Pub Date : 2026-02-10DOI: 10.1038/s41612-026-01342-7
Hannah C. Frostenberg, Montserrat Costa-Surós, Paraskevi Georgakaki, Ulrike Proske, Georgia Sotiropoulou, Eleanor May, David Neubauer, Patrick Eriksson, María Gonçalves Ageitos, Athanasios Nenes, Carlos Pérez García-Pando, Øyvind Seland, Luisa Ickes
The balance between liquid and ice in clouds remains a major challenge in climate modeling, largely due to uncertainties in ice-related processes. We investigate the relative importance of four microphysical processes—primary ice nucleation (PIN), secondary ice production (SIP), sedimentation, and transport of ice crystals—for the supercooled liquid fraction (SLF) in mixed-phase clouds using three global climate models: EC-Earth3-AerChem, NorESM2-MM, and ECHAM6.3-HAM2.3. All models identify PIN as the dominant influence on SLF at cold temperatures in high northern latitudes, but diverge elsewhere and for higher temperatures. Implementing a unified SIP parameterization produced varied model responses, revealing fundamental differences in how microphysical processes interact within each model framework. These discrepancies suggest that each model prioritizes different processes in shaping the cloud phase. Such divergence may limit the reliability of conclusions regarding microphysical processes drawn from any single model.
{"title":"Large discrepancies in dominant microphysical processes governing mixed-phase clouds across climate models","authors":"Hannah C. Frostenberg, Montserrat Costa-Surós, Paraskevi Georgakaki, Ulrike Proske, Georgia Sotiropoulou, Eleanor May, David Neubauer, Patrick Eriksson, María Gonçalves Ageitos, Athanasios Nenes, Carlos Pérez García-Pando, Øyvind Seland, Luisa Ickes","doi":"10.1038/s41612-026-01342-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-026-01342-7","url":null,"abstract":"The balance between liquid and ice in clouds remains a major challenge in climate modeling, largely due to uncertainties in ice-related processes. We investigate the relative importance of four microphysical processes—primary ice nucleation (PIN), secondary ice production (SIP), sedimentation, and transport of ice crystals—for the supercooled liquid fraction (SLF) in mixed-phase clouds using three global climate models: EC-Earth3-AerChem, NorESM2-MM, and ECHAM6.3-HAM2.3. All models identify PIN as the dominant influence on SLF at cold temperatures in high northern latitudes, but diverge elsewhere and for higher temperatures. Implementing a unified SIP parameterization produced varied model responses, revealing fundamental differences in how microphysical processes interact within each model framework. These discrepancies suggest that each model prioritizes different processes in shaping the cloud phase. Such divergence may limit the reliability of conclusions regarding microphysical processes drawn from any single model.","PeriodicalId":19438,"journal":{"name":"npj Climate and Atmospheric Science","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146152335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-10DOI: 10.1016/j.gr.2026.01.012
Jing Wang, Xiaoqing Wu, Deliang Sun, Haijia Wen, Qiang Zhang, Xuelian An, Youchen Zhu, Jin Tan, Chunzao Bu
China is highly vulnerable to landslide disaster. Climate change alters the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events, and, together with land use change and infrastructure expansion, future landslide susceptibility is showing an increasing trend. To scientifically assess the potential risk of landslide disasters in China under multiple future scenarios, this study divides China into six geographic regions based on geomorphic characteristics and selects multi-source geo-environmental factors as well as climate and land use data under multiple SSP-RCP scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The CatBoost algorithm is used to construct landslide susceptibility models for each region in four time periods: 2020, 2050 s, 2070 s, and 2090 s, and a multi-scenario simulation analysis is carried out. The results show that the area under curve (AUC) values of all CatBoost models exceed 87% and surpass 95% in most scenarios. Relative to 2020, both the mean and median landslide-susceptibility index increase in future periods. Under the high-emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5), most regions in China exhibit rising susceptibility, whereas under the low-emissions scenario (SSP1-2.6) the increase is comparatively moderate. These findings highlight changing dynamics across China, underscore the value of region-specific modeling, and provide key insights for future disaster-risk management and mitigation.
