Preprints
There are 5428 Preprints listed.
An environmental modeling algorithm to predict naturalized hydrology and water allocation status at human-influenced gauged sites: case study, Otago New Zealand
Published: 2024-12-22
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Recent New Zealand legislation requires that regional councils set limits for water resource usage to manage the effects of abstractions in over-allocated catchments. Toward that end, an environmental modeling algorithm is proposed and demonstrated for applicability to sustainable stream management across the Otago Region of New Zealand. This four-layer algorithm includes a Data model, Base [...]
Preliminary Development of Machine Learning Emulators for Long-Term Atmospheric CO2 Evolution
Published: 2024-12-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Environmental Chemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study evaluates machine learning emulators for modeling long-term atmospheric CO2 evolution by comparing Random Forests (RF) and Multilayer Perceptrons (MLP) in replicating cGENIE Earth System Model outputs over a one-million-year timescale. Using one-year pulse emission experiments spanning 1,000-20,000 PgC with outputs tracked for 106 years, we assessed emulator performance across multiple [...]
Unlocking Geological Hydrogen Storage with Ammonia: An Effort for Net-Zero Future
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Education, Engineering
Hydrogen gas (H2) generation systems, comprising carbon capture and storage technology (CCST) play a crucial role to achieve the U.N. Net Zero goal before 2050. However, a critical challenge in grid-scale H2 storage is the low volumetric energy density. One prospective approach is to use ammonia (NH3) as a chemical carrier for H2 and store it. This paper presents a state-of-the-art report on NH3 [...]
Quantifying the benefits of nature-based solutions in urban drainage on headwater stream water quality
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
In urban areas lacking adequate sanitation infrastructure, greywater flows into nearby urban streams through the stormwater drainage network. This study evaluates the impact of this drainage on water quality in a headwater stream in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA), Argentina. We analysed and model pollutant loads — organic matter, nutrients, and allochthonous faecal bacteria — [...]
Efficacy of Recent Prescribed Burning and Land Management on Wildfire Burn Severity and Smoke Emissions in the Western United States
Published: 2024-12-21
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Prescribed fire is increasingly proposed as a policy strategy to reduce wildfire risks, but evidence of its effectiveness in lowering fire severity and smoke emissions remains limited in the western US. We empirically demonstrate that areas treated with prescribed fire and subsequently burned during California’s extreme 2020 wildfire season showed a -14% net reduction in smoke emissions, though [...]
Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Forests are in decline worldwide due to human activities such as agricultural expansion, urbanization, and mineral extraction. Forest loss due to generally temporary causes, such as wildfire and forest management, is important to distinguish from permanent land use conversion due to the differing ecological and climate impacts of these disturbances and for the purposes of developing effective [...]
Heat Vulnerability Analysis And Mapping (HEVAM): Analysis of United States power grids vulnerability to climate changes
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Power and Energy
The importance of the power grid under the energy sector umbrella is difficult to overstate, as it enables the function of nearly all critical infrastructure systems. The interconnected assets within electrical substations enable the function of our society and economy. With such a vast system of interconnected nodes, threats to the stability of this network come in many forms, from natural [...]
A Novel Model to Assess the Greenhouse Effect
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The greenhouse effect is the warming of the earth's surface due to the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is said to be 33 °C, but we cannot measure this value because we cannot create the state “without greenhouse gases”. We therefore have to rely on calculations, although these are controversial. In the climate debate, this lack of measurements is often denoted as a major [...]
Contribution of AMOC Decline to Uncertainty in Global Warming via Ocean Heat Uptake and Climate Feedbacks
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate models vary widely in projections of 21st century global warming and projections of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). However, the extent to which this uncertainty in AMOC contributes to uncertainty in warming has not yet been quantified. To investigate this, we perform climate model experiments that increase CO2 concentrations while imposing the range of AMOC [...]
Nonlinear carbon feedbacks in CMIP6 and their impacts on future freshwater availability
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Will plants consume more or less water in a high carbon dioxide [CO2] world? What will the hydrologic consequences of those changes will be? Some theories and analyses of earlier generations of Earth System Models (ESM) suggest that transpiration will decline with higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations [CO2] due to stomatal closure, thereby enhancing runoff and soil moisture and [...]
Groundwater Flooding of Superficial Gravels in an Urbanized Catchment
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater behavior in superficial gravel aquifers is globallypoorly understood, especially across urban regions where drinking water is sourced from elsewhere. We focus on one such region around Staines, SE UK, where local River Terrace Gravels form a thin (<10 m) superficial aquifer. Our objective was to explain the unusually broad and long-lived distribution of flooding by investigating [...]
Prevalent glacial North Atlantic Deep Water despite Arctic freshwater input
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Changes in the configuration and properties of deep ocean water masses modulated Quaternary climate transitions between ice ages and interglacials. For example, it is thought that North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) was volumetrically reduced during the last glacial period. Yet, reconstructions based on individual types of proxy observations yield diverging results about the past spatial extent and [...]
Holocene environmental change in Rotsee and its impact on sedimentary carbon storage
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
To assess the long-term impact of climate change and human influence on lakes and their sedimentary carbon storage, paleo-environmental approaches using well-dated lake sediment cores can be employed. Here, we reconstruct carbon mass accumulation rates for organic and inorganic carbon since 13 ka BP in Rotsee, a perialpine lake near the Swiss Alps, using a 12m sediment core. A multiproxy approach [...]
Beyond land surface temperature: identifying areas of daytime thermal discomfort in cities by combining remote sensing and field measurements.
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
Satellite images of land surface temperatures (LST) are commonly used to identify areas within cities most prone to diurnal thermal discomfort, but they may not reflect the experiences of pedestrians. Here, we developed predictive statistical models for Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET), an indicator of thermal discomfort, with easily accessible spatial predictors. For this, we measured [...]
Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) for Longwall Coal Mines
Published: 2024-12-19
Subjects: Engineering
Seismic monitoring of underground longwall mines can provide valuable information for managing coal burst risks and understanding the ground response to extraction. However, the underground longwall mine environment poses major challenges for traditional in-mine microseismic sensors including the restricted use of electronics due to potentially explosive atmospheres, the need to frequently and [...]