Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
A New Paradigm for High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal: Intrinsic Radionuclide Properties and Comparative Hazard
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology
This paper develops a hazard- and pathway-based framework for high-level radioactive waste (HLW) disposal grounded in intrinsic radionuclide decay characteristics, geochemical behavior, and comparative hazard. We examine the physical and geochemical properties of key radionuclides and quantify lifetime cancer risk from chronic ingestion on a per-unit-mass basis using established regulatory [...]
Mineral properties identified as most influential drivers of mineral-associated organic carbon formation using a community-based sorption database
Published: 2026-01-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) storage has the potential to substantially offset anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Globally, mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) constitutes the majority of SOC (~65%) and represents a more persistent SOC pool for sequestration. However, the factors controlling how much organic carbon sorbs to soil minerals remain poorly understood, limiting our ability to [...]
Cervical Cancer and Climate Change
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
Background: The research question guiding this scoping review was: "What does the literature reveal (since January 1, 2005) about the association between climate change—or its underlying environmental drivers—and cervical cancer?" Methods: We conducted a comprehensive literature search using two major electronic databases: PubMed and Web of Science, for January 1, 2005, through July 30, 2024. 522 [...]
HydroVerse Education: An AI-Assisted Education Framework for Immersive Learning and Training Environments
Published: 2025-12-22
Subjects: Adult and Continuing Education, Computer Engineering, Educational Methods, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Hydroinformatics education has traditionally been constrained by pedagogical approaches that fail to adequately convey the complexity of water systems. Virtual Reality (VR) presents a transformative solution by enabling interactive and experiential learning. This study introduces HydroVerse Education, an immersive virtual classroom environment designed to modernize hydroinformatics education by [...]
How Robust are Single Aliquot Regeneration paleo-doses using single grains of Quartz: The role of change in luminescence sensitivity during the measurement of natural luminescence
Published: 2025-12-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Luminescence dating using quartz is generally carried out using the single aliquot regeneration (SAR) protocol (Murray et al., 2021; Murray and Wintle, 2000). Singhvi et al. (2011) suggested a methodological improvement in the SAR protocol to account for the changes in the luminescence sensitivity during the readout of natural OSL signal. It was suggested that such changes are common and if not [...]
A Multidisciplinary Data Synthesis for Environmentally-Relevant Beta-Emitting Radionuclides in the Back-End Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Published: 2025-12-13
Subjects: Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study synthesizes multidisciplinary information—from nuclear physics and environmental science—related to environmentally relevant beta-emitting radionuclides in the back-end nuclear fuel cycle: H-3, C-14, Cl-36, Se-79, Sr-90, Tc-99, and I-129. First, our synthesis shows that these radionuclides are the key contaminants and dominant dose contributors, both in the high-level radioactive waste [...]
Income strongly moderates climate-driven migration
Published: 2025-12-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Understanding how climate change will reshape human migration remains an open empirical challenge. Migration decisions reflect a complex interplay of environmental and socioeconomic factors, yet existing data and models have struggled to capture this interaction at a global scale. To address this, we assemble spatially granular, long-panel migration data covering nearly the entire world and [...]
Climate Network Analysis of Precipitation Regimes from WorldClim Data in Saudi Arabia
Published: 2025-12-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Risk Analysis
Saudi Arabia is shaped by a hydroclimatic gradient, from the hyper-arid Rub’ al-Khali desert to the semi-arid mountains in the southwest. This gradient affects runoff generation, groundwater recharge, and drought risk, yet most studies still summarize rainfall using basic statistics from station data or gridded products. This research applies climate network analysis to identify coherent rainfall [...]
Infiltration drives a Heavy–Tailed Distribution of Combined Sewer Overflow Spill Durations
Published: 2025-12-10
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) discharge untreated wastewater into natural water bodies during periods of excess sewer flow, posing environmental risks. Using ∼ 4 million CSO spill events recorded by Event Duration Monitors across England (2020–2024), we characterize the statistical distribution of spill durations. We find that while spills exceeding two hours represent only ∼ 10% of events, [...]
Earth Embeddings: Towards AI-centric Representations of our Planet
Published: 2025-12-08
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
This paper presents a new perspective for the flexible and efficient representation of geospatial data, tailored to and empowered by AI: Earth embeddings. Earth embeddings provide a unified and accessible vector representation of local geographic characteristics. They fuse different geospatial data sources across time and space, compress highly-correlated raw geospatial data into one dense [...]
Advancing CLMU for regional urban climate simulations through WRF coupling: intercomparison with NOAH–SLUCM
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Urban areas are highly vulnerable to climate extremes, creating a pressing need for reliable modeling tools to support climate adaptation. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is widely used for regional urban climate simulations, and incorporating an alternative urban scheme for long-term climate projections expands the available modeling options and supports more robust simulation [...]
Evaluating Trade-offs Between Irrigation Profit and Streamflow Depletion Using a Hydro-Economic Model
Published: 2025-12-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Groundwater overexploitation can reduce flows in connected rivers through streamflow depletion, which threatens ecosystems and downstream users who often rely on these flows for their economic wellbeing. Quantifying groundwater-surface water interactions and their economic trade-offs remains challenging for sustainable water management. This study integrates analytical groundwater and streamflow [...]
When the City Never Sleeps: Urban Climate Vulnerabilities in Ghana’s Shift to a 24-Hour Economy
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Ghana’s 24H+ Programme proposes a transition toward a 24-hour economy as a strategy to expand employment, strengthen productivity, and modernize national development. While the policy outlines economic and infrastructural priorities, its implications for urban climate risks and resilience have not been examined. This study assesses how continuous economic activity may influence climate-related [...]
Governing the cryosphere beyond political timeframes
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Glaciology, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Sustainability
Cryospheric systems are nearing irreversible thresholds, yet political processes remain misaligned with the long timescales of ice loss. Using COP30 as context, we argue that cryosphere science must inform governance capable of linking near-term decisions with long-term stability in a rapidly changing world.
Timescales of Antarctic ice shelf loss via basal crevassing
Published: 2025-11-26
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Antarctic ice-shelves are vulnerable to collapse in a warming climate. However, when this might happen is largely unknown, propagating significant uncertainty into sea-level-rise projections. To constrain this uncertainty, we use fracture modelling to predict the timescales on which crevasses fully penetrate ice-shelves, and consider how these timescales change under future warming. We find that [...]