Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Fire-weather interaction fed the 2020 western USA gigafire
Published: 2021-10-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Wildfires threaten human lives, destroy infrastructure, disrupt economic activity, and damage ecosystem services. A record-breaking gigafire event ravaged the western United States (USA) in mid-September 2020, burning 1.2 million acres (4,900 km2) in Oregon and California, and resulting in severe smoke pollution with daily fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations over 300 µg/m3 for multiple [...]
Rapid characterisation of the extremely large landslide threatening the Rules Reservoir (Southern Spain)
Published: 2021-10-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology
When an active landslide is first identified in an artificial reservoir, a comprehensive study has to be quickly conducted to analyse the possible hazard that it may represent to such a critical infrastructure. This paper presents the case of the El Arrecife Landslide, located in a slope of the Rules Reservoir (Southern Spain), as an example of geological and motion data integration for [...]
Pangeo Forge: Crowdsourcing Analysis-Ready, Cloud Optimized Data Production
Published: 2021-10-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Pangeo Forge is a new community-driven platform that accelerates science by providing high-level recipe frameworks alongside cloud compute infrastructure for extracting data from provider archives, transforming it into analysis-ready, cloud-optimized (ARCO) data stores, and providing a human- and machine-readable catalog for browsing and loading. In abstracting the scientific domain logic of data [...]
Missing or Underrated Super-emitters of Nitrogen Oxides in China Exposed from Space
Published: 2021-09-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Nitrogen oxides (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) play a central role in air pollution. Super-emitters present unique opportunities for emission mitigation in China and beyond. They comprise intensive industrial facilities (e.g., power or chemical plants), less than 1 × 1 km2 with high NOx plumes, dominating localized concentrations within a limited geographical scope. However, identification of super-emitters [...]
The Impact of Neglecting Climate Change and Variability on ERCOT’s Forecasts of Electricity Demand in Texas
Published: 2021-09-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Risk Analysis
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the electric power across most of Texas. They make short-term assessments of electricity demand based on historical weather over the last decade or two, thereby ignoring the effects of climate change and the possibility of weather variability outside of the recent historical range. In this paper, we develop an empirical methodology to [...]
Acquisition of Data for Building Photogrammetric Virtual Outcrop Models for the Geosciences using Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs)
Published: 2021-09-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Over the past five years the use of 3D models in the Earth Sciences has become ubiquitous. These models, termed Virtual outcrops, are most commonly generated using Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry, an image-based modelling method that has achieved widespread uptake and utilization. Data for these models is commonly acquired using remotely piloted aerial vehicles (RPVs), commonly called [...]
Three-dimensional fluid-driven stable frictional ruptures
Published: 2021-09-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
We investigate the quasi-static growth of a fluid-driven frictional shear crack that propagates in mixed mode (II+III) on a planar fault interface that separates two identical half-spaces of a three-dimensional solid. The fault interface is characterized by a shear strength equal to the product of a constant friction coefficient and the local effective normal stress. Fluid is injected into the [...]
Higher Long-Term Soil Moisture Increases Organic Carbon Accrual Through Microbial Conversion of Organic Inputs
Published: 2021-09-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
High long-term soil moisture may either stimulate or inhibit soil organic carbon (SOC) losses through changes to mineral and chemical composition, and resultant organo-mineral interactions. Yet, the trade-off between mineralization and accrual of SOC under long-term variation in unsaturated soil moisture remains an uncertainty. In this study, we tested the underexplored relationships between [...]
A high-resolution downscaled CMIP6 projections dataset of essential surface climate variables over the globe coherent with the ERA5-Land reanalysis for climate change impact assessments
Published: 2021-08-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
A high-resolution climate projections dataset is obtained by statistically downscaling climate projections from the CMIP6 experiment using the ERA5-Land reanalysis from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. This global dataset has a spatial resolution of 0.1°x 0.1°, comprises 5 climate models and includes two surface daily variables at monthly resolution: air temperature and precipitation. Two [...]
Comprehensive aerial survey quantifies high methane emissions from the New Mexico Permian Basin
Published: 2021-08-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Limiting emissions of climate-warming methane from oil and gas (O&G) is a major opportunity for short-term climate benefits. We deploy a basin-wide airborne survey of the New Mexico Permian Basin, spanning 35,923 km^2, 26,292 active wells, and over 15,000 km of natural gas pipelines using an independently-validated hyperspectral methane point source detection and quantification system. The [...]
Safety and Belonging in the Field: A Checklist for Educators
Published: 2021-08-19
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Cosmochemistry, Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Higher Education, Human Geography, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Mineral Physics, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Geography, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Planetary Sciences, Outdoor Education, Paleobiology, Paleontology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Glaciology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Mineral Physics, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology, Remote Sensing, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Speleology, Stratigraphy, Sustainability, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology, Water Resource Management
Ensuring taught fieldwork is a positive, generative, collective, and valuable experience for all participants requires considerations beyond course content. To guarantee safety and belonging, participants’ identities (backgrounds and protected characteristics) must be considered as a part of fieldwork planning and implementation. Furthermore, getting fieldwork right is an important step in [...]
Does ENSO significantly affect rice production in Indonesia? A preliminary study using computational time-series approach
Published: 2021-08-15
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
ENSO is a phenomenon that is suspected to influence rice production in Indonesia. In this study, we try to find a direct correlation between ENSO and rice production in this region by using various latest computational time series methods, such as Dynamic Time Warping, Wavelet Coherence, and Bayesian Structural Time Series to quantify the statistical relationship between the Multivariate ENSO [...]
Transport and Fate of All-Time Released Plastics in the Global Ocean
Published: 2021-08-14
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences
Mismanaged plastics accumulate in oceans and threaten marine life. About 40 million tonnes of plastics have reached the oceans, where their fate remains unclear. To track the sources, sinks, sizes, and age of all-time released plastics, we developed a new mechanistic model and synthesized decades of measurements. We find that Asian plastics are the largest contributor (76%) to marine plastics by [...]
Creating a climate changed future with the sea level rise interactive- fiction game ‘Lagos2199’
Published: 2021-07-26
Subjects: Climate, Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Instructional Media Design, International and Area Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Sustainability
Story-based futures serve an important role in climate change scenario development. Stories are particularly useful in exploring sea level rise possibilities, since we know many coastal areas are specifically vulnerable to accelerating rises in sea level. This discrete change in coastline is different from most other climate change impacts, and offers a clear basis for scientifically-informed, [...]
De-risking the energy transition by quantifying the uncertainties in fault stability
Published: 2021-07-26
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Other Engineering, Risk Analysis
The operations needed to decarbonise our energy systems increasingly involve faulted rocks in the subsurface. To manage the technical challenges presented by these rocks and the justifiable public concern over induced seismicity, we need to assess the risks. Widely used measures for fault stability, including slip and dilation tendency and fracture susceptibility, can be combined with Response [...]