ALBERT

Beschreibung: The recently selected missions to Venus have opened a new era for the exploration of this planet. These missions will provide information about the chemistry of the atmosphere, the geomorphology, local-to-regional surface composition, and the rheology of the interior. One key scientific question to be addressed by these future missions is whether Venus remains volcanically active