Preprints
There are 6976 Preprints listed.
Accuracy, Robustness and Comprehensibility – Challenges in bottom-up energy system models
Published: 2026-03-24
Subjects: Electrical and Computer Engineering
This work provides a comprehensive framework for addressing key research gaps in bottom-up energy system modeling. While the field has experienced significant advancements in recent decades, largely due to improvements in computational capabilities and data availability, current models face persistent challenges in accuracy, robustness, and comprehensibility. While numerous review papers have [...]
An assessment of small rural and micro-enterprises as pathways out of poverty. Insights from KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: International and Area Studies
Rural poverty continues to pose a significant development challenge in South Africa, marked by pronounced inequality, persistent unemployment, and substantial dependence on social grants. The present study investigates whether household-level micro and small enterprises (MSEs) function as effective pathways out of poverty or primarily as coping mechanisms for survival in the Izingolweni area of [...]
Rapid Fault Leakage Modelling for CO2 Storage in Saline Aquifers
Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Petroleum Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
Simulating the fluid flow along fault zones at different scales is essential for predicting the CO2 leakage and containment during injection and storage. However, this can be challenging, especially in the early stages of a storage project when knowledge of the reservoir and caprock is limited and the cost of obtaining the relevant data is high. This study proposes a tool for fast screening of [...]
Rethinking land take futures: A cellular automata-based spatial planning approach to model urban expansion and densification under divergent growth scenarios
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Spatial Science
Land take - the conversion of greenfield land into built-up areas - poses critical challenges for sustainable urban development. Addressing this issue requires understanding the balance between outward urban expansion and inward urban densification. This study employs a Multinomial Logistic Regression-based Cellular Automata (MNL-CA) model to simulate two different future scenarios of urban [...]
Reversal of extreme precipitation trends over the Northeast US in response to aggressive climate mitigation in GFDL SPEAR
Published: 2025-10-24
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations are increasingly included in mitigation strategies, yet the response of regional climate extremes to such reductions remain highly uncertain. Here, we assess projected changes in extreme precipitation over the Northeast US under an aggressive overshoot mitigation pathway (SSP5-3.4OS), simulated by the fully coupled 25-km GFDL SPEAR climate [...]
Platinum-Group Element systematics in the North Atlantic Igneous Province: new insights from Northern Irish and Irish magmatism
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Geochemistry, Geology, Other Earth Sciences, Volcanology
The North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP) is one of the most prospective regions for Ni-Cu-Platinum-Group Element (PGE) mineralisation in Europe, and recent studies have discovered elevated PGE concentrations within its early lavas and minor intrusions comprising the British and Irish Palaeogene Igneous Province (BIPIP). This study presents an extended digital map of the regional mafic dyke [...]
Spatiotemporal Evolution of Urban Thermal Conditions, Vegetation Dynamics, and Built-up Expansion in Ahmedabad, India (2000–2025) Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Analysis.
Published: 2026-05-11
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Rapid urban expansion has substantially altered urban thermal conditions across many semi-arid cities. This study examined spatiotemporal variation in land surface temperature (LST), vegetation cover, and built-up intensity across Ahmedabad, India, between 2000 and 2025 using multi-temporal Landsat imagery and the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Spatial analysis revealed progressive expansion [...]
EGMSpy: an open-source Python toolkit for scalable data handling, classification, clustering, and visualisation of Copernicus EGMS InSAR data
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology
The Copernicus European Ground Motion Service (EGMS) provides millimetre-accuracy line-of-sight displacement measurements for over five billion coherent scatterers across Europe, derived from Sentinel-1 SAR interferometry over the period 2015--2023. Despite the unprecedented spatial coverage and measurement density of this dataset, no open-source integrated toolchain exists for processing, [...]
First Empirical Measurement of k G on Mars via InSight/ELYSE Seismic Data: A Two-Planet Validation of the Gasque Compliance
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology
We present the first empirical measurement of the Gasque compliance index k G = π × f₀ / (Q × V s ) on Mars, using 8.3 GB of InSight/ELYSE broadband seismic data (XB network, 2019–2022) processed with the Harmonic Matched Filter (HMF) pipeline. From 4,645,686 stacked PSD windows and 91 candidate frequencies tested via permutation (N = 1,000), five spectral features are recovered at p < 0.05, [...]
Stress testing insurance market stability under climate risk
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis
Climate change, urban development, and evolving insurance markets threaten the stability of disaster-risk financing. Homeowners insurance is embedded in a layered network of reinsurers, capital markets, and public backstops that absorb losses and can be overwhelmed by extreme events. We develop a probabilistic risk-propagation model linking physics-based simulations of tropical cyclone wind and [...]
Overshoot pathways of 1.5°C: reversible biophysical change, irreversible socioeconomic impacts
Published: 2026-04-26
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Exceedance of 1.5°C in the near term is now unavoidable. Among pathways consistent with the remaining carbon budget, an overshoot pathway, in which exceedance is followed by decline to or below 1.5°C through net-negative emissions, is the best case of what remains achievable. Permanent exceedance produces strictly worse outcomes, yet even an overshoot pathway leaves lasting legacies. We propose a [...]
Uncertainty-Aware Bayesian Machine Learning for Landslide Susceptibility Mapping: in the Chattogram Metropolitan Hill System, Bangladesh
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Landslide-prone hilly regions experiencing rapid urban expansion need susceptibility models that provide both robust predictive performance and transparent uncertainty estimates. This study develops an uncertainty-aware probabilistic framework for landslide susceptibility mapping in Bangladesh’s Chattogram metropolitan hill system, incorporating 14 conditioning factors: geomorphological, [...]
Can Hyperscale Data Centers Alter Local Meteorology in the Kathmandu Valley? A Simulation-Based Assessment
Published: 2026-05-11
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
There is growing interest in Nepal in hosting large data centers inside the Kathmandu Valley, but how the valley’s atmosphere would respond to substantial additional heat emissions remains uncertain. The Kathmandu Valley is a closed bowl-shaped basin surrounded by mountains, with persistent nocturnal cold pools and weak boundary-layer winds that limit the dispersal of pollutants and heat from the [...]
A Systematic Review of Arsenic, Lead, and Manganese Occurrence through Drinking Water in East Africa
Published: 2026-03-26
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Toxic metals (TMs) harm human health, causing cancers, irreversible neurocognitive impairment, and cardiovascular disease. Drinking water is an important source of exposure to TMs. However, current peer-reviewed literature does not adequately capture or synthesize the extent of TM occurrence in drinking water in East Africa. The goal of this systematic review is to report and synthesize available [...]
When Irrigation Cannot Keep Pace: Aridification, Crop Composition, and the Spatial Concentration of Agricultural Water Use Efficiency Decline in Central Chile
Published: 2026-05-01
Subjects: Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering
Water scarcity under sustained aridification is among the most consequential threats to agriculture in Mediterranean-climate regions. Central Chile's ongoing megadrought (~2010-present), characterized by persistent precipitation deficits and intensified atmospheric evaporative demand-provides a natural experiment for examining how agricultural water use efficiency (WUE) responds to prolonged [...]