Preprints
There are 8001 Preprints listed.
DispSAC: Surface-wave dispersion inversion using soft actor-critic reinforcement learning
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Surface-wave inversion (SWI) is widely used to image shear-wave velocity structure in the crust and upper mantle. Locally linearized methods offer computational efficiency but can be sensitive to the initial model and regularization, whereas Bayesian sampling methods can characterize model uncertainty at substantial computational cost. Neural networks provide another route to efficient inversion, [...]
Early Hadean Earth conditions were ideal for prebiotic chemistry
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
The time at which surface conditions favorable for prebiotic chemistry were established on Earth remains debated. Following magma-ocean solidification, high atmospheric pressure modulated the release of water from Earth’s primary crust. Here, we model the coupled formation of early oceans and felsic crust under these conditions. Our calculations show that a hydrated primary crust forms, resulting [...]
Drilled petit-spot basalts reveal asthenospheric mantle heterogeneity before subduction
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Geochemistry, Geology
Submarine petit-spot volcanoes form where oceanic plates bend and flex before sinking into subduction zones, providing a rare opportunity to sample mantle-derived melts before subduction. Here we report results from the first scientific drilling of a sediment-buried petit-spot volcano during International Ocean Drilling Programme Expedition 502, recovering basalts from a previously inaccessible [...]
Predicting Elephant Crop-Raiding with Machine Learning to Inform Conservation Planning: A Case Study Comparing the Performance and Tradeoffs of GeoAI Algorithms in Northwestern Zimbabwe
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Human–elephant conflict (HEC) is a persistent socio-environmental challenge arising from the intersection of wildlife ecology, land use change, and development. African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) come into conflict with humans when space and resource needs overlap. Patterns of HEC are complex and the relationships between drivers and conflict are not always linear. In northwestern [...]
Life After Impact: Paleobathymetric Gradients in Post-K/Pg Nannoplankton Boom-Bust Successions
Published: 2025-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) bolide impact ~66 Ma caused the near-demise of calcareous nannoplankton – key primary producers and major components of the biological pump that exports organic and inorganic carbon to the deep sea. Despite their ecological significance, resolving the exact impact of nannoplankton’s mass extinction on ecosystem structure and function is complicated by marked global [...]
Changes to the Madden-Julian Oscillation with Surface Temperature Warming in Aquaplanet Simulations
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Interactions between waves and the mean-state in the tropics are of fundamental importance for reliable future projection of tropical waves and their impacts under anthropogenic climate change. The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the dominant source of weather variability over many parts of the globe on intraseasonal timescales. In this study, we investigate the influence of mean-state changes [...]
Assessing Spatial and Temporal Variability of Vertical Land Motion Along Coastal Massachusetts Using Sentinel-1 InSAR and GNSS Time Series Analysis
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences
Vertical land motion (VLM) is a critical component of relative sea-level rise (RSLR) assessments and can vary substantially across local to regional scales and over multi-year to decadal timescales due to differences in geology, natural processes, and anthropogenic influences. Coastal Massachusetts (MA) is a low-lying, geologically diverse region encompassing densely urbanized shorelines, [...]
Skillful Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Prediction with AI Weather--Climate Models Forced by Dynamically Predicted SSTs
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
AI weather-climate models are far cheaper than dynamical seasonal prediction models and have shown skillful tropical cyclone (TC) prediction under persisted sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, but their skill under dynamically predicted ocean boundary conditions, benchmarked against an established dynamical seasonal prediction system, is untested. We evaluate eight seasonal hindcast [...]
ORBIT: A new, reduced-complexity air quality model for South Asia
Published: 2026-10-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Exposure to outdoor air pollution is the most important environmental health risk worldwide, associated with over a million deaths each year in South Asia alone. To understand how to improve air quality, it is necessary to model how changes in emissions affect changes in pollutant concentrations and human health. However, air quality modeling typically demands substantial computation and [...]
Reconstructing Significant Wave Height Fields from Sparse Observations Using Virtual Observation Augmentation
Published: 2026-10-23
Subjects: Oceanography
Real-time, high-precision significant wave height (SWH) fields are essential for ocean forecasting, disaster mitigation, and marine applications. However, extremely sparse observational coverage in vast ocean regions limits accurate reconstruction, as traditional spatial interpolation often produces overly smoothed fields that fail to capture fine-scale structures and sharp gradients. This study [...]
New mapping along Ishtar Terra margins: use and limits of Magellan SAR data for testing Venus crustal plateau formation models
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The origins of crustal plateaus on Venus are poorly understood. Several formation models have been proposed, including four previously explored models: downwelling, upwelling, pulsating continents, and bolide impact models; as well as a waning heat-pipe model. Key predictions which vary across models include surface deformation, marginal deformation, and the tessera-plain onlapping relationships. [...]
Physics, Ecology, Mathematics and Engineering of the Negawatt Economy: A Formal Architecture for Verified Energy Conservation
Published: 2026-09-26
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The contribution is a formal issuance architecture for verified energy conservation. The Negawatt (NWT) is the registry denomination of that conservation: one NWT equals one megawatt-hour (1 MWh) accepted under Proof of Conservation. In this paper, energy conservation means measured and verified avoided energy use relative to an adjusted baseline; it does not mean the First-Law [...]
Assessing the riverine flood forecast skill of GloFAS and Google Flood Hub with impact data and discharge observations to support early actions in Mali
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Water Resource Management
Riverine floods are among the most destructive and frequent natural hazards in Mali. To reduce their impacts, the Mali RedCross implemented an Early Action Protocol (EAP) to enable anticipatory actions through pre-defined triggers and forecastinformation. Currently, the protocol relies on upstream water levels from the National Directorate of Hydraulics (DNH) to pre-dict downstream flooding. [...]
Three-Dimensional Numerical Modeling of Glacier Flow and U-Shaped Valley Evolution in Subtropical Taiwan
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Glaciology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Glacial erosion plays a critical role in shaping alpine topography,yet the coupled effects of ice deformation, basal sliding, andbedrock erosion on millennial-scale valley morphodynamics remainchallenging to quantify. This study presents three-dimensionalsimulations of glacier dynamics and bed evolution in Xue MountainGlacial Cirque No.~2, Taiwan, over an effective glaciation timescaleof 9~ka. [...]
P-T-t-d history of the Greater Himalayan Sequence in the Zanskar Shear Zone, NW India
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
We present a synthesis of pressure-temperature-time-deformation (P-T-t-d) conditions that track the evolution of the Greater Himalaya Sequence (GHS) exhumed along the Zanskar Shear Zone (ZSZ), the western arm of the South Tibetan Detachment and that spans the entirety of the Himalayan range. The dominant mineralogy is Qz + Kfs + Pl + Bt + Grt + Ilm + Sil(Fi) ± Ms ± Ky ± St. P-T paths constructed [...]