Preprints
There are 4726 Preprints listed.
Holocene climate variability of Mesopotamia and its impact on the history of civilisation
Published: 2018-10-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mesopotamia, known as the cradle of civilisation, gave rise to the first state-based urban societies with sophistic political hierarchies. Its rich history full of important cultural achievements was accompanied by fundamental environmental changes over the Holocene. While geo-bio-archives from the broader region reflect slightly varying climate histories, there is a clear consensus on a more [...]
The deposition and alteration history of the northeast Syrtis Major layered sulfates
Published: 2018-10-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Ancient stratigraphy on Isidis Basins western margin records the history of water on early Mars. Noachian units are overlain by layered, basaltic-composition sedimentary rocks that are enriched in polyhydrated sulfates and capped by more resistant units. The layered sulfates – uniquely exposed at northeast Syrtis Major – comprise a sedimentary sequence up to 600-m thick that has undergone a [...]
Paired organic matter and pyrite δ34S records reveal mechanisms of carbon, sulfur, and iron cycle disruption during Ocean Anoxic Event 2
Published: 2018-10-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Sulfur (S) isotope compositions of pyrites in the sedimentary record have played an important part in our understanding of biogeochemical cycling in the geologic record. However, the kinetics of pyritization are complex and depend strongly on the reactivity and mineralogy of available iron. As a second major sink for sulfide in anoxic sediments, organic matter (OM) provides essential context for [...]
Achieving the 17 sustainable development goals within 9 planetary boundaries
Published: 2018-10-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Near-term gains on socio-economic goals under the 2030 Agenda could reduce the Earth system ‘safety margin’ represented by the nine planetary boundaries. We built an intentionally simple global systems simulation model, Earth3, that combines a socio-economic model of human activity with a biophysical model of the global environment. Earth3 fills a key gap in the family of integrated models, by [...]
Wavelet-based analysis of ground deformation coupling satellite acquisitions (Sentinel-1, SMOS) and data from shallow and deep wells in Southwestern France
Published: 2018-10-15
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Acquisitions of the Sentinel-1 satellite are processed and comprehensively analyzed to investigate the ground displacement during a 3-year period above a gas storage site in Southwestern France. Despite quite low vertical displacements (between 4 and 8 mm) compared to the noise level, the local displacements reflects the variations due to charge and discharge during summer and winter periods, [...]
Seismic observation of tsunami at island broadband stations
Published: 2018-10-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Previous studies have reported seismic observations of tsunami recorded at island broadband stations. Coastal loading by the tsunami can explain them. For further quantification, we model tsunami propagation assuming an axisymmetric structure: a conical island with a flat ocean floor. The total tsunami wavefield can be represented by superposition between an incident tsunami wave and the [...]
U–Pb dating of mineral deposits: From age constraints to ore-forming processes
Published: 2018-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The knowledge of the timing and duration of ore-forming processes are perhaps one of the most desirable pieces of information that geologists require to draw a complete picture of the deposit and to put its genesis into a coherent regional or even global geological framework. In many cases, it represents an essential parameter for establishing detailed genetic models, and can critically impact on [...]
Estimating Transient Climate Response in a large-ensemble global climate model simulation
Published: 2018-10-11
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The transient climate response (TCR), defined to be the warming in near-surface air temperature after 70 years of a 1% per year increase in CO2, can be estimated from observed warming over the 19th and 20th centuries. Such analyses yield lower values than TCR estimated from global climate models (GCMs). This disagreement has been used to suggest that GCMs’ climate may be too sensitive to [...]
Structure and elasticity of phlogopite under compression: Geophysical implications
Published: 2018-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We investigated the response of the crystal structure, lattice parameters, and unit-cell volume of hydrous layered silicate phlogopite at conditions relevant to subduction zone settings. We have used first principles simulation based on density functional theory to calculate the equation of state and full elastic constant tensor. Based on the generalized gradient approximation, the full single [...]
Glacial hydroclimate of western North America: insights from proxy-model comparison and implications for Lake Bonneville
Published: 2018-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Decades of paleoclimate research have helped to bring the pattern of hydroclimatic change across North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) into ever sharper focus. Despite these advances, the drivers of LGM hydroclimatic variability continue to be debated at the continental to basin scale. To explore the driving mechanisms behind LGM hydroclimatic change, we compare an updated network [...]
Lake area constraints on past hydroclimate in the western United States: Application to Pleistocene Lake Bonneville
Published: 2018-10-09
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Lake shoreline remnants found in basins of the western United States reflect wetter conditions during Pleistocene glacial periods. The size distribution of paleolakes, such as Lake Bonneville, provide a first-order constraint on the competition between regional precipitation delivery and evaporative demand. In this contribution we downscale previous work using lake mass balance equations and [...]
Geomorphology and Climate Interact to Control Organic Carbon Stock and Age in Mountain River Valley Bottoms
Published: 2018-10-08
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Organic carbon (OC) in valley bottom downed wood and soil that cycles over short to moderate timescales represents a large, dynamic, and poorly quantified pool of carbon whose distribution and residence time affects global climate. We compare four disparate mountain river basins to show that mountain river valley bottoms store substantial estimated OC stocks in floodplain soil and downed wood. [...]
The Provision and Utility of Science and Uncertainty to Decision-Makers: Earth Science Case Studies
Published: 2018-10-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This document presents case studies that have been submitted for publication at the journal ENVIRONMENT SYSTEMS AND DECISIONS. The collective results of these case studies are analysed in a companion manuscript submitted for publication in MINERVA. These case studies have been internally and externally peer reviewed prior to submission to https://eartharxiv.org. If accepted at ENVIRONMENT SYSTEMS [...]
Do surface lateral flows matter for data assimilation of soil moisture observations into hyperresolution land models?
Published: 2018-10-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hyperresolution land modeling is expected to innovate the simulation of terrestrial water, energy, and carbon cycles. One of the major advantages of existing hyperresolution land models against conventional 1-demensional land surface models is that surface and subsurface lateral water flows can be explicitly simulated. Despite a lot of efforts on assimilating hydrological observations into the [...]
Volcanic-plutonic parity and the differentiation of the continental crust
Published: 2018-10-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
The continental crust is central to the biological and geological history of Earth. However, crustal heterogeneity has prevented a thorough geochemical comparison of its primary igneous building blocks – volcanic and plutonic rocks – and the processes by which they differentiate to felsic compositions. Our analysis of a comprehensive global dataset of volcanic and plutonic whole-rock geochemistry [...]