Preprints
There are 5428 Preprints listed.
Climate controls on compound solar and wind droughts in Australia
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Climate, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Solar and wind power are central to Australia’s renewable energy future, which implies an energy sector vulnerable to weather and climate variability. Alignment of weather systems and the influence of large-scale climate modes of variability risks widespread reductions in solar and wind resources, and could induce grid-wide impacts. We therefore systematically analyse the relationship between [...]
Investigating the Relationship Between Sea Surface Temperature and the Mechanical Efficiency of Tropical Cyclones
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Previous studies have investigated how sea surface temperature (SST) affects the potential intensity of tropical cyclones (TCs). However, this is an upper bound only on the maximum near-surface azimuthal winds, and does not fully account for the effects of atmospheric moisture. Potential intensity might not vary in the same way as the total kinetic energy (WKE) of a TC would with changing SST. [...]
Multivariate Analysis and Anomaly Detection of U.S. Reservoir Sedimentation Dataset
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Engineering
Sedimentation processes in reservoirs can jeopardize their functionality and compromise dam safety. Climate change and associated hydrologic uncertainty are introducing additional stressors to US reservoirs, and data-driven indicators of climate impacts on upstream soil erosion and reservoir’s sedimentation processes are crucial to evaluate their aggradation and life expectancy. The US Army Corps [...]
Non-structural Flood Mitigation Optimization at Community Scale: Middle Cedar Case Study
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Risk Analysis
Flooding is the leading natural hazard in Iowa and has resulted in billions of dollars of damage to properties and critical infrastructure over the past couple of decades. Land alterations, urbanization, and changing precipitation regimes increase the magnitude and frequency of flood events. Considering the increasing risk, flood mitigation efforts are significant to reduce future losses. In this [...]
Volcanic lightning reveals umbrella cloud dynamics of the January 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Volcanology
The 15 January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) significantly impacted the Kingdom of Tonga as well as the wider Pacific region. The eruption column attained a maximum height of 58 km whilst the umbrella cloud reached a diameter approaching 600 km within about 3 hours. The intensity of volcanic lightning generated during the eruption was also unprecedented, with the Vaisala [...]
Diamond open access with preregistration: a new publishing model for palaeontology
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Paleontology
The current academic publishing model is systemically unfit for purpose. The academic publishing ecosystem is dominated by a few large for-profit publishing houses which, at every stage of the publication process, transform academic work and public resources into private profit. Although extracting substantial profits, these publishing houses themselves add little value to the final published [...]
ChatGPT as a mapping assistant: A novel method to enrich maps with generative AI and content derived from street-level photographs
Published: 2023-06-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Other Computer Sciences, Other Geography, Spatial Science
This paper explores the concept of leveraging generative AI as a mapping assistant for enhancing the efficiency of collaborative mapping. We present results of an experiment that combines multiple sources of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and large language models (LLMs). Three analysts described the content of crowdsourced Mapillary street-level photographs taken along roads in a small [...]
Ensemble modeling of the two-dimensional stochastic confined groundwater flow through the evolution of the hydraulic head's probability density function
Published: 2023-06-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Groundwater storage in aquifers has become a vital water source due to water scarcity in recent years. However, aquifer systems are full of uncertainties, which inevitably propagate throughout the modeling computations, mainly reducing the reliability of the model output. This study develops a novel two-dimensional stochastic confined groundwater flow model. The proposed model is developed by [...]
Is Snow Drought a Messenger for the Upcoming Severe Drought Period? A Case Study in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Water Resource Management
The exacerbation of floods and the extension of droughts, attributed to climate change and other human-induced factors, are posing a substantial risk to communities by causing water scarcity and insecurity. The significance of safeguarding water resources and managing them is increasingly gaining prominence. Snow is an efficient source of water for recharging groundwater compared to rainfall. [...]
Crowded and warmer: unequal dengue risk at high spatial resolution across a megacity of India
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The role of climate factors on transmission of mosquito-borne infections within urban landscapes must be considered in the context of the pronounced spatial heterogeneity of such environments. Socio-demographic and environmental variation challenge control efforts for emergent arboviruses, a major class of pathogens responsible for dengue, Zika and chikungunya, transmitted via the urban mosquito [...]
Learning generative models for geostatistical facies simulation based on a single training image
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Characterization of subsurface reservoirs often requires geological facies models to identify areas with favorable rock properties. With the development of computing powers, deep learning approaches, such as the generative adversarial networks (GANs), became widely used for simulating complex geological models. However, training of the GANs typically requires a large quantity of training data for [...]
A city-wide emissions inventory of plastic pollution
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
A global agreement on plastic should have quantitative reduction targets for emissions of plastic pollution and regular measurements to track success. Here, we present a framework for measuring plastic emissions, akin to greenhouse gas emissions, and demonstrate its utility by calculating a baseline measurement for the city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. We identify relevant sources of plastic [...]
Using Detrending to Assess SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater Loads as a Leading Indicator of Fluctuations in COVID-19 Cases at Fine Temporal Scales: Correlations Across Twenty Sewersheds in North Carolina
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Public Health
Wastewater surveillance emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a novel strategy for tracking the burden of illness in communities. Previous work has shown that trends in wastewater SARS-CoV-2 viral loads correlate well with reported COVID-19 case trends over longer time periods (i.e., months). We used detrending time series to reveal shorter sub-trend patterns (i.e., weeks) to identify leads or [...]
How high is high enough? A multi-million-member ensemble analysis of future climate scenarios and their relevance
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Climate
Assessments of high-forcing climate scenarios provide unique insight into possible high-risk climate change impacts in the 21st century and beyond. Given rapid and ongoing societal changes (e.g., population growth, energy demand, technology, etc.), debates are increasing on the continued relevance of these 'high-forcing' scenarios, such as those designed to reach 8.5 W/m2 by the end of the [...]
Despite a century of warming, increased snowfall has buffered the ice phenology of North America’s largest high-elevation lake against climate change
Published: 2023-06-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lakes are sentinels of environmental change. In cold climates, lake ice phenology—the timing and duration of ice cover during winter—is a key control on ecosystem function. Ice phenology is likely driven by a complex interplay between physical characteristics and climatic conditions. Under climate change, lakes are generally freezing later, melting out earlier, and experiencing a shorter duration [...]