{"title":"Landslide susceptibility multi-scenario prediction in China under climate and land use change","authors":"Jing Wang, Xiaoqing Wu, Deliang Sun, Haijia Wen, Qiang Zhang, Xuelian An, Youchen Zhu, Jin Tan, Chunzao Bu","doi":"10.1016/j.gr.2026.01.012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2026.01.012","url":null,"abstract":"China is highly vulnerable to landslide disaster. Climate change alters the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events, and, together with land use change and infrastructure expansion, future landslide susceptibility is showing an increasing trend. To scientifically assess the potential risk of landslide disasters in China under multiple future scenarios, this study divides China into six geographic regions based on geomorphic characteristics and selects multi-source geo-environmental factors as well as climate and land use data under multiple SSP-RCP scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The CatBoost algorithm is used to construct landslide susceptibility models for each region in four time periods: 2020, 2050 s, 2070 s, and 2090 s, and a multi-scenario simulation analysis is carried out. The results show that the area under curve (AUC) values of all CatBoost models exceed 87% and surpass 95% in most scenarios. Relative to 2020, both the mean and median landslide-susceptibility index increase in future periods. Under the high-emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5), most regions in China exhibit rising susceptibility, whereas under the low-emissions scenario (SSP1-2.6) the increase is comparatively moderate. These findings highlight changing dynamics across China, underscore the value of region-specific modeling, and provide key insights for future disaster-risk management and mitigation.","PeriodicalId":12761,"journal":{"name":"Gondwana Research","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146146319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deep-seated gravitational slope deformation is slowly occurring, being affected by long-term river or glacial erosion and climatic change, as well as short-term impacts from precipitation and earthquakes. A geological field survey, high-resolution digital elevation model topographic analysis, drilling, and tephrochronological dating of sediments from the depressions of deep-seated gravitational slope deformation (DGSD) were performed to investigate the structural causes and chronological development of nearly 6-km linearly aligned ridge-top depressions within a Cretaceous accretional complex in the Chichibu area of central Japan. The DGSD occurred on slopes with a low-angle thrust fault that dips downslope, which was gradually exhumed at the riverbed by river erosion caused by the upstream knickpoint migration. The dating of the depression sediments and the characteristics of the ridge-top depressions indicate that the deformation process continued for 200,000 years with typical displacement rates ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 mm per year. The recent short-term rates observed over the past 18 years have been somewhat faster, averaging 0.69 mm per year. This rate discrepancy during the long and short terms might be attributed to the glacial ages during which DGSD could have been decelerated. The prevalence of low-angle thrust faults and DGSDs in Japan's Cretaceous accretional complex suggests that DGSDs exhibiting similar behavior could serve as a reference for such a complex.
深层重力斜坡变形是缓慢发生的，受到长期河流或冰川侵蚀和气候变化的影响，以及降水和地震的短期影响。通过野外地质调查、高分辨率数字高程模型地形分析、钻井和沉积物年代学分析，研究了日本中部秩部地区白垩纪增生杂岩中近6公里线性排列脊顶凹陷的构造成因和年代学发展。逆冲断层发育在低角度逆冲断层下倾的斜坡上，由上游断裂点运移引起的河流侵蚀作用逐渐在河床上掘出。坳陷沉积物测年和脊顶坳陷特征表明，变形过程持续了200000 年，典型位移率为0.2 ~ 0.5 mm /年。在过去的18 年中观测到的近期短期速率略快，平均每年0.69 毫米。这种长期和短期的速率差异可能归因于冰川时代，在此期间DGSD可能已经减速。日本白垩纪增生杂岩中低角度逆冲断层和dgsd的普遍存在表明，dgsd表现出类似的行为可以作为此类杂岩的参考。
{"title":"Chronological development of gravitational slope deformation induced by upstream knickpoint migration","authors":"Masakazu Mashiko, Masahiro Chigira, Hirokazu Furuki, Takehiko Suzuki","doi":"10.1016/j.enggeo.2026.108605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2026.108605","url":null,"abstract":"Deep-seated gravitational slope deformation is slowly occurring, being affected by long-term river or glacial erosion and climatic change, as well as short-term impacts from precipitation and earthquakes. A geological field survey, high-resolution digital elevation model topographic analysis, drilling, and tephrochronological dating of sediments from the depressions of deep-seated gravitational slope deformation (DGSD) were performed to investigate the structural causes and chronological development of nearly 6-km linearly aligned ridge-top depressions within a Cretaceous accretional complex in the Chichibu area of central Japan. The DGSD occurred on slopes with a low-angle thrust fault that dips downslope, which was gradually exhumed at the riverbed by river erosion caused by the upstream knickpoint migration. The dating of the depression sediments and the characteristics of the ridge-top depressions indicate that the deformation process continued for 200,000 years with typical displacement rates ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 mm per year. The recent short-term rates observed over the past 18 years have been somewhat faster, averaging 0.69 mm per year. This rate discrepancy during the long and short terms might be attributed to the glacial ages during which DGSD could have been decelerated. The prevalence of low-angle thrust faults and DGSDs in Japan's Cretaceous accretional complex suggests that DGSDs exhibiting similar behavior could serve as a reference for such a complex.","PeriodicalId":11567,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Geology","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146146799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-10DOI: 10.1186/s13021-026-00398-5
