Skip to main content

Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences

Sensitivity of evapotranspiration deficit index to its parameters and temporal scales

Frank Joseph Wambura

Published: 2020-05-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management

Sound estimates of drought characteristics are very important for planning intervention measures in drought-prone areas. Among many drought indices used in estimation of drought characteristics in many parts of the world, evapotranspiration deficit index (ETDI) is increasingly used to estimate agricultural drought. However, in most studies ETDI has been computed using the specific ETDI formula. [...]

Cave airflow patterns control calcite dissolution rates within a cave stream: Blowing Springs Cave, Arkansas, USA

Matthew D Covington, Katherine Knierim, Holly A. Young, et al.

Published: 2020-05-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Erosion rates within streams vary dramatically over time, as differences in discharge and sediment load enhance or inhibit erosion processes. Within cave streams, and other bedrock channels incising soluble rocks, changes in water chemistry are an important factor in determining how erosion rates will vary in both time and space. Prior studies within surface streams, springs, and caves suggest [...]

Same but different: A framework to design and compare riverbank plastic monitoring strategies

Paul Vriend, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Tim van Emmerik

Published: 2020-05-24
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management

Plastic pollution in rivers negatively impacts human livelihood and aquatic ecosystems. Monitoring data are crucial for a better understanding of sources, sinks and transport mechanisms of riverine macroplastics. In turn, such understanding is key to develop effective plastic pollution prevention, mitigation and removal strategies. Riverine plastic has been observed in all compartments, of which [...]

Human Health Benefits of the Minamata Convention on Mercury

Yanxu Zhang, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, Huanxin Zhang, et al.

Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Minamata Convention is a legally-binding international treaty aimed at reducing the anthropogenic release of mercury, a potent neurotoxin. However, its human health benefit has not been quantified on a global scale. Here we evaluate the Convention’s benefit by a coupled climate-atmosphere-land-ocean-ecosystem model and a human mercury exposure component that considers all food categories. We [...]

Probabilistic soil moisture dynamics of water- and energy-limited ecosystems

Estefanía Muñoz, Andrés Ochoa, Germán Poveda, et al.

Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability

This paper presents an extension of the stochastic ecohydrological model for soil moisture dynamics at a point of Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1999) and Laio et al. (2001). In the original model, evapotranspiration is a function of soil moisture and vegetation parameters, so that the model is suitable for water-limited environments. Our extension introduces a dependence on maximum evapotranspiration [...]

Increasing economic drought impacts in Europe with anthropogenic warming

Gustavo Naumann, Carmelo Cammalleri, Lorenzo Mentaschi, et al.

Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics

While climate change will alter the distribution in time and space of water, quantifications of drought risk in view of global warming remain little explored. Here, we show that in Europe drought damages could strongly increase with global warming and cause a strong regional imbalance in future drought impacts. In the absence of climate action (4°C in 2100 and no adaptation) annual drought losses [...]

What is the hydrologically effective size of a catchment?

Yan Liu, Thorsten Wagener, Hylke E. Beck, et al.

Published: 2020-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management

Linking human activities and climate change with their consequences for water availability is a prerequisite for sustainable water management, which is traditionally performed at topographically delineated catchments. However, inter-catchment groundwater flow results in effective catchment sizes other than sizes suggested by topography. Here, we introduce the notion of effective catchment size [...]

COVID-19-related drop in anthropogenic aerosol emissions in China and corresponding cloud and climate effects

Axel Timmermann, Sun-Seon Lee, Jung-Eun Chu, et al.

Published: 2020-05-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive disruptions of public life on a global scale. To halt the spread of the disease, China temporarily shut down parts of the manufacturing and transportation sectors. Associated anthropogenic aerosol emissions in February 2020 plunged to record lows, causing a temporary improvement of air quality with uncertain effects on cloud formation, atmospheric [...]

Danger of groundwater contamination widely underestimated because of shortcuts for aquifer recharge

Andreas Hartmann, Scott Jasechko, Tom Gleeson, et al.

Published: 2020-05-11
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management

Groundwater pollution threatens human and ecosystem health in many areas around the globe. Shortcuts to the groundwater through concentrated recharge are known to transmit short-lived pollutants into carbonate aquifers endangering water quality of around a quarter of the world population. However, the large-scale impact of such concentrated recharge on water quality remains poorly understood. [...]

Addressing Model Data Archiving Needs for the Department of Energy’s Environmental Systems Science Community

Maegen Simmonds, William J. Riley, Shreyas Cholia, et al.

Published: 2020-05-08
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Researchers in the Department of Energy’s ESS program use a variety of models to advance robust, scale-aware predictions of terrestrial and subsurface ecosystems. ESS projects typically conduct field observations and experiments coupled with modeling exercises using a model-experimental (ModEx) approach that enables iterative co-development of experiments and models, and ensures that experimental [...]

On doing large-scale hydrology with Lions: Realising the value of perceptual models and knowledge accumulation

Thorsten Wagener, Tom Gleeson, Gemma Coxon, et al.

Published: 2020-05-08
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Moving the study domain in hydrology to larger and larger regions leaves us with significant knowledge gaps because we are unable to observe the hydrology of many parts of the world, while in-depth hydrologic studies cover only a fraction of our landscape. On medieval maps, knowledge gaps were shown as images of lions. How do we best acknowledge and reduce these gaps in hydrology, i.e. our [...]

How waves are accelerating global coastal overtopping

Rafael Almar, Harold Diaz, Erwin W. J. Bergsma, et al.

Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The world’s coastal areas are home to about 10% of the human population and support unique and dynamic ecosystems, offering € trillions worth of environmental and societal benefits. Climate change and anthropogenic pressures are however exacerbating devastating hazards such as episodic coastal flooding, the magnitudes of which remain highly uncertain to date. This study, for the first time, [...]

Lower air pollution during COVID-19 lock-down: improving models and methods estimating ozone impacts on crops (accepted 01.07.2020)

Frank Dentener, Lisa Emberson, stefano galmarini, et al.

Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences

We suggest that the unprecedented and unintended decrease of emissions of air pollutants during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 could lead to declining seasonal ozone concentrations, and positive impacts on crop yields. An initial assessment of the potential effects of COVID-19 emission reductions was made using a set of six scenarios that variously assumed annual European and global emission [...]

EC-Earth Global Climate Simulations: Ireland’s Contributions to CMIP6

Paul Nolan

Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The global climate simulations described in this report constitute Ireland’s contribution to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) (phase 6) (CMIP6) and will be included for assessment in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Since 1995, CMIP has co-ordinated climate model experiments involving multiple international [...]

A radial hydraulic fracture with pressure-dependent leak-off

Evgenii Kanin, Egor Dontsov, Dmitry Garagash, et al.

Published: 2020-05-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology

This paper investigates the problem of a radial (or penny-shaped) hydraulic fracture propagating in a permeable reservoir. In particular, we consider the fluid exchange between the crack and ambient porous media as a pressure-dependent process. In most of the existing models, the fluid exchange process is represented as one-dimensional pressure-independent leak-off described by Carters law. We [...]

search

You can search by:

  • Title
  • Keywords
  • Author Name
  • Author Affiliation