Preprints
There are 5428 Preprints listed.
Empowering the Next-Generation Climate Scientists: Insights from the 2023 Forecasters’ WEB (ForWEB) Exchange Program/Hackathon at KNUST, Ghana
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Education, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In response to the escalating climate change issues, the Forecasters' WEB (ForWEB), established by the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science, KNUST, collaborated with the Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science, UENR to host the first, exchange program/hackathon. The program aimed at equipping students with knowledge, practical skills, and a collaborative ethos for addressing the [...]
Land transformation on multi-decadal timescales reveals expanding croplands and settlements at the expense of tree-covered areas and mangroves in Nigeria
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Evaluating how land-cover is being transformed is essential to identify patterns necessary to infer the change trajectories and the driving factors. This study considers the case of Nigeria, where various natural ecosystems are being converted and for which a current national scale assessment is lacking. Producing Landsat-based time-series, we analyze change among land-cover types (i.e., [...]
2D and 3D imaging of ‘tunnel-shaped’ weathering features in soil grains: a biological origin?
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The evolution of the first plant-based terrestrial ecosystems some ~450 million years ago had a profound effect on the development of soils and shifts in global biogeochemical cycles, notably drawdown of CO2 from the atmosphere. In some part these shifts were due to biologically mediated weathering of mineral grains, which until plants evolved, had not been a significant contributor to [...]
A Review of Geological and Climatic Variables in Groundwater Availability Prediction in Africa: Machine Learning Approaches
Published: 2024-01-08
Subjects: Engineering
Groundwater is crucial for Africa's potable water supply, agriculture, and economic development. However, the continent faces challenges with groundwater scarcity due to factors like population growth, climate change, and over exploitation. Over the past ten years, machine learning has been increasingly and successfully used in groundwater level prediction across the world. This review paper [...]
Machine-Learning Approaches for Assessing Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) in Ghana, West Africa
Published: 2024-01-08
Subjects: Education, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In the field of environmental health, assessing air pollution exposure has historically posed challenges, primarily due to sparse ground observation networks. To overcome this limitation, satellite remote sensing of aerosols provides a valuable tool for monitoring air quality and estimating particulate matter concentration (PM) at the surface. In this study, we employ two predictive models to [...]
Designing and describing climate change impact attribution studies: a guide to common approaches
Published: 2024-01-06
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Human Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Public Health, Spatial Science, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Impact attribution is an emerging transdisciplinary sub-discipline of detection and attribution, focused on the social, economic, and ecological impacts of climate change. Here, we provide an overview of common end-to-end frameworks in impact attribution, focusing on examples relating to the human health impacts of climate change. We propose a typology of study designs based on whether [...]
Hydrogen wettability and capillary pressure in Clashach sandstone for underground hydrogen storage
Published: 2024-01-05
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hydrogen (H2) can support the transition to net-zero carbon (C) emissions by facilitating increased renewable energy use by acting as an energy store to balance supply and demand. Underground H2 storage in porous media is investigated due to its high capacity and economical price. An important unknown in underground porous media H2 storage is the volume of recoverable H2 which is partly [...]
Megathrust locking encoded in subduction landscapes
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Locked areas of subduction megathrusts are increasingly found to coincide with landscape features sculpted over hundreds of kyrs, yet the mechanisms that underlie such correlations remain elusive. We show that interseismic locking gradients induce increments of irreversible strain across the overriding plate manifested predominantly as distributed seismicity. Summing these increments over [...]
Aggregation - Disaggregation Cycles in ERA 5 Reanalysis
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding convective aggregation is very important for understanding tropical climate and climate sensitivity. However, we still lack a full understanding of how aggregation evolves in the real world or what phenomena and scales are analogous to the self-aggregation observed in idealized models. In this study, we apply the moist static energy (MSE) variance budget framework to ERA5 reanalysis [...]
Inverse modeling of satellite observations shows that the wet tropics drive the 2010-2022 methane increase
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Atmospheric methane concentrations rose rapidly over the past decade and surged in 2020-2022 but the causes are unclear. We find from inverse analysis of GOSAT satellite observations that global methane emissions increased from 500 to 550 Tg a-1 from 2010 to 2019 and surged to 570-590 Tg a-1 in 2020-2022. Concentrations of tropospheric OH (the main methane sink) show no long-term trend over [...]
Redox Geochemistry of the Late Cambrian SPICE Event in Durness Group, UK
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology
The Late Cambrian Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion (SPICE) event occurring at approximately 497 Ma and lasting for about 2-4 Myr is emblematic of a global-scale oceanic anoxia, coinciding with the trilobite mass extinction. It is significant in the biotic evolution spanning the Late Cambrian to Ordovician. Nevertheless, the driving mechanism behind the SPICE event is contentious, and [...]
Near-source effects on DAS recording: implications for tap tests
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences
In the immediate vicinity of a source there are strong gradients in the seismic wavefield that are tamed and modified in DAS recording due to combined effects of gauge-length averaging and local stacking on the local strain field. Close to a source broadside propagation effects are significant and produce a characteristic impact on the local DAS channels. In the presence of topography, of surface [...]
A shake and a surge: Assessing the possibility of an earthquake-triggered eruption at Steamboat Geyser
Published: 2024-01-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
When and why earthquakes trigger volcano and geyser eruptions remains unclear. In September 2022, Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone, USA erupted 8.25 hours after a local M3.9 earthquake—an improbable coincidence based on the geyser’s eruption intervals. We leverage monitoring data from the surrounding geyser basin to determine if the earthquake triggered this eruption. We calculate a peak ground [...]
Microbial indicators and detection of Cu-sulfide ore mineralization
Published: 2024-01-02
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science
Rapid electrification of society is placing unprecedented demand on critical mineral and metal resources. New strategies and technologies are thus needed to promote mineral discovery in regions where deposits are likely buried deep under soil and glacial till. We show that microbial communities from different soil types change in composition in response to amendment with copper. We also show [...]
New U-Pb zircon data and patterns of collision magmatism in the Northern Highlands of Scotland
Published: 2023-12-29
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Northern Highlands Terrane of the Scottish Caledonides contain a record of Palaeozoic collision magmatism which overlaps with Baltica – Laurentia convergence and the Scandian Orogeny. Here, there remain gaps in our understanding of the relationship between collision dynamics and the spatial-temporal distribution of Caledonian intrusions. In this study, the Strontian and Helmsdale plutons and [...]