Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
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 [...]
Machine learning estimates for G20 subnational GHG emissions from 2000-2020 using self-reported emissions data
Published: 2025-07-23
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Reliable, comparable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data at the subnational level remain scarce, despite growing expectations for cities and regions to lead on climate action. Inconsistent reporting, methodological variation, and limited coverage of self-reported inventories hinder efforts to track progress and guide mitigation opportunities. To address these challenges, we develop a machine [...]
River Network HyperGraphs and Transportation Network HyperGraphs: A Graph-Theoretic Approach for Geoscientific and Civil Applications
Published: 2025-07-03
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Other Life Sciences, Other Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
River Network Graphs and Transportation Network Graphs are classical models that represent river systems and transportation infrastructures as vertices and edges, respectively, and underpin applications in hydrological simulation, watershed management, shortest-path computation, and urban traffic analysis. In this paper, we extend these graph-based models into the hypergraph and superhypergraph [...]
More than a buzzword? Mapping interpretations of the 'polycrisis'
Published: 2025-07-02
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
“Polycrisis” leapt from Davos into everyday policy talk, yet its meaning remains fluid and sometimes contradictory. To take stock, we asked fifty experts to sort key statements, and Q-method analysis revealed four distinct framings. All agree that polycrisis spills across sectors and borders and reject the view that polycrisis is a mere buzzword. They diverge, however, on how much faith to place [...]
The Stotfield silcrete (or ‘Stotfield Cherty Rock’), Moray, eastern Scotland: Characterization and discussion of an archaeologically important lithic raw material
Published: 2025-06-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Human Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
We describe and discuss a lithic raw material new to Scottish prehistoric research: the Stotfield silcrete or Stotfield Cherty Rock. This material was well-known to Scottish geologists, but it was only recently realized that it had been used by prehistoric people in Moray, eastern Scotland. We describe our examination of archaeological Stotfield silcrete, as well as field information relating to [...]
Spatiotemporal dynamics of floodplain patterns during the last 400 years south of Leipzig - A regional scale analysis
Published: 2025-06-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Elster-Pleiße floodplain south of Leipzig has undergone significant hydromorphological changes over the past centuries, influenced by both natural processes and anthropogenic interventions. This study employs high-resolution LiDAR-based fluvial-geomorphological mapping (1x1 m resolution) and old maps analyses to reconstruct past river dynamics and identify shifts in channel morphology. [...]
Identifying and overcoming social-ecological barriers to ending plastics pollution
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Plastics are deeply embedded in contemporary life, and their production and pollution contribute to irreversible harm across ecological and social systems. Recognized as a “novel entity” in the Planetary Boundaries framework, plastics challenge traditional governance models due to their chemical complexity and diversity, cross-sectoral impacts, and pushback from powerful political and economic [...]
Correlation Between Commuting Behavior and Air Pollution
Published: 2025-05-10
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
One of the biggest causes of air pollution in a city is the use of gasoline engined vehicles, such as cars, buses, and motorcycles, which is used every day as a commuting mode for citizens. Commuting behaviors of people can be categorized into two big factors, public transportation and private transportation. The research invested on whether or not higher usage rate of public transportation [...]
Bridging Territorial and Consumption-Based Emissions for Urban Climate Action Assessment
Published: 2025-05-09
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Urban areas are responsible for the vast majority of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, yet their full contribution, particularly from consumption-based sources, remains inconsistently measured. To address this problem, we provide an updated and globally consistent estimate of urban contributions to both territorial and consumption-based emissions, finding that urban areas account for 87% of [...]