Saige Wang, Nan Xia, Ming Yang, Rou Peng, Huangying Gu, Guanyu Guo, Chengming Li
The transition toward low-carbon sustainable development is critical for transforming heavily polluting industries. Green credit policies are designed to direct capital toward environmentally friendly and low-carbon corporates. Using the introduction of China's Green Credit Guidelines in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study analyzes a panel of A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2021. Employing a Difference-in-Differences approach, we assess the impact of the green credit policy (GCP) on corporate carbon emissions. Empirical results indicate that GCP leads to a significant reduction in corporate carbon emissions. Baseline DID estimates show that treated corporates reduced emissions by approximately 13-19% compared to the control group, a finding that remains robust across a series of checks. The emission-reduction effect of GCP is more pronounced in corporations with a separated board leadership structure, higher profitability, central urban locations, and well-developed digital infrastructure. We identify two primary mechanisms through which GCP operates: imposing financial constraints that deter investment in carbon-intensive activities, and promoting green innovation, which facilitates the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies and practices. Further analysis reveals that both internal governance and external regulatory factors-such as stronger environmental awareness among executives, ISO 14,001 certification, enhanced intellectual property protection, and strict enforcement of the Three Simultaneous System-strengthen the effectiveness of GCP in reducing emissions. Through these channels, GCP supports the transition to a more sustainable economic pathway and contributes to global climate change mitigation.
{"title":"From capital to climate action: assessing the impact of china's green credit initiative on corporate emissions.","authors":"Saige Wang, Nan Xia, Ming Yang, Rou Peng, Huangying Gu, Guanyu Guo, Chengming Li","doi":"10.1186/s13021-026-00398-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-026-00398-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The transition toward low-carbon sustainable development is critical for transforming heavily polluting industries. Green credit policies are designed to direct capital toward environmentally friendly and low-carbon corporates. Using the introduction of China's Green Credit Guidelines in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study analyzes a panel of A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2021. Employing a Difference-in-Differences approach, we assess the impact of the green credit policy (GCP) on corporate carbon emissions. Empirical results indicate that GCP leads to a significant reduction in corporate carbon emissions. Baseline DID estimates show that treated corporates reduced emissions by approximately 13-19% compared to the control group, a finding that remains robust across a series of checks. The emission-reduction effect of GCP is more pronounced in corporations with a separated board leadership structure, higher profitability, central urban locations, and well-developed digital infrastructure. We identify two primary mechanisms through which GCP operates: imposing financial constraints that deter investment in carbon-intensive activities, and promoting green innovation, which facilitates the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies and practices. Further analysis reveals that both internal governance and external regulatory factors-such as stronger environmental awareness among executives, ISO 14,001 certification, enhanced intellectual property protection, and strict enforcement of the Three Simultaneous System-strengthen the effectiveness of GCP in reducing emissions. Through these channels, GCP supports the transition to a more sustainable economic pathway and contributes to global climate change mitigation.</p>","PeriodicalId":505,"journal":{"name":"Carbon Balance and Management","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146148603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-10DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2026.119904
Jiaming Zhu , Bo Wu , Zikang Li , Yiliang Li
The behavior of volatiles is critically important for understanding crustal fluids and the potential existence of a subsurface biosphere on Mars. However, our knowledge of the volatile cycle on Mars is limited by insufficient data from landed rovers and orbiter sensors. Halite salt crusts are widespread in the Qaidam Basin on the northern Tibetan Plateau due to strong evaporation under hyperarid climate conditions. We observed that the halite-dominated salt crust in the desiccated playa area diverts fluids percolating from depth to the surface, leading to the formation of raised polygonal rims enriched in gypsum. We drilled through the salt crust using a hand mill and measured the instantaneous gas concentrations and compositions. Beneath the halite salt crust, significantly higher concentrations of H2O, CO2, and CH4 were detected compared with levels in the atmospheric background and at the polygonal rims. The thickness of the salt crust ranges from approximately 0.3 to 1 m, with halite content primarily between 5 and 30 wt%, and is comparable in scale to the thickness (typically <3 m) and abundance (10–25 wt%) of chloride deposits on Mars. These results suggest that similar salt crust formation should also be common in Martian crater basins subjected to long-term evaporation under hyperarid conditions. Furthermore, such salt crusts could trap deep volatiles, including potential biogenic gases, which may be detectable by gas spectrometers aboard Mars landers.
