Preprints
There are 6193 Preprints listed.
Cooling after net zero
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Climate policy aims to limit global warming by achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Climate models indicate that achieving net-zero emissions yields a nearly constant global temperature over the following decades. However, whether temperatures remain stable in the centuries after net-zero emissions is uncertain, as models produce conflicting results. Here, we explain how this disagreement [...]
Unsupervised Concept Discovery for Deep Weather Forecast Models with High-Resolution Radar Data
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Computer Engineering
The global climate crisis is creating increasingly complex rainfall patterns, leading to a rising demand for data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) in short-term weather forecasting. However, the black-box nature of AI models act as a critical obstacle against their integration into existing forecasting operations. This study addresses this issue by implementing an explainable AI framework that [...]
Establishing Deep Time: Multi-Method Dating of Archaeological and Speleological Features in the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids
Published: 2025-05-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
This study presents an integrated chronological framework for the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids using multiple scientific dating techniques. Radiocarbon dating, uranium-thorium analysis, and soil pedogenesis studies were conducted on archaeological and speleological features including the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon, and the Ravne tunnel networks. Results suggest [...]
Protection of subterranean water infrastructure in an abrupt sunlight reduction scenario
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
An abrupt sunlight reduction scenario (ASRS) could result from a nuclear war, supervolcanic eruption, or asteroid/comet impact, reducing global temperatures for over a decade and leaving subterranean water pipes vulnerable to freezing. This paper builds on previous work assessing the extent of vulnerable water pipes in a severe ASRS, and assesses the feasibility of two methods of pipe protection: [...]
Reliability of Contrast-Based Automated Fracture Detection from Decimeter Resolution Aerial Imagery
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Aerial imagery that captures outcrop exposures of rocks enables the characterization of structural discontinuities such as faults and fractures across large and difficult-to-access areas. These datasets provide an opportunity to analyze the characteristics of fault and fracture networks as analogues for the subsurface. The application of automated interpretation methods to imagery has the [...]
Evaluating Turbulence Parameterizations at Gray Zone Resolutions for the Ocean Surface Boundary Layer
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Fluid Dynamics, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Turbulent mixing in ocean boundary layers is often fully parameterized as a subgrid-scale process in realistic ocean simulations. However, recent submesoscale modeling studies have advanced to a horizontal grid spacing of O(10 m) that is comparable to, or even smaller than, the typical depth of the turbulent surface boundary layer. Meanwhile, efforts toward realistic large-eddy simulations (LES) [...]
Comparative analysis of the stage-discharge rating operated in gradual varied flows with alternative streamflow monitoring approaches
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Streamflow data derived from stage-discharge (HQRC) are reported without uncertainty compelling users to treat them as absolute and deterministic. However, ignoring uncertainty is no longer viable, as data users increasingly demand confidence in measurements - especially for cross-agency comparisons and scientific or legal scrutiny. This paper investigates a major factor affecting the accuracy of [...]
Proactive Tundra Conservation Strategy for a Rapidly Changing Arctic
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Warming induced forest expansion, permafrost thaw, and human activities are major drivers affecting the biodiversity and ecosystem functions of the Arctic tundra. While the pace of climate warming is fastest in the Arctic, some important stressors, like forest expansion, seem relatively slow. The slow response might provide the opportunity to safeguard Arctic biodiversity and ecosystem function [...]
Theoretical background for full-waveform inversion with distributed acoustic sensing and integrated strain sensing
Published: 2025-04-30
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology
Full-waveform inversion (FWI) is a powerful imaging technique that produces high-resolution subsurface models. In seismology, FWI workflows are traditionally based on seismometer recordings. The development of fibre-optic sensing presents opportunities for harnessing information from new types of measurements. With dense spatial and temporal sampling, fibre-optic sensing captures the seismic [...]
Quantifying damage and vulnerability for volcanic hazards
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Volcanology
Reducing volcanic risk requires a comprehensive understanding of the potential impacts of volcanic hazards on various community elements, assets and critical infrastructure. This chapter considers systematic approaches to characterizing the interaction (impacts) between volcanic hazards and assets (broadly defined). Damage states provide a description of volcanic hazard impacts and can be used in [...]
Pathways to Carbon Neutrality: A Review of CO2 Reduction Strategies
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Engineering
The global climate crisis, driven largely by the escalating levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, has prompted an urgent need for effective mitigation strategies. CO2, the predominant greenhouse gas, is primarily released through fossil fuel combustion, industrial processes, and deforestation. Its continuous accumulation in the atmosphere has led to severe climate disruptions, including [...]
Temporal convolutional networks for subsidence prediction in snowy regions
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Sustainability
This paper introduces a model based on a temporal convolutional network (TCN) for predicting future land subsidence caused by groundwater pumping for snow melting. Developed using historical snowfall and cumulative subsidence data from Joetsu City, Japan, the model demonstrates satisfactory performance in predicting observed land subsidence. The results suggest that TCNs are effective for [...]
Evolution of the Climate as an Attributable Complex System with Main Cause
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Attributable complex systems can be classified into two categories: those with a main cause and those without. The climate is an attributable complex system with a main cause, where CO2 concentration serves as the primary fingerprint. The essential dynamics of climate change can be effectively captured through the representation of CO2 concentration. In this study, we analyze global warming in [...]
Natural forests of the world - a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring
Published: 2025-04-29
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Informed decisions to reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and curb carbon emissions require not just knowing where forests are, but understanding their composition. Identifying natural forests, which serve as critical biodiversity hotspots and major carbon sinks, is particularly valuable. We developed a novel global natural forest map for 2020 at 10 m resolution. This map can support [...]
Landscape signature of seismogenic faults in the off- and onshore domains of the Noto Peninsula in Japan’s back-arc
Published: 2025-04-27
Subjects: Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Tectonics and Structure
The eastern margin of the Sea of Japan is a zone of great seismic and tsunami hazard due to multiple offshore and nearshore reverse faults as shown by the 2024 Mw 7.5 Noto Peninsula Earthquake. Here we compare coseismic deformation of the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake with 4767 individual marine terraces spanning the last Myr. This reveals that the earthquake faults started slipping between 326 [...]