Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Global projections of compound coastal meteorological extremes
Published: 2020-04-29
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Compound coastal and inland flooding can result in catastrophic impacts in densely populated low-lying coastal areas. The dynamics and interactions between the underlying meteorological drivers in view of climate change are not fully understood at global scale. Here, we show that under a high emissions scenario the concurrence probability of extreme meteorological tides and inland precipitation [...]
Using large-scale NO2 data from citizen science for air quality compliance and policy support
Published: 2020-04-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Citizen science projects that monitor air quality have recently drastically expanded in scale. Projects involving thousands of citizens generate spatially dense datasets using low-cost passive samplers for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which complement data from the sparse reference network operated by environmental agencies. However, there is a critical bottleneck in using these citizen-derived [...]
Lockdown caused by COVID-19 pandemic reduces air pollution in cities worldwide
Published: 2020-04-18
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Drastic measures such as lockdown taken by countries worldwide to contain spread of COVID-19 have influenced air pollution dynamics substantially, at a planetary scale. Several media reported the lockdown induced air pollution reduction based on quickly assembled satellite observations. However, a global-scale analysis of such reduction in air pollution backed by quality data collected from [...]
Evaluating UK natural hazards: the national risk assessment
Published: 2020-04-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Despite its relatively temperate climate and stable geography, natural hazards present multiple risks to human activity in the UK. These range from small-scale local occurrences, such as landslides, through regional incidents, such as flooding, to major high impact, low probability events, such as space weather. The impacts of such hazards can be wide-ranging but may include disruption to [...]
Do atmospheric plastics act as fomites for novel viruses?
Published: 2020-04-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Plastic particles are ubiquitous in various environmental compartments, the atmosphere being the least explored compartment in terms of plastic pollution. The way that atmospheric plastics affect the biological systems has not yet been explored when compared to aquatic ecosystems. There are many speculated human health impacts, one definite and direct impact of atmospheric plastics would be [...]
A mixed $RT_0 - P_0$ Raviart-Thomas finite element implementation of Darcy Equation in GNU Octave
Published: 2020-04-14
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Computational Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Partial Differential Equations, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
In this paper we shall describe mixed formulations -differential and variational- of Darcys flow equation, an important model of elliptic problem. We describe * Galerkin method with finite dimensional spaces; * Local matrices and assembling; * Raviart-Thomas $RT_0 - P_0$ elements; * Edge basis and local matrices for $RT_0 - P_0$ FEM; * Model problem with corresponding local matrices, right hand [...]
Enhanced secondary pollution offset reduction of primary emissions during COVID-19 lockdown in China
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
To control the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), China imposed nationwide restrictions on the movement of its population (lockdown) after the Chinese New Year of 2020, leading to large reductions in economic activities and associated emissions. Despite such large decreases in primary pollution, there were nonetheless several periods of heavy haze pollution in East China, raising [...]
Success at the farm-level in payments for ecosystem services: monetary incentives, participatory processes and institutional adaptation all matter
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
While payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes are increasingly common, in most cases, their effectiveness has lagged behind initial expectations. A major debate exists around whether performance can be improved by prioritising project design features that align with the theoretical, economistic model of PES, or whether, where necessary, it is more important for projects to depart from this [...]
Social as much as environmental: the drivers of tree biomass in smallholder forest landscape restoration programmes
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A major challenge for forest landscape restoration initiatives is the lack of quantitative evidence on how social factors drive environmental outcomes. Here we conduct a transdisciplinary quantitative analysis of the environmental and social drivers of tree biomass accumulation across 639 smallholder farms restoring native tree species in Mexico, Uganda and Mozambique. We use environmental and [...]
Cascading Failure Phenomenon in the Multi-Stage Hydraulically Fractured Wells
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The phenomenon of cascading fracture failure during flowback and initial production from a horizontal multistage hydraulically fractured well is introduced, described, and investigated. First, a simplified analytical model of production from such well is built. This model allows evaluating a range of systems parameters through which the cascading failure evolves and performing a sensitivity study [...]
Weak influence of paleoenvironmental conditions on the subsurface biosphere of lake Ohrid in the last 515 ka
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Earth Sciences, Paleobiology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding the response of geo- and biosystems to past climatic disturbance is primordial to assess the short to long terms effects of current global change. Lacustrine sediments are commonly used to investigate the impact of climatic change on biogeochemical cycling. In these sediments, subsurface microbial communities play a primordial role in nutrient, organic matter and elemental cycling, [...]
Global heat uptake by inland waters
Published: 2020-04-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Heat uptake is a key variable for understanding the Earth system response to greenhouse gas forcing. Despite the importance of this heat budget, heat uptake by inland waters has so far not been quanti?ed. Here we use a unique combination of global-scale lake models, global hydrological models and Earth system models to quantify global heat up take by natural lakes, reservoirs and rivers. The [...]
InSAR Time Series Analysis of L-band Wide- Swath SAR Data Acquired by ALOS-2
Published: 2020-04-12
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Mining Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Operating at L-band (~24 cm wavelength) in wide-swath modes is one of the characteristics of the new and next generation satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) missions. After 3 years of operation, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) satellite has acquired a wealth of L-band wide-swath SAR data over many areas using its ScanSAR mode. We present [...]
Estimating Azimuth Offset With Double-Difference Interferometric Phase: The Effect of Azimuth FM Rate Error in Focusing
Published: 2020-04-06
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Hydrology, Mining Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Estimating azimuth offset with double-difference interferometric (DDI) phase, which is called multiple-aperture interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) or spectral diversity, is increasingly used in recent years to measure azimuth deformation or to accurately coregister a pair of InSAR images. We analyze the effect of frequency modulation (FM) rate error in focusing on the DDI phase with [...]
Initial Exploration Free Floating CO2 Fixation Catalysts
Published: 2020-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Climate change as an inextricable and dire threat to humanity is well established. The primary problem stems from an excess of carbon dioxide in earths atmosphere and oceans causing a gradual increase in average temperature. With this there arises an immediate need for the alteration of this carbon dioxide into differing chemical states. Herein we perform an initial exploration of adapting the [...]