Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Thermal Power and Climate Change: A Data-Driven Analysis of Cause and Effect, 1800-2100
Published: 2025-11-20
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Since 2020, global politics have shifted dramatically to the right—most notably in Europe and the United States. By 2024, this rightward turn in the U.S. reached its culmination with the open denial of climate change, the defunding of clean energy initiatives, and a wholesale dismissal of science—especially climate science. Key domestic and international institutions such as NOAA, NASA, the U.S. [...]
The Geography of Insufficient Sleep in the Contiguous United States (CONUS)
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Insufficient sleep is becoming increasingly prevalent, partially because of the accelerated pace of modern life, and is linked to a wide range of adverse physical and mental health outcomes. While several social, physical, and environmental factors are known to influence sleep duration, the underlying mechanisms and their geographic variability remain poorly understood. The growing availability [...]
Spatio-temporal Analysis of Vegetation Disturbance and Recovery in the Cerrado-Amazon Transition Using Landsat Time Series and Deep Learning
Published: 2025-10-20
Subjects: Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Cerrado-Amazon Transition (CAT) represents the world’s largest tropical ecotone, demarcating the boundary between the Brazilian Cerrado and Amazon biomes. Extensive deforestation and degradation within the CAT are driving irreversible ecological transformations and significant biodiversity loss. The escalating incidence of fire and agriculture-induced deforestation has rendered the CAT a [...]
Unlocking Gigatonne-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal with strategic tipping point frameworks
Published: 2025-10-16
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Achieving global climate mitigation requires a rapid acceleration of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) to gigatonne (Gt) scales by 2040. Linear growth in climate solutions is insufficient to reach these targets, but system-change practices and leveraging interventions that trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks ("tipping points"), offer a solution. Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) in Brazil is uniquely [...]
Toward Greater Clarity: Reanalyzing Solomon’s Depiction of the Ross Ice Shelf Atmospheric Dynamic
Published: 2025-10-10
Subjects: Education, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In the final chapters of The Coldest March: Scott's Fatal Antarctic Expedition, Dr. Susan Solomon analyzes the meteorological conditions surrounding the last blizzard that claimed the lives of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Dr. Edward Wilson, and Lieutenant Henry Bowers. The book’s conclusion—that the storm could not have lasted ten days and that the men may have chosen to die—warrants close [...]
Contrasting patterns of deforestation and reforestation in India’s tropical dry woodlands
Published: 2025-10-07
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Tropical dry woodlands are key ecosystems for global biodiversity, carbon storage, and forest-based livelihoods in some of the poorest regions of the world. Many of these woodlands have been historically converted and degraded, and while recovery occurs in some areas, the pressure on remaining tropical dry woodlands remains high. Despite this, our understanding of spatial patterns of tropical dry [...]
Adverse Climate: Addressing Inclusion and Diversity Issues in the IPCC's Sixth Assessment and beyond
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
In this essay, we reflect on what it means for the scientific community to collaborate effectively in global scientific assessments, drawing on our experience within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and with relevance beyond the IPCC to many other scientific collaborations. We amplify IPCC author voices through lived-experience narratives that reveal how systemic barriers [...]
INTEGRATED DUAL-SOURCING PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK: COMBINING WASTEWATER REUSE AND DESALINATION IN A TWO-PRONGED APPROACH FOR RESILIENT URBAN WATER SECURITY IN TAIZ, YEMEN.
Published: 2025-09-05
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
This study proposes a novel paradigm integrating wastewater reuse and desalination for Taiz's water security in Yemen. This hydrological circuit of multiple stages transforms wastewater streams into value-added products, establishing a robust dual-sourcing matrix that mitigates the linear exploitation of resources. The proposed framework strives to generate 0.8 kWh of electricity with 1 m³ of [...]
Modeling urban traffic heat flux in the Community Earth System Model
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Traffic is a major contributor to anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) in urban areas, amplifying urban heat island effects. However, few Earth system models explicitly represent traffic conditions and their associated heat emissions. This study introduces a new urban traffic module into the Community Earth System Model (CESM), enabling interactive simulation of traffic-related heat in urban areas. The [...]
High-ambition climate action in all sectors can achieve a 60% greenhouse gas emissions reduction in Korea by 2035
Published: 2025-08-13
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Under the Paris Agreement’s ratchet mechanism, countries are expected to enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), including new targets for 2035. For Korea, one of the world’s largest CO2 emitters, the challenge is to strengthen its existing policy framework to not only ensure the achievement of its 2030 NDC but also support a more ambitious 2035 pathway. This study employs an [...]
Woodside’s North West Shelf gas extraction project extension: a case study in how opacity in Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism increases costs to other companies as it enlarges the mitigation challenge
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Woodside’s North West Shelf gas facility was recently granted conditional approval to continue operations until 2070. Should the project receive the final go-ahead, followed by an approval of Woodside’s connected Browse-to-North West Shelf offshore gas project, significant quantities of greenhouse gases would be released over a roughly 40-year period, points on public record. The novel [...]
Technological Adaptation Outpaces Climate Impacts on Aviation: Evidence from Three Decades of Warming
Published: 2025-08-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Climate impact assessments frequently prioritize projections over empirical validation of operational outcomes. We introduce and apply a generalizable empirical validation framework that (i) separates operational encounters from safety outcomes and (ii) tests climate → operations linkages via physical mechanism validation with explicit detectability bounds. Using 33 years (1991–2023) of U.S. [...]
Experiments to Systematically Evaluate the Role of Cohesion in River Morphodynamics
Published: 2025-07-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Other Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While cohesion is thought to be an important control on sediment transport, few studies have systematically examined the role of cohesion in river morphodynamics. In this study we use simplified, small-scale laboratory experiments to investigate how increasing sediment cohesion affects the morphometrics of fluvial channels. Experiments were conducted in a laminar flume with a mixture of [...]
Navigating Rising Waters: Empowering Shunganunga Creek Floodplain Communities through Protection Motivation Theory
Published: 2025-07-25
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Studies, Meteorology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In communities like those near Topeka’s Shunganunga Creek, where flooding is a frequent and expected part of life, risk communication must adapt to meet the unique circumstances of residents. To understand how people in this floodplain perceive risk and respond to flood warnings, we interviewed 11 residents, guided by principles from Protection Motivation Theory. Participants, including long-time [...]
Multilingual Community Visualizations (MCV): A GIS Dashboard for Linguistic Research and NWS Operations
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The NWS is actively expanding its multilingual outreach to better serve the 68.8 million U.S. individuals who speak a language other than English at home. Among these, 26.3 million individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) are of particular concern, as they often rely entirely on translated forecasts to make life-saving decisions. Yet identifying where these populations are concentrated [...]