{"title":"Accumulation of volatiles under salt crusts in the highly evaporative Qaidam basin: Implications for salt crust fluid processes on Mars","authors":"Jiaming Zhu , Bo Wu , Zikang Li , Yiliang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.epsl.2026.119904","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.epsl.2026.119904","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The behavior of volatiles is critically important for understanding crustal fluids and the potential existence of a subsurface biosphere on Mars. However, our knowledge of the volatile cycle on Mars is limited by insufficient data from landed rovers and orbiter sensors. Halite salt crusts are widespread in the Qaidam Basin on the northern Tibetan Plateau due to strong evaporation under hyperarid climate conditions. We observed that the halite-dominated salt crust in the desiccated playa area diverts fluids percolating from depth to the surface, leading to the formation of raised polygonal rims enriched in gypsum. We drilled through the salt crust using a hand mill and measured the instantaneous gas concentrations and compositions. Beneath the halite salt crust, significantly higher concentrations of H<sub>2</sub>O, CO<sub>2</sub>, and CH<sub>4</sub> were detected compared with levels in the atmospheric background and at the polygonal rims. The thickness of the salt crust ranges from approximately 0.3 to 1 m, with halite content primarily between 5 and 30 wt%, and is comparable in scale to the thickness (typically <3 m) and abundance (10–25 wt%) of chloride deposits on Mars. These results suggest that similar salt crust formation should also be common in Martian crater basins subjected to long-term evaporation under hyperarid conditions. Furthermore, such salt crusts could trap deep volatiles, including potential biogenic gases, which may be detectable by gas spectrometers aboard Mars landers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11481,"journal":{"name":"Earth and Planetary Science Letters","volume":"680 ","pages":"Article 119904"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146147112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Giuseppe Costantino, Mathilde Radiguet, Zaccaria El Yousfi, Anne Socquet
Slow, aseismic fault slip has emerged as a significant contributor to the seismic cycle. However, whether slow and fast slip arise from similar physical processes remains unresolved, due to detection biases affecting noisy surface measurements and the analysis of the source properties of slow slip. Using daily geodetic time series denoised with a deep learning model, we invert for 15 years of slow slip evolution on the Cascadia subduction with unprecedented temporal resolution. Our observations show that an upper bound for slow-slip moment rates exists, and that scaling laws are strongly influenced by the chosen detection threshold and the signal-to-noise ratio. Moment rate functions evolve with magnitude: slow slip nucleates as a two-dimensional expanding crack, propagating laterally when encountering the along-dip limits of the transition zone. Our findings highlight a continuum of slow slip events of various sizes controlled by subduction interface geometrical constraints.
