Preprints
There are 6454 Preprints listed.
Automating glacier facies classification: pan-European dataset and deep learning baseline
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Glaciology
Glacier facies play a critical role in understanding the mass balance of glaciers, offering insights into accumulation and melting processes. Accurate mapping of glacier facies is therefore essential for monitoring glacier response to climate change and informing climate policies. In this study, we present the largest glacier facies dataset ever compiled for Europe, comprising 31 glaciers, 92 [...]
Stadiums as climate-exposed socio-technical infrastructures: a scoping review of fragmented risks and emerging challenges
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies
Stadiums are among the most climate-sensitive infrastructures in global sport, yet the evidence available to characterise their climate-related risks remains fragmented. Although billions of spectators attend sporting events each year and climate change is recognised as a multiplier of existing hazards, research on stadium environments continues to treat risks separately. Heat is examined through [...]
Near-total loss of buttressing stresses observed on Pine Island Ice Shelf, West Antarctica
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ice shelves, the floating extensions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, provide critical buttressing stresses that resist the seaward flow of ice and help set the position of the grounding line, where the ice goes afloat. As buttressing stresses are diminished by thinning or fracturing and collapse of the ice shelf, glaciers tend to accelerate. Here, we focus on the response of Pine Island Ice Shelf [...]
Smoothing Earth’s surface: the complexity of soil texture class transitions
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Dynamic Systems, Dynamical Systems, Environmental Sciences, Non-linear Dynamics, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Ordinary Differential Equations and Applied Dynamics, Soil Science, Statistical Models, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
Soil depth functions are essential for analysing, modeling, understanding and visualising soil profiles. While robust methods existed for continuous properties, soil texture is typically reported as discrete classes, and no established approach exists to interpolate soil categorical information with depth. Here, we introduced phySplines, a physics-informed, analytically solvable spline for [...]
A Quality-Control Procedure for Bio-Optical Applications of Hyperspectral Radiometric Upwelling Radiance and Downwelling Irradiance Profiles Measured by BioGeoChemical-Argo Floats.
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Autonomous in-situ radiometric observations are increasingly used to constrain bio-optical processes and validate satellite ocean-color products, such as remote sensing reflectance and diffuse attenuation coefficients. Because these observations are collected independently of weather and sea-state conditions, their application critically depends on robust quality control. Starting in 2012, the [...]
Pathways of resilience: a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of healthcare systems resilience to extreme weather events
Published: 2026-01-26
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Background Increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events threaten healthcare services globally, with particularly intense risks to low-resource regions. Evidenced pathways for building and enacting resilience in complex health systems are under researched. Literature on resilient healthcare is dominated by infections disease outbreaks and lacks synthesised insights from [...]
Spontaneous liquefaction in saturated granular deposits: State controlled boundary and surface reconfiguration
Published: 2026-01-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Mining Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
In the case of water-saturated, granular deposits that are at risk of liquefaction, engineers need reliable information about the spatial extent of soil deformation in the event of liquefaction. It is not so important for them to know the exact location of the first failure. However, existing anal-yses primarily deal with the triggering of liquefaction and offer only limited information on how [...]
Exploring Potential Mechanisms for the Initiation of Solifluction Patterns
Published: 2026-01-25
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hillslopes in arctic regions commonly display large-scale features—known as solifluction patterns—that form due to the exceedingly slow downhill movement of frost-heaved soil. Here we use a combination of remote sensing data, linear stability analysis, numerical modeling, and review of a wide range of literature to evaluate several working hypotheses for the necessary and sufficient conditions [...]
Diel Dynamics of Zooplankton Fecal Pellet Flux Revealed by Integrated Optical Observations and Modeling
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography
The contribution of sinking fecal pellets to the biological carbon pump depends on pellet properties, producer abundance, and the depth and timing of pellet production, which can be modulated by diel vertical migration. We examined diel variability in zooplankton fecal pellet flux in the subarctic Northeast Pacific using two image-based tools: the Underwater Vision Profiler (UVP5) and [...]
Opportunities to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation across strategic, adaptive and transformative pathways
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Calls to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation promote synergistic action. However, narrow, intervention- or sector-specific perspectives obscure complexities shaping how these agendas are operationalised in practice. This paper explores opportunities for integration from a systemic perspective, viewing climate resilient futures as emerging from diverse changes across sectors, [...]
Advancing continuous in-situ quantification of microbial contamination in environmental waters using tryptophan-like fluorescence - Sensor design and validation
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Microbial contamination of recreational and source waters poses persistent public health risks, yet conventional monitoring based on laboratory culture methods provides delayed results and limited temporal resolution. These constraints hinder timely identification of short-duration contamination events and effective management of recreation advisories. This study evaluates the performance of a [...]
AI-assisted identification of stromatoporoids
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Stromatoporoid sponge fossils were major diverse reef-builders in the Palaeozoic Era; their taxonomic identification relies on thin sections examined under transmit-ted light microscopy, where vertical and transverse skeletal elements reveal diag-nostic architectural features that vary with taxa. These elements typically appear darker than the cement-filled internal spaces, allowing [...]
Storm signals in coastal sediments: A review of palaeostorm archives and analytical approaches in north-west Europe
Published: 2026-01-22
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Coastal sedimentary archives offer key insights into past severe storms and related flooding, contributing to a better understanding of long-term coastal hazard histories. Although interest in palaeostorm reconstructions has increased in recent decades, a comprehensive overview and information for north-west Europe is missing. This synoptic literature review compiles all known sedimentary storm [...]
Estimation of Near-Surface Density using Vertical Gravity Gradients in Central and Western Japan
Published: 2026-01-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The Vertical Gravity Gradient (VGG), derived from the difference between terrestrial and airborne gravity data, highlights shallow density contrasts. We estimated the near-surface density structure of Central and Western Japan using VGGs derived from terrestrial data within 3 km of airborne flight lines. We constructed an inversion model on a 1/7-degree grid to estimate surface density and a [...]
Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to assess changes in transdisciplinary understandings across a large research consortium
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Researching how to create just and sustainable futures for all requires innovative and mission-oriented transdisciplinary approaches. This article sets out our approach and findings following the assessment, using Natural Language Processing (NLP), of the development in transdisciplinary understandings across a large and newly-forming research consortium as it changed over the six-year period of [...]