Preprints
There are 5824 Preprints listed.
Thermal analysis of meso-scale high-temperature Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) systems with varying operational cycles
Published: 2025-07-12
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Other Mechanical Engineering
High temperature and short-term subsurface heat storage using BTES is a promising option and an emerging technology for increasing the fraction of renewable energy in the heat sector and supplying stored heat at high and directly usable temperatures. Investigation of thermal interactions of multiple BHEs employed for high-temperature cyclic storage operations is required to understand the system [...]
Ancient DNA and lipid biomarkers quantify the climate sensitivity of highland shrubification in Iceland
Published: 2025-07-12
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Future changes in high latitude shrubification are expected to lead to changes in ecosystem structure and positive climate feedbacks, but the rates and elevational range of shrubification are still poorly constrained. Using a sediment record from a small lake in Iceland’s eastern highlands (422 m asl), we merge a sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) record of Betula with mean summer lake temperature [...]
Integrated Disaster Nursing Response for Public Healthcare Settings in Pakistan: A Sequential Mixed Method Approach Study Protocol
Published: 2025-07-12
Subjects: Public Health
Abstract Background Natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes pose significant threats to human lives and infrastructure, particularly in low-lying regions of Pakistan. Among the most vulnerable areas are Sanghar and Dadu in the Sindh province, which experience recurrent flooding. These disasters often overwhelm healthcare systems and underscore the urgent need for adequately [...]
Towards HydroLLM: Building a Domain-Specific Language Model for Hydrology
Published: 2025-07-12
Subjects: Engineering
As large language models (LLMs) continue to expand, their effective adaptation to specialized fields remains a critical challenge. This work presents an initial step toward the development of HydroLLM, a domain-specific LLM for hydrology. We construct a dataset of approximately 8,800 hydrology-focused question–answer pairs, each with a supporting context passage drawn from textbooks and [...]
3D insights into the structure and behaviour of Icelandic crystal mushes from gabbroic nodules
Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Crystal mushes are porous yet cohesive frameworks of crystals interspersed with interstitial melts that form the plumbing systems beneath many active volcanoes. Gabbroic nodules from Gígöldur, central Iceland, provide a unique window into the structure and degassing behaviour of mushy magma reservoirs - localised crystal mush domains beneath Icelandic volcanoes. These plagioclase-rich nodules [...]
Remote Sensing-Based Geospatial Analysis of Channel Migration Patterns in the Lower Shire Valley of the Shire River, Chikwawa District, Malawi
Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Engineering
This study examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of fluvial geomorphology along the Shire River floodplain in Malawi from 1975 to 2023, with emphasis on channel migration, width variation, sinuosity, meander curvature, and sediment budget changes. Utilizing multi-temporal satellite imagery and geospatial analysis, morphometric indicators were quantified across 41 cross-sectional zones over four [...]
Domain-Specific Embedding Models for Hydrology and Environmental Sciences: Enhancing Semantic Retrieval and Question Answering in RAG Pipelines
Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Education, Engineering
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown strong performance across natural language processing tasks, yet their general-purpose embeddings often fall short in domains with specialized terminology and complex syntax, such as hydrology and environmental science. This study introduces HydroEmbed, a suite of open-source sentence embedding models fine-tuned for four QA formats: multiple-choice (MCQ), [...]
Regional Responses to Oceanic Variability Constrain Global Drought Synchrony
Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Synchronized droughts threaten global food security, with concerns about increased frequency and duration under climate change. However, their long-term evolution and physical limits remain unknown. We analyze 61 drought networks over 120 years (1901–2020) of scPDSI data, employing a suite of network synchronization measures and empirical orthogonal functions to unravel the physical drivers and [...]
Mapping Europe's Natural Hydrogen Potential: A Continental-Scale Geological Prospectivity Assessment
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Natural hydrogen, generated by a range of geological processes in the Earth's crust, is emerging as a promising carbon-neutral energy source. However, systematic large-scale assessments of its subsurface occurrence remain limited. This study presents the first continental-scale prospectivity map of natural hydrogen in Europe, integrating geological indicators of hydrogen generation, reservoir [...]
Deglaciation history and relative sea level changes since the Last Glacial Maximum in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
During the last glacial period, continents and surrounding shelves in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere were covered by ice sheets. Their retreat during the late Pleistocene and Holocene resulted in isostatic adjustments of the previously glaciated landmass, which influenced post-glacial changes in relative sea level (RSL). Many questions, however, remain about the timing and [...]
Warming in the Western Mediterranean Fuels Wetter European Storms and Heightens Extreme Flood Potential Rapid Mediterranean warming brings extreme floods risks for Europe
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
The Mediterranean Sea is warming rapidly, with profound implications for regional hydroclimate extremes. The Gulf of Genoa, a critical source region for European storm systems, has exhibited a 1.17°C increase in sea surface temperature (SST) between 2010 and 2020. This study links accelerated SST warming to enhanced atmospheric moisture availability, suggesting a substantial increase in storm [...]
Conservation is Coherence: Introducing the Negawatt Philosophy of Lawful Design
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Physics, Other Planetary Sciences, Sustainability, Systems Biology
This paper articulates the Negawatt Philosophy, reframing conservation not as omission or moral restraint, but as the structural intelligence that sustains life and preserves biospheric coherence. Modern economies valorise extraction and combustion while treating conservation as invisible absence. Yet thermodynamics reveals life as negentropy—an ordering that defies the drift into entropy’s [...]
GROW: A Global Time Series Dataset for Groundwater Studies within the Earth System
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater is a central component of the Earth system. However, our understanding of how it is dynamically interlinked with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and anthroposphere remains limited. In the pursuit of understanding groundwater dynamics across diverse global settings, we present GROW (global integrated GROundWater package). This analysis-ready, [...]
Variable methane–arsenic interactions in groundwater of Northern Bangladesh revealed by stable isotopes and geochemical analyses
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The reductive dissolution of arsenic (As)-bearing Fe(III) (hydr)oxides is widely regarded as the primary mechanism driving As mobilisation into groundwater in the aquifers of Bangladesh. Recently, methane (CH4) has been proposed as a potentially important electron donor in this process, with CH4 oxidation by methanotrophic bacteria facilitating Fe(III) reduction and subsequent As release. [...]
Leveraging Large Language Models for Automating Water Distribution Network Optimization
Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Engineering
Effective management of Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) is essential to ensure efficient and reliable water supply in cities. However, many management tasks require complex system modelling and optimization approaches, which heavily rely on specialized domain expertise and human resources. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) offer promising opportunities to automate complex [...]