{"title":"A Continuum of Slow Slip Events in the Cascadia Subduction Zone Illuminated by High-Resolution Deep-Learning Denoising","authors":"Giuseppe Costantino, Mathilde Radiguet, Zaccaria El Yousfi, Anne Socquet","doi":"10.1029/2025gl117446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl117446","url":null,"abstract":"Slow, aseismic fault slip has emerged as a significant contributor to the seismic cycle. However, whether slow and fast slip arise from similar physical processes remains unresolved, due to detection biases affecting noisy surface measurements and the analysis of the source properties of slow slip. Using daily geodetic time series denoised with a deep learning model, we invert for 15 years of slow slip evolution on the Cascadia subduction with unprecedented temporal resolution. Our observations show that an upper bound for slow-slip moment rates exists, and that scaling laws are strongly influenced by the chosen detection threshold and the signal-to-noise ratio. Moment rate functions evolve with magnitude: slow slip nucleates as a two-dimensional expanding crack, propagating laterally when encountering the along-dip limits of the transition zone. Our findings highlight a continuum of slow slip events of various sizes controlled by subduction interface geometrical constraints.","PeriodicalId":12523,"journal":{"name":"Geophysical Research Letters","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146146316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-10DOI: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108858
Elenio Avolio, Mario Marcello Miglietta, Claudia Fanelli, Martina Lagasio, Mekdes Tadesse Mengistu, Massimo Milelli, Antonio Parodi, Andi Xhelaj, Massimiliano Burlando
{"title":"Analysis of the 18 August 2022 western Mediterranean derecho: Atmospheric dynamics and impacts over the northwestern Italian coast","authors":"Elenio Avolio, Mario Marcello Miglietta, Claudia Fanelli, Martina Lagasio, Mekdes Tadesse Mengistu, Massimo Milelli, Antonio Parodi, Andi Xhelaj, Massimiliano Burlando","doi":"10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108858","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":8600,"journal":{"name":"Atmospheric Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146153123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-09DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2026.119897
Daniel Sauter , Gianreto Manatschal , Nick Kusznir , Nicolas Coltice , Pauline Chenin , Marc Ulrich , Marie Garbaciak , Philippe Werner
Insulation by the Pangean supercontinent has been suggested to have resulted in subcontinental mantle thermal anomalies and enhanced magmatic activity that may have influenced continental breakup. However, the thermal state of the mantle during the rifting of Pangea is not well established by geophysical and geochemical data. We present a compilation of oceanic crustal thicknesses next to the rifted margins of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to investigate the variations of magma budget along the initial spreading centers, and thus the thermal state of the mantle immediately after breakup. We show that the initial oceanic crustal thickness values show a bimodal distribution with two modes centered around ∼5.5 km and ∼6.7 km. The first mode (∼5.5 km) corresponds mostly to initial oceanic crusts from the Equatorial Atlantic and is thinner than present-day normal oceanic crust (∼6.1 km thick). It could result from a cold thermal anomaly related to thick pre-opening equatorial continental lithosphere. The thicker than normal oceanic crusts of the second mode (∼6.7 km) could result from a small positive mantle potential temperature anomaly of 9–15 °C. In the Central Atlantic, which opened in Jurassic time after the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province event, this thermal anomaly could reach ∼60 °C at most to produce ∼9 km thick initial oceanic crust. We thus propose that the insulation effect of Pangea might have controlled locally the thermal state of the asthenosphere but it cannot be considered as a generally ubiquitous effect associated with the breakup of Pangea.
{"title":"Was the mantle warmer when Pangea broke up? insights from initial oceanic crustal thickness alongside the rifted margins of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans","authors":"Daniel Sauter , Gianreto Manatschal , Nick Kusznir , Nicolas Coltice , Pauline Chenin , Marc Ulrich , Marie Garbaciak , Philippe Werner","doi":"10.1016/j.epsl.2026.119897","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.epsl.2026.119897","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Insulation by the Pangean supercontinent has been suggested to have resulted in subcontinental mantle thermal anomalies and enhanced magmatic activity that may have influenced continental breakup. However, the thermal state of the mantle during the rifting of Pangea is not well established by geophysical and geochemical data. We present a compilation of oceanic crustal thicknesses next to the rifted margins of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to investigate the variations of magma budget along the initial spreading centers, and thus the thermal state of the mantle immediately after breakup. We show that the initial oceanic crustal thickness values show a bimodal distribution with two modes centered around ∼5.5 km and ∼6.7 km. The first mode (∼5.5 km) corresponds mostly to initial oceanic crusts from the Equatorial Atlantic and is thinner than present-day normal oceanic crust (∼6.1 km thick). It could result from a cold thermal anomaly related to thick pre-opening equatorial continental lithosphere. The thicker than normal oceanic crusts of the second mode (∼6.7 km) could result from a small positive mantle potential temperature anomaly of 9–15 °C. In the Central Atlantic, which opened in Jurassic time after the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province event, this thermal anomaly could reach ∼60 °C at most to produce ∼9 km thick initial oceanic crust. We thus propose that the insulation effect of Pangea might have controlled locally the thermal state of the asthenosphere but it cannot be considered as a generally ubiquitous effect associated with the breakup of Pangea.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11481,"journal":{"name":"Earth and Planetary Science Letters","volume":"680 ","pages":"Article 119897"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146147109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study proposes a fully coupled conditional simulation framework for jointly characterizing geological uncertainty and geotechnical variability under sparse site investigation data. In conventional practice, soil-category simulation (Task 1, T1) and soil-property simulation (Task 2, T2) are treated in a decoupled manner, conditioning on observed categorical data (L) and continuous soil property data (X) separately. The proposed framework departs from this paradigm by adopting a fully coupled strategy in which both L and X are simulated by conditioning jointly on {L, X}, thereby explicitly accounting for their statistical dependence. Implementing such a framework requires knowledge of site-specific X-L and X-X correlations, which are often weakly identifiable from sparse target-site data. To address this challenge, a modified hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) is developed to learn these correlation characteristics from a newly compiled global soil database and transfer them to the target site as an informative prior. The framework is further equipped with an efficient conditional simulation algorithm for X, enabling practical three-dimensional applications. The performance and advantages of the proposed framework are demonstrated through a real case study and comparative analyses with existing methods.
