Preprints
There are 7999 Preprints listed.
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Deep Learning Improves Global Satellite Observations of Ocean Eddy Dynamics
Published: 2024-01-15
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Fluid Dynamics, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Ocean eddies affect large-scale circulation and induce a kinetic energy cascade through their non-linear interactions. However, since global observations of eddy dynamics come from satellite altimetry maps that smooth eddies and distort their geometry, the strength of this cascade is underestimated. Here, we use deep learning to improve observational estimates of global surface geostrophic [...]
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 [...]
Stress-strain hysteresis during hydrostatic loading of porous rocks
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering
A micro-mechanical model is proposed to predict the stress-strain hysteresis during the cyclic hydrostatic loading of fluid-saturated rocks under drained or undrained conditions. A spherical pore is surrounded by a cracked shell where local deviatoric stress develops despite the remote hydrostatic loading. The effective properties of the material composing the shell are constructed with the crack [...]
Temperature and precipitation changes in ten cities in Southeast Asia: an analysis based on CMIP6 climate projections
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Environmental Studies
Climate change influences both average states and extremes in temperatures and precipitation. Southeast Asia, one of the most vulnerable regions worldwide to floods and heatwaves, indicates an escalation of the possibility of severe climate extremes. Extreme precipitation events can bring increasing floods, leading to considerable damage to property and human well-being. However, droughts also [...]
The Rapa Nui Little Ice Age drought: evidence, potential causes and socioecological impact
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Paleontology, Sedimentology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
A decade ago, an island-wide drought was proposed to have occurred on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) during the Little Ice Age (LIA). This climatic event was considered to be important for ecological and cultural transformations that occurred on the island during the 16th and 17th centuries. Independent multiproxy paleoecological and paleoclimatic evidence produced in the last years supports the [...]
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., [...]
An Assessment of Annual Load Estimation Methods in Small Watersheds for Cross Site Comparisons
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Streams and rivers export dissolved materials and eroded sediments from the watersheds they drain. Much can be learned about rivers and their watersheds by measuring the magnitude, timing and form of these exports. Such watershed load datasets are used to gain fundamental understanding of watershed ecosystems as well as to assess water quality and the efficacy of management approaches to sustain [...]
Mineral precipitation and geometry alteration in porous structures: How to upscale variations in permeability-porosity relationship?
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Porous materials in natural and engineered environments are subject to morphological changes resulting from interacting chemical and physical processes. The complexity of coupled flow, transport, and chemical processes that occur on different temporal and spatial scales makes it difficult to predict the resulting porosity and permeability alterations. Delineating the controls of mineral [...]
Environmental Signal Propagation in Non-stationary Systems: The Impact of Delta Advance on Terrestrial to Marine Information Transfer
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences
When interpreting environmental signals in the deep marine sedimentary archive, separating the record of local flow and sediment dynamics from that of the terrestrial transport system that feeds it can be challenging. We used a physical experiment to study the dynamics of flow and sedimentation on a prograding, hyperpycnal flow-dominated delta, shelf and submarine slope subject to slow rates of [...]