ALBERT

Description: Contemporary combined heat and power (CHP) systems are often based on fossil fuels, such as natural gas or heating oil. Thereby, small-scale cogeneration systems are intended to replace or complement traditional heating equipment in residential buildings. In addition to space heating or domestic hot water supply, electricity is generated for the own consumption of the building or to be sold to the electric power grid. The adaptation of CHP-systems to renewable energy sources, such as solid biomass applications is challenging, because of feedstock composition and heat integration. Nevertheless, in particular smallscale CHP technologies based on biomass gasification and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) offer significant potentials, also regarding important co-benefits, such as security of energy supply as well as emission reductions in terms of greenhouse gases or air pollutants. Besides emission or air quality regulations, the development of CHP technologies for clean on-site small-scale power generation is also strongly incentivised by energy efficiency policies for residential appliances, such as e.g. Ecodesign and Energy Labelling in the European Union (EU). Furthermore, solid residual biomass as renewable local energy source is best suited for decentralised operations such as micro-grids, also to reduce long-haul fuel transports. By this means such distributed energy resource technology can become an essential part of a forward-looking strategy for net zero energy or even smart plus energy buildings. In this context, this paper presents preliminary impact assessment results and most recent environmental considerations from the EU Horizon 2020 project "FlexiFuel-SOFC" (Grant Agreement no. 641229), which aims at the development of a novel CHP system, consisting of a fuel flexible smallscale fixed-bed updraft gasifier technology, a compact gas cleaning concept and an SOFC for electricity generation. Besides sole system efficiencies, in particular resource and emission aspects of solid fuel combustion and net electricity effects need to be considered. The latter means that vastly less emission intensive gasifier-fuel cell CHP technologies cause significant less fuel related emissions than traditional heating systems, an effect which is further strengthened by avoided emissions from more emission intensive traditional grid electricity generation. As promising result, operation "net" emissions of such on-site generation installations may be virtually zero or even negative. Additionally, this paper scopes central regulatory instruments for small-scale CHP systems in the EU to discuss ways to improve the framework for system deployment.

Description: Despite the importance of surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. In situ observational data of SEB components - useful for research and model validation - are collected at relatively few sites across the terrestrial Arctic, and not all available datasets are readily interoperable. Furthermore, the terrestrial Arctic consists of a diversity of vegetation types, which are generally not well represented in land surface schemes of current Earth system models. This dataset describes the data generated in a literature synthesis, covering 358 study sites on vegetation or glacier (〉=60°N latitude), which contained surface energy budget observations. The literature synthesis comprised 148 publications searched on the ISI Web of Science Core Collection.

Description: The airborne laser scanning (ALS) datasets were acquired at the Arctic tundra site of Trail Valley Creek (TVC), Northwest Territories, Canada, which is underlain by continuous permafrost. Basic processing and filtering steps were applied to the ALS point cloud. Based on a classification into ground and vegetation points, a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and rasters of mean and maximum vegetation heights are derived. Detailed metadata are included.

Description: This report documents the acquisition and archiving of a major 3D active-source and passive seismic imaging experiment, NZ3D-FWI. The NZ3D-FWI project aims to image the Hikurangi subduction zone (upper and lower plates and plate boundary fault) along the north Hikurangi margin where shallow slow slip events occur. The primary aim of the project is to collect data optimally to produce high-resolution velocity models using Full-waveform inversion (FWI). The deployment, servicing and collection of the NZ3D-FWI onshore instruments between December 2017 and October 2018 was conducted by Imperial College London, GNS Science, Cardiff University, University of Southampton and Victoria University of Wellington. A 15 x 60 km volume of 3D seismic reflection data was collected offshore of Gisborne by the R/V Marcus Langseth, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF, USA), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK) and GNS Science. 99 ocean bottom seismographs were deployed in the 3D seismic reflection volume footprint by JAMSTEC and GNS Science. The onshore NZ3D-FWI deployment included 49 CMG-6TD broadband seismometers from NERC SEIS-UK, which were deployed from December 2017 to October 2018 and detected airgun shots from the 3D seismic reflection survey and local and teleseismic earthquakes over the nine-month period. 119 short-period DATA-CUBE3 instruments loaned from the German Instrument Pool Potsdam (GIPP), and 25 short-period GSX3 instruments from the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI), Tokyo, were deployed between December 2017 and February 2018. These recorded airgun sources and seismicity over a two-month period. The deployment involved a broader array (the Gisborne array), which covered an area of 15 x 30 km with an instrument spacing of ∼2 km. These instruments will primarily be used to construct a high-resolution onshore-offshore velocity model in conjunction with the data collected by the offshore instruments. A denser array of instruments (the Waimata Valley array) with spacing of ∼500 m is aimed at understanding mud volcano processes using active and passive source methods.

