their sensitivity within coarse-resolution global models remains incompletely characterized, particularly under differing background aerosol states. Here we present [...]
Assessing Causality in PM2.5 and NO2 Changes One Year After New York City’s Congestion Pricing Policy
Published: 2026-04-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Sciences
On January 5, 2025, New York City implemented the Central Business District Tolling Program (CBDTP), a congestion pricing policy targeting lower Manhattan. We evaluate its air quality effects after one year using ground-based and satellite observations. Using New York City Community Air Survey (NYCCAS) real-time PM2.5 monitors, we compare PM2.5 concentrations during the first year of CBDTP [...]
Xerokampos Evidence for a localized hot desert microclimate enclave
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Climate
This study investigates the spatial precipitation distribution and microclimatic characteristics of the coastal enclave of Xerokampos, Lasithi in Greece. Utilizing a local meteorological time series (2020-2026), the mean annual precipitation (MAP) is recorded at 219.5 mm, alongside a mean annual temperature of 20.9°C. To contextualize these limited contemporary observations, a synthetic climate [...]
Before the Threshold: Deceptive Stability, Buffer Slack, and Earth System Transitions
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Other Environmental Sciences
Earth history includes episodes in which persistent biological or geophysical byproduct loads are absorbed by finite environmental sinks and buffers, preserving apparent stability while the capacity to absorb further stress declines. This paper synthesizes literatures on Earth system revolutions, redox transitions, mass extinctions, and Anthropocene change into a comparative framework termed [...]
Regional Economic Impacts and Emission Responses under Solar Radiation Modification
Published: 2026-04-20
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) has been proposed as a potential tool to limit increases in global or regional temperatures caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. While previous research has extensively examined the climate system's response to various SRM strategies, as well as their aggregate economic consequences, the regional distribution of economic impacts has received less [...]
Reconstructing Land Surface Temperature for Cloud-Covered Regions: A Review of Methods
Published: 2026-04-16
Subjects: Climate, Other Earth Sciences
Understanding surface thermal conditions is essential for studying ecosystem responses, hydrological processes, and climate-driven environmental change. Land Surface Temperature (LST) is a key parameter for studying a wide range of environmental and climatic processes. Although remote sensing technologies enable the acquisition of LST data on a global scale, satellite observations are frequently [...]
Spatiotemporal evolution of temperature extremes across India’s agro-climatic zones (1951–2025)
Published: 2026-04-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Oceanography
Long-term changes in temperature extremes are a robust signature of anthropogenic climate change, yet their spatial structure across India’s agro-climatic zones (ACZs) remains insufficiently resolved at policy scales. Here, we quantify changes in temperature extremes across 14 mainland ACZs during 1951–2025 using the India Meteorological Department 1°×1° gridded daily dataset. We compute 22 [...]
Climate variability introduces uncertainty into future emissions pathways
Published: 2026-04-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Uncertainty in long-term climate outcomes arises not only from physical processes but also from societal responses to climate variability and change. Here we embed a range of temperature anomalies into an empirically-informed, coupled climate–social model to investigate how natural temperature variability shapes global emissions trajectories. Using Monte Carlo ensembles spanning social, [...]
Introducing Microalgae Carbon Fixation and Sinking (MCFS): a new approach for controlled and scalable CDR
Published: 2026-04-08
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Oceanography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Achieving global climate targets requires scalable and durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies to tackle both historical and hard-to- abate emissions. We introduce Microalgae Carbon Fixation and Sinking (MCFS), a marine CDR methodology designed to enhance carbon fixation and export to the deep ocean through a controlled process. At the core of the MCFS approach is a tailored substrate: [...]