Preprints
There are 6081 Preprints listed.
Novel Nitrogen Hybrid Gas-Based Nanofoam System for Enhanced Geothermal Applications: Nanogeios and GEIOS Geothermal EQG
Published: 2025-03-04
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
This study presents a novel nitrogen hybrid gas nanofoam system designed for enhanced geothermal applications, validated through comprehensive laboratory testing. The system integrates a nitrogen gas matrix (95% by volume) infused with engineered aluminum oxide (0.6–0.8% vol) and silica (0.3–0.5% vol) nanoparticles, achieving superior thermal conductivity and fracture stability under simulated [...]
Geometric forward modeling of thrust systems underlying shortening landforms on Mercury
Published: 2025-03-01
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Mercury hosts thousands of shortening landforms that are widespread across the entire planet. The shortening is widely accepted to be caused by a combination of thrust faulting and folding, resulting from the global contraction of Mercury caused by long, sustained cooling. Most shortening landforms on Mercury’s surface have been classified into one of two groups: lobate scarps or wrinkle ridges. [...]
Neoproterozoic denudation of a Laurentian superbasin
Published: 2025-03-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Tectonics and Structure
It has long been speculated that isolated Paleoproterozoic basins of northern Laurentia are remnants of a once contiguous sedimentary cover due to similarities in stratigraphy, paleocurrent directions, sediment provenance, and geochronological data. However, corroborating evidence for this 'superbasin hypothesis' has been lacking outside the footprints of the preserved basins. We present new [...]
Fresh ideas on modeling water demand and allocation in Global Hydrological Models
Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Hydrology
Global hydrological models are essential tools to address the increasing challenge of global water scarcity. However, current models often rely on simplistic assumptions for sectoral water allocation, limiting their ability to capture real-world complexities such as prioritization and competition among water uses. This paper introduces a theoretical two-layer framework that distinguishes between [...]
Landscapes on the edge: river intermittency in a warming world
Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Sediment transport in rivers is not uniform through time. Highly intermittent systems, which only transport bedload during the most significant flow events, are particularly sensitive to changes in climate and precipitation patterns. Quantifying river intermittency is critical for assessing how fluvial landscapes will respond to projected changes in precipitation extremes due to climate change, [...]
Planetary health security?: critical scoping review of conceptual linkages between ‘health security’ and ‘planetary health’
Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Public Health
Background ‘Health security’ — the subjection of health to ‘security’ frameworks — and ‘planetary health’— the study of human health impacts of the degradation of planetary ecosystems — have emerged in the last decades as prominent global health fields. However, limited literature connects them, particularly incorporating critical perspectives. We explored interactions between these approaches [...]
Floods, Facts, and Fictions: Numbers and Narratives Behind Bangladesh’s 2024 Regional Floods
Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The August 2024 regional floods in Bangladesh, occurring shortly after a major political upheaval, were among the most severe in recent history, displacing millions and causing extensive damage. This paper examines both the scientific and social dimensions of this disaster by exploring the natural drivers that led to the flooding and the sociopolitical context that caused rumors to spread that [...]
Kimberlite, carbonatite and alkaline magmatic systems: definitions, origins, and strategic mineral resources
Published: 2025-02-28
Subjects: Education
This Chapter provides an overview of the nature and origin of kimberlites, carbonatites and alkaline silicate rocks, with emphasis on the strategic mineral deposits linked to these types of mantle-derived volcanism (e.g., diamonds and rare-earth elements). It is demonstrated that many of the critical raw materials hosted by carbonatites and alkaline silicate rocks are essential for the transition [...]
A composite index-based insurance instrument for managing the financial risk of variable hydrometeorology for electric utilities
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Variable hydrometeorological conditions can impact electric utilities' financial stability. Extreme temperatures often increase electricity demand, raising utility costs, while drought reduces hydropower generation and often reduces revenues, with financial impacts potentially exacerbated by spikes in fuel prices, particularly natural gas. In this study, a model of the U.S. West Coast power [...]
Seismic imaging of mid-crustal heterogeneity beneath geothermal systems, central Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology
The Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ) in New Zealand is a region of highly pro- ductive Quaternary volcanism and very large hydrothermal heat flux. Here we investigate the upper- and mid-crustal seismic velocity structure of a region within the central, rhyolitic part of the TVZ encompassing the high- temperature geothermal systems Mokai, Wairakei, Ng¯a Tamariki, Orakei Korako, Te Kopia and Rotokawa. [...]
Influence of snowpack properties and local incidence angle on SAR signal depolarization: a mathematical model for high-resolution snow depth estimation
Published: 2025-02-27
Subjects: Remote Sensing
Recently, Dual-Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been shown to be effective for large-scale snow cover monitoring, but it faces significant challenges when applied to finer resolutions, which are crucial for applications such as avalanche forecasting. In this study, we propose a novel mathematical model to retrieve snow properties from Sentinel-1 SAR data, leveraging variations in [...]
Patterns of deformation in the deepest mantle linked to ancient subduction
Published: 2025-02-26
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Shear wave speeds in Earth's deepest mantle (D") that vary with wave propagation and polarization direction -- a property called seismic anisotropy -- offer insights into mantle convection. To date, global patterns of D" anisotropy have been mostly derived from long wavelength radially anisotropic tomography models, which often disagree except for the large-scale degree-2 pattern. Here, we [...]
Aligning science and practice in evaluations of cookstove carbon projects
Published: 2025-02-25
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Carbon markets are thought to be central to global climate strategies,1 but their scalability depends on the credibility of emissions reduction claims,2 a point that has recently faced scientific and public doubt.3,4 Carbon projects typically generate their own estimates of averted emissions to produce credits, a practice that introduces potential conflicts of interest and underscores the need [...]
Joint optimization of AI large and small models for surface temperature and emissivity retrieval using knowledge distillation
Published: 2025-02-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence in domains such as natural language processing has catalyzed AI research across various fields. This study introduces a novel strategy, the AutoKeras-Knowledge Distillation (AK-KD), which integrates knowledge distillation technology for joint optimization of large and small models in the retrieval of surface temperature and emissivity using thermal [...]
Air quality impacts of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires: Insights from public data sources
Published: 2025-02-25
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection
Smoke from the Los Angeles wildfires that started on January 7, 2025 caused severe air quality impacts across the region. Government agencies released guidance on assessing personal risk, pointing to publicly available data platforms that present information from regulatory and low-cost monitoring networks. Additional satellite-based products provide useful supplementary information during [...]