{"title":"Fully coupled conditional simulation of geological and geotechnical variabilities for sparse geotechnical data in three dimensions","authors":"Jianye Ching, Hassan Kamyab Farahbakhsh, Jiun-Shiang Wang, Xiang Li, Hui Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.enggeo.2026.108609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2026.108609","url":null,"abstract":"This study proposes a fully coupled conditional simulation framework for jointly characterizing geological uncertainty and geotechnical variability under sparse site investigation data. In conventional practice, soil-category simulation (Task 1, T1) and soil-property simulation (Task 2, T2) are treated in a decoupled manner, conditioning on observed categorical data (L) and continuous soil property data (X) separately. The proposed framework departs from this paradigm by adopting a fully coupled strategy in which both L and X are simulated by conditioning jointly on {L, X}, thereby explicitly accounting for their statistical dependence. Implementing such a framework requires knowledge of site-specific X-L and X-X correlations, which are often weakly identifiable from sparse target-site data. To address this challenge, a modified hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) is developed to learn these correlation characteristics from a newly compiled global soil database and transfer them to the target site as an informative prior. The framework is further equipped with an efficient conditional simulation algorithm for X, enabling practical three-dimensional applications. The performance and advantages of the proposed framework are demonstrated through a real case study and comparative analyses with existing methods.","PeriodicalId":11567,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Geology","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146146805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-09DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2026.105145
Hailun Xie, Arjun Biswas, Steve Coupland, Ben Dickens, Jeremy Morley, Hywel Williams
Retrieving granular information from large-scale geospatial databases is challenging and can require significant domain expertise, owing to complex data taxonomies and hierarchical data structures related to geometry and topology. In this research, a multi-agent system is developed that uses large language models (LLMs) for geospatial information retrieval based on natural language queries. The proposed solution employs LLMs within three agents that decompose data retrieval into sub-tasks: human instruction comprehension; data collection identification; and feature category screening. The three agents collaborate in a sequential workflow to accumulate knowledge and identify a pathway to the correct information within a hierarchical data structure. A data retrieval module subsequently interprets the search extent and retrieves data through API calls to the underlying databases. The proposed approach is evaluated in a case study with a large and complex geospatial database, the National Geographic Database operated by Ordnance Survey in the UK. Evaluation was based on a total of 83 sample queries, i.e. 40 human queries collected from volunteers, 40 synthetic queries generated by LLM, and 3 queries selected from a benchmark database. The proposed system answered majority of the queries successfully, namely 22 out of the 31 valid human queries, 29 out of 37 effective synthetic queries, and all 3 queries from the benchmark dataset. This demonstrates good potential for flexible data retrieval, locating a variety of geographical features from different data collections in response to natural language questions about tennis courts, public car parks, and restaurants, etc. The multi-agent solution was also evaluated using OpenStreetMap and the results demonstrate the transferability of the proposed method in handling different data taxonomies and structures. Our findings also highlight several research challenges around the “AI readiness” of documentation, complex geospatial data taxonomies, ambiguity in human language, and complex spatial reasoning. Overall, our study addresses two major research gaps: (1) the use of unstructured natural language to accurately retrieve geospatial information; and (2) the use of LLMs to navigate multiple heterogeneous datasets in a hierarchical data taxonomy.
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