Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Other Earth Sciences
Phanerozoic atmosphere and ocean conditions estimated by a continuous climate and multi-box ocean model
Published: 2026-09-15
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Geochemistry, Other Earth Sciences
The Phanerozoic Eon has witnessed marked fluctuations in Earth’s climate and the concentrations of elements conducive to life. Understanding what has driven these changes to the Earth system over such a long timeframe has traditionally used ‘box models’ which split the Earth into a small number of chemical reservoirs, with many models utilising a single, combined ocean-atmosphere reservoir. This [...]
Thin the heat-trapping blanket of superpollutants and CO2 to slow the rate of warming by half
Published: 2026-09-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences
With the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) revealed as rate-dependent, it is critical to quickly cut the rate of warming in half, which would require an ambitious combination of fast mitigation of short-lived climate pollutants, CO2 mitigation, and removal of CO2 and other GHGs.
A transparent constrained stochastic framework for urban expansion forecasting and future service-network screening: Cape Town demonstration using annual building evidence, empirical land constraints, spatial hindcasting, and multi-horizon ensembles
Published: 2026-09-09
Subjects: Other Earth Sciences
Spatial forecasts of urban expansion require separate, auditable answers to two questions: how much built area is assumed to appear, and where it is allocated. This study presents a constrained stochastic workflow and demonstrates it for metropolitan Cape Town, South Africa. Annual Open Buildings Temporal building-presence surfaces for 2016–2023 are harmonised to a 10 m grid and cleaned with a [...]
Probabilistic assessment of tropical cyclone recovery burden across US Atlantic and Gulf Coast counties
Published: 2026-08-27
Subjects: Climate, Other Earth Sciences
Tropical cyclones cause widespread damage to housing and infrastructure, and recovery is often slow and uneven. Climate risk assessments quantify the likelihood and direct impacts of extreme events, but post-disaster recovery remains largely absent from these models, limiting our ability to assess long-term resilience. We therefore integrate simplified recovery modeling into probabilistic [...]
State-Dependent Biophysical Processes Prevented a Late Paleozoic Snowball Earth
Published: 2026-08-21
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Terrestrial vegetation modulates Earth’s climate through two distinct pathways—biogeochemically drawing down CO2 through enhanced organic carbon burial [1, 2] and silicate weathering [3, 4], and biophysically altering surface energy and water balances through potentially competing albedo and evapotranspiration changes [5, 6]. Although the biogeochemical pathway is widely invoked to explain the [...]
Hydroclimatic Regime Shifts and Compound Heat–Dry Events in Rajshahi Division, Bangladesh: Integrating Thermal Gradients, Change-Point Detection, and Heat-Driven Dryness Dynamics (1992–2022)
Published: 2026-08-07
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology, Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistical Models
Hydroclimatic variability and compound climate extremes are increasingly affecting monsoon-dominated regions of South Asia, particularly drought-prone northwestern Bangladesh. However, integrated assessments of thermal dynamics, atmospheric moisture, land–atmosphere coupling, and compound heat–dry events remain limited in the regional context. Therefore, this study investigated long-term [...]
Moving fast without breaking things: The benefits of preprinting for CDR research
Published: 2026-08-06
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
Advocates of preprinting usually focus on its benefits to individual researchers — more feedback, citations, and visibility. We argue its greater value is collective: preprinting improves scientific coordination, which the carbon dioxide removal field needs in order to move fast without sacrificing rigor.
Permafrost degradation as a heterogeneous mosaic of tipping and non-tipping behaviour
Published: 2026-08-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences
Permafrost thaw can occur as widespread gradual thaw, or as abrupt thaw. Abrupt thaw can occur on decadal or shorter timescales and produce large, often irreversible changes to landscapes, ecosystems, and infrastructure. These changes are frequently described as tipping points, yet the underlying mechanisms differ substantially in their feedback structure, reversibility, and capacity for [...]
Clay Characterization of Tiller Flotten Quick Clay
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Mineral Physics, Other Earth Sciences, Soil Science
In this study, we investigate the mineralogical and physicochemical properties of the Tiller–Flotten quick clay formation in Trondheim, Norway. The objective is to enhance our understanding of particle interactions within this quick clay system, thereby contributing to the development of more environmentally friendly stabilization strategies. A comprehensive suite of analytical techniques was [...]
ICP-Base: A free and open-source software solution for centralized LA-ICP-MS data processing, evaluation and management
Published: 2026-06-23
Subjects: Geochemistry, Other Earth Sciences, Speleology, Volcanology
Transient signal intensity data, particularly since the advent of Laser Ablation–Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), have become a standard tool in petrology and geochemistry for determining the chemical composition of minerals and fluid and melt inclusions. However, commonly used software for quantifying raw ICP-MS data is often inflexible, expensive, and closed-source, [...]
Novel Data-driven High-Frequency Mass Change Models from GRACE orbit residuals
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Glaciology, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a fully data-driven framework for transforming residual K-band range-rate (KBRR) data from GRACE into 5-day mass change models expressed in Equivalent Water Height (EWH). The approach first derives residual range and Line-of-Sight Gravity Differences (LGDs) from monthly post-fit residual range-rates and combines them with 5-day post-fit residuals. A hybrid formulation, merging LGD- and [...]
The influence of speed and scale of carbon dioxide removal on overshoot peak temperature and duration
Published: 2026-06-11
Subjects: Other Earth Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics
CO2 emissions are pushing global temperatures higher, with the Paris Agreement temperature target of limiting warming to no more than 1.5°C above the preindustrial average likely to be exceeded within the next two decades. Overshooting this target before reducing global temperature by the end of the century is increasingly viewed as a potential pathway to still meet the Paris Agreement target, [...]
Subsurface advective flow unveils the architecture of Earth’s crustal biosphere
Published: 2026-06-09
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Geology, Microbiology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
The subsurface biosphere is one of Earth’s largest microbial reservoirs, yet its spatial extent remains poorly constrained due to limited direct access. Here we propose using the integrated environmental readouts encoded in deep subsurface fluids to shift from simply mapping where life can be detected to constraining where life can exist. Deeply-sourced advective fluids provide an integrated [...]
Two decades of kilometer-scale daily PM2.5 from satellite observations and machine learning reveal geographically diverging exposure in Ghana
Published: 2026-06-05
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a major contributor to global burden of disease, yet air quality data remain sparse in many low- and middle-income countries, limiting nationwide monitoring and effective policy development. We address this gap by developing a high-resolution gridded (1 km × 1 km) dataset for daily surface PM2.5 concentrations in Ghana from 2005 to 2025 by training [...]
Trapped Lee-Wave Resonance Determines Antarctic Megadune Wavelength
Published: 2026-05-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Categorical Data Analysis, Design of Experiments and Sample Surveys, Earth Sciences, Fluid Dynamics, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Mineral Physics, Other Earth Sciences, Paleontology, Physics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Mineral Physics, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology, Sedimentology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Stratigraphy
Snow megadunes cover 5×105 km2 of the East Antarctic plateau, biasing surface mass balance estimates and overprinting ice-core signals—yet their 2–5 km wavelength has lacked a quantitative selection mechanism for two decades. We first falsify the standard formula λ∗ = 2πU0/N through a calibration-free spatial test: eight REMA 2 m tiles across two independent locations at 81.5–82.0°S show no [...]