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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences

MEIC-global-CO2: a new global CO2 emission inventory with highly-resolved source category and sub-country information

Ruochong Xu, Dan Tong, Qingyang Xiao, et al.

Published: 2023-08-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

CO2 emission inventory provides fundamental data for climate research and emission mitigation. Currently, most global CO2 emission inventories were developed with energy statistics from International Energy Agency (IEA) and were available at country level with limited source categories. Here, as the first step toward a high-resolution and dynamic updated global CO2 emission database, we developed [...]

Plastics in the deep sea – a global estimate of the ocean floor reservoir

Xia Zhu, Chelsea Rochman, Britta Denise Hardesty, et al.

Published: 2023-07-22
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology

The exponential increase in plastic production coupled with variable global waste management system efficiencies has resulted in large amounts of plastic waste entering the ocean every year. Although we know millions of tonnes of plastic have entered the oceans, we do not yet understand the patterns of its accumulation across space nor the drivers of these patterns. The deep ocean is expected to [...]

Present and future limits to climate change adaptation

Christopher Callahan

Published: 2023-07-21
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Sustainable economic development and resilience to climate change impacts require human adaptation to a warming climate. It is possible that rising costs of climate change will provide incentives to increase adaptation actions in the future. This Perspective argues, by contrast, that adaptation to the costs of global warming is likely to be ineffective. Empirical evidence suggests that current [...]

Climate Resilience of small-town water utilities in Eastern Ethiopia

Abraham Geremew, Anisha Nijhawan, Bezatu Mengistie, et al.

Published: 2023-07-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences

Building a resilient water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) system is more important than ever since climate change threatens WASH, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The Government of Ethiopia stresses climate-resilient WASH through its One WASH National Program, albeit it may be challenging to ascertain the resilience due to the absence of an easy-to-use monitoring tool. The “How [...]

Nutrient concentrations and nitrogen speciation in tropical watersheds of central Panama

Ozeas da Silva Costa, W. Berry Lyons, Russell S. Harmon, et al.

Published: 2023-07-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences

We present chemical analyses from rivers and streams in five partly to near-fully forested watersheds in the humid tropics of central Panama. Contrary to the situation observed for temperate watersheds in the Northern Hemisphere, the concentration of dissolved inorganic nitrogen in the Panamanian watersheds is low (mostly <2.6 µmol L-1), whereas concentrations of organic nitrogen are several [...]

Earth System Data Cubes: Avenues for advancing Earth system research

David Montero, Guido Kraemer, Anca Anghelea, et al.

Published: 2023-07-11
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Recent advancements in Earth system science have been marked by the exponential increase in the availability of diverse, multivariate datasets characterised by moderate to high spatio-temporal resolutions. Earth System Data Cubes (ESDCs) have emerged as one suitable solution for transforming this flood of data into a simple yet robust data structure. ESDCs achieve this by organising data into an [...]

Spatio–temporal trends of air quality, Kampala City, Uganda, 2020–2022

Mackline Ninsiima, Alex Ndyabakira, Sarah Zalwango, et al.

Published: 2023-07-05
Subjects: Environmental Sciences

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is among the health damaging air pollutants that pose health risks to humans, with levels >15 µg/m3 being associated with adverse health effects. PM2.5 has been recommended as the best measure of air quality. Cities are more prone to poor air quality compared to non–urban areas. We assessed the spatio–temporal trends in air quality in Kampala City during January [...]

Mountains of plastic: Mismanaged plastic waste along the Carpathian watercourses

Maciej Liro, Anna Zielonka, Tim van Emmerik, et al.

Published: 2023-07-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Plastic waste poses numerous risks to mountain river ecosystems due to their high biodiversity and specific physical characteristics. Here, we provide a baseline assessment for future evaluation of such risks in the Carpathians, one of the most biodiverse mountain ranges in East-Central Europe. We used high-resolution river network and mismanaged plastic waste (MPW) databases to map MPW along the [...]

OpenStreetMap for Multi-Faceted Climate Risk Assessments

Evelyn Mühlhofer, Chahan M. Kropf, David N. Bresch, et al.

Published: 2023-06-29
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Risk Analysis

Natural hazards pose significant risks to human lives, infrastructure, and ecosystems, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of climate risks for effective adaptation planning and risk management. However, climate risk assessments mostly focus on economic asset values and infrastructures such as roads and buildings, because publicly available data on more diverse exposures are scarce. The [...]

Global protection from tropical cyclones by coastal ecosystems - past, present, and under climate change

Sarah Hülsen, Robert I. McDonald, Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer, et al.

Published: 2023-06-27
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Risk Analysis

Coastal ecosystems have the potential to contribute to disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change. While previous studies have estimated the value of current coastal ecosystems for reducing coastal risk, there have been relatively few studies that look at changes in ecosystem service provision, in the past and under climate change. We employ the probabilistic, event-based CLIMADA [...]

Decoding the Dynamics of Climate Change Impact: Temporal Patterns of Surface Warming and Melting on the Nivlisen Ice Shelf, Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica

Geetha Priya M, Raghavendra K R, Mahesh B, et al.

Published: 2023-06-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Surface melting in Antarctica can result in the formation of meltwater ponds and streams, which can encourage glacier basal sliding and ice flow; long-term severe surface melting can result in the formation of melt ponds and, eventually, supraglacial lakes (SGLs), raising the prospect of hydrofracturing. Measurements of these surface melting characteristics are useful for studying glacier and ice [...]

GIS-Based Modelling of Soil Erosion Risk categories County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Zeinab Smillie

Published: 2023-06-08
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Soil erosion is one of the major global concerns. Such a process can occur naturally, at different rates. However, under extreme conditions, soil erosion can accelerate and present a risk to ecosystems, loss of food supply (loss of agricultural lands), and lead to episodic landslides. The present study employs Geographic Information Systems and functions to predict possible risks connected to [...]

Is Snow Drought a Messenger for the Upcoming Severe Drought Period? A Case Study in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

Serhan Yeşilköy, Özlem Baydaroğlu, Ibrahim Demir

Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management

The exacerbation of floods and the extension of droughts, attributed to climate change and other human-induced factors, are posing a substantial risk to communities by causing water scarcity and insecurity. The significance of safeguarding water resources and managing them is increasingly gaining prominence. Snow is an efficient source of water for recharging groundwater compared to rainfall. [...]

A city-wide emissions inventory of plastic pollution

Xia Zhu, Matthew J Hoffman, Chelsea Rochman

Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Environmental Sciences

A global agreement on plastic should have quantitative reduction targets for emissions of plastic pollution and regular measurements to track success. Here, we present a framework for measuring plastic emissions, akin to greenhouse gas emissions, and demonstrate its utility by calculating a baseline measurement for the city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. We identify relevant sources of plastic [...]

California margin temperatures modulate regional circulation and extreme summer precipitation in the desert Southwest

Tripti Bhattacharya, Ran Feng, Chris Maupin, et al.

Published: 2023-06-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology

In August 2022, Death Valley, the driest place in North America, experienced record flooding from summertime rainfall associated with the North American monsoon (NAM). Given the socioeconomic cost of these type of events, there is a dire need to understand their drivers and future statistics. Existing theory predicts that increases in the intensity of precipitation is a robust response to [...]

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