Preprints
There are 5427 Preprints listed.
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 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 [...]
Middle Miocene Mediterranean mangroves and potential modern analogs
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Paleontology
During the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO; 17–15 Ma), the northern boundary of mangroves – now situated at ~30° N – extended along the northern Mediterranean coasts (~45° N). These Avicennia-only mangroves have been considered impoverished mangroves controlled by the general latitudinal temperature gradient. The MCO Mediterranean mangroves have been compared with the extant Middle East (ME) [...]
Uncertainties as a Guide for Global Water Model Advancement
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Global water models increasingly allow us to explore the terrestrial water cycle in earth-sized digital laboratories to support science and guide policy. However, these models are still subject to considerable uncertainties that mainly originate from three sources: (1) imbalances in data quality and availability across geographical regions and between hydrologic variables, (2) poorly quantified [...]
Phytoplankton blooms in the new Southern Ocean sea ice regime
Published: 2025-02-24
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Geophysics and Seismology, Oceanography
Over the last decade, the Antarctic sea ice extent has recorded record highs and lows. The anomalous low in 2023 suggested a new reduced sea-ice state, with unknown impacts on phytoplankton blooms, including phenology and magnitude. Analysing both Biogeochemical (BGC) and Core Argo floats, we compare annual sea ice extent (SIE) anomalies and sea ice volume (SIV) to physical and biological [...]
Trends and ENSO-related variability in Atlantic tropical cyclone intensity and intensification
Published: 2025-02-23
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Thirty Years of the Open Geospatial Consortium - History, Present, and Future
Published: 2025-02-23
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
For 30 years, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has advanced geospatial interoperability through continuous innovation. The OGC provides strategies and Standards that promote adoption, increase efficiencies, create new opportunities, and transform our relationship with the dynamic planet we inhabit. It has fostered global collaborations among companies, governments, academic institutions, and [...]
Towards a global deep learning model for daily soil CO2 efflux
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Soil CO2 efflux, the largest flux of CO2 to the atmosphere, is expected to rise globally under climate change. Its magnitude and temporal variability are highly uncertain, and daily-scale models capturing rapid changes to environmental drivers remain rare. We used a global database of soil CO2 efflux (total observations = 7,797,535 from 2002-2020) to train a deep learning model (Long Short-Term [...]
The Role of Geospatial Intelligence in Modern Military Operations
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) has become an indispensable tool in modern military operations since it considerably increases situational awareness, strategic decision-making, and operational success. Advanced geospatial technologies have changed military force collecting, analysis, and spatial data interpretation, including satellite imagery, remote sensing, geographic information systems [...]
Using fracture-scarp lineations as kinematic indicators on active normal fault scarps
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Reliable kinematic (slip vector) data collected from offset piercing points, corrugations or striations, is a key input for fault based seismic hazard assessments. However, it can be difficult to interpret kinematic indicators on degraded fault scarps. In this work, we investigate the orientations and growth history of on-fault fracture networks, which extend into the footwall and have greater [...]
First empirical assessment of ice content from Himalayan rock glaciers.
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate warming in the Himalaya threatens glaciers and permafrost, with severe implications for the future sustainability of the region’s natural ‘water towers’ and connected ecological systems and human infrastructure. Recent work in high mountain environments has highlighted how rock glaciers are prevalent and contain globally valuable water supplies. Yet, over the Himalaya, information [...]
Beyond Single Hazard Framework: Multi-Hazard Worst Case Scenarios from Ensemble Tropical Cyclone Forecasts
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Oceanography, Risk Analysis
Ensemble forecasting is a powerful tool for supporting informed decision-making in managing multi-hazard risks associated with tropical cyclones (TCs). Although TC ensemble forecasts are widely used in operational numerical weather prediction systems, their potential for disaster prediction and management has not been fully exploited. Here we propose a novel, efficient, and practical method to [...]
Senescence driven solubilization of biomass is the main source of kelp-derived dissolved organic carbon to the coastal ocean
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Kelp forests form some of the most productive areas on earth and are proposed to sequester carbon in the ocean, largely in the form of released dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Here we investigate the role of environmental, seasonal and age-related physiological gradients on the partitioning of net primary production (NPP) into DOC by the canopy forming giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). Rates of [...]
Enhancing Global-scale Urban Land Cover Representation Using Local Climate Zones in the Community Earth System Model
Published: 2025-02-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Urban areas are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, necessitating accurate simulations of urban climates in Earth system models (ESMs) in support of large-scale urban climate adaptation efforts. ESMs underrepresent urban areas due to their small spatial extent and the lack of detailed urban landscape data. To enhance the accuracy of urban representation, this study [...]