Description: A major uncertainty in determining the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet from measurements of satellite gravimetry, and to a lesser extent satellite altimetry, is the poorly known correction for the ongoing deformation of the solid Earth caused by glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). In the past decade, much progress has been made in consistently modelling the ice sheet and solid Earth interactions; however, forward-modelling solutions of GIA in Antarctica remain uncertain due to the sparsity of constraints on the ice sheet evolution, as well as the Earth's rheological properties. An alternative approach towards estimating GIA is the joint inversion of multiple satellite data - namely, satellite gravimetry, satellite altimetry and GPS, which reflect, with different sensitivities, trends of recent glacial changes and GIA. Crucial to the success of this approach is the accuracy of the space-geodetic data sets. Here, we present reprocessed rates of surface-ice elevation change (Envisat/ICESat; 2003-2009), gravity field change (GRACE; 2003-2009) and bedrock uplift (GPS; 1995-2013). The data analysis is complemented by the forward-modelling of viscoelastic response functions to disc load forcing, allowing us to relate GIA-induced surface displacements with gravity changes for different rheological parameters of the solid Earth. The data and modelling results presented here form the basis for the joint inversion estimate of present-day ice-mass change and GIA in Antarctica. This paper presents the first of two contributions summarizing the work carried out within a European Space Agency funded study, REGINA.

Description: The rewetting of peatlands is a promising measure to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by preventing the further mineralization of the peat soil through aeration. In coastal peatland, the rewetting with brackish water can increase the GHG mitigation potential by the introduction of sulfate, a terminal electron acceptor (TEA). Sulfate is known to lower the CH4 production and thus, its emission by favoring the growth of sulfate-reducers, which outcompete methanogens for substrate. The data contain porewater variables such as pH, electrical conductivity (EC) and sulfate, chloride, dissolved CO2 and CH4 concentrations, as well as absolute abundances of methane- and sulfate-cycling microbial communities. The data were collected in spring and autumn 2019 after a storm surge with brackish water inflow in January 2019. Field sampling was conducted in the nature reserve Heiligensee and Hütelmoor in North-East Germany, close to the Southern Baltic Sea coast. We took peat cores using a Russian peat corer in addition to pore water diffusion samplers and plastic liners (length: 60cm; inner diameter 10 cm) at four locations along a transect from further inland towards the Baltic Sea. We wanted to compare the soil and pore water geochemistry as well as the microbial communities after the brackish water inflow to the common freshwater rewetting state. Pore water was extracted using pore water suction samplers in the lab and environmental variables were quantified with an ICP. Microbial samples were sampled from the peat core using sterile equipment. We used quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to characterize pools of DNA and cDNA targeting total and putatively active bacteria and archaea. qPCR was performed on key functional genes of methane production (mcrA), aerobic methane oxidation (pmoA) and sulfate reduction (dsrB) in addition to the 16S rRNA gene for the absolute abundance of total prokaryotes. Furthermore, we retrieved soil plugs to determine the concentrations and isotopic signatures of dissolved trace gases (CO2/DIC and CH4) in the pore water.

Description: Despite the importance of surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. In situ observational data of SEB components - useful for research and model validation - are collected at relatively few sites across the terrestrial Arctic, and not all available datasets are readily interoperable. Furthermore, the terrestrial Arctic consists of a diversity of vegetation types, which are generally not well represented in land surface schemes of current Earth system models. This dataset contains metadata information about surface energy budget components measured at 64 tundra and glacier sites 〉60° N across the Arctic. This information was taken from the open-access repositories FLUXNET, Ameriflux, AON, GC-Net and PROMICE. The contained datasets are associated with the publication vegetation type as an important predictor of the Arctic Summer Land Surface Energy Budget by Oehri et al. 2022, and intended to support research of surface energy budgets and their relationship with environmental conditions, in particular vegetation characteristics across the terrestrial Arctic.

Description: Despite the importance of surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. In situ observational data of SEB components - useful for research and model validation - are collected at relatively few sites across the terrestrial Arctic, and not all available datasets are readily interoperable. Furthermore, the terrestrial Arctic consists of a diversity of vegetation types, which are generally not well represented in land surface schemes of current Earth system models. This dataset comprises harmonized, standardized and aggregated in-situ observations of surface energy budget components measured at 64 sites on vegetated and glaciated sites north of 60° latitude, in the time period from 1994 till 2021. The surface energy budget components include net radiation, sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, ground heat flux, net shortwave radiation, net longwave radiation, surface temperature and albedo, which were aggregated to daily mean, minimum and maximum values from hourly and half-hourly measurements. Data were retrieved from the monitoring networks FLUXNET, AmeriFlux, AON, GC-Net and PROMICE.

Description: Despite the importance of surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. In-situ observational data of SEB components - useful for research and model validation - are collected at relatively few sites across the terrestrial Arctic, and not all available datasets are readily interoperable. Furthermore, the terrestrial Arctic consists of a diversity of vegetation types, which are generally not well represented in land surface schemes of current Earth system models. Therefore, we here provide four datasets comprising: 1. Harmonized, standardized and aggregated in situ observations of SEB components at 64 vegetated and glaciated sites north of 60° latitude, in the time period 1994-2021 2. A description of all study sites and associated environmental conditions, including the vegetation types, which correspond to the classification of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM, Raynolds et al. 2019). 3. Data generated in a literature synthesis from 358 study sites on vegetation or glacier (〉=60°N latitude) covered by 148 publications. 4. Metadata, including data contributor information and measurement heights of variables associated with Oehri et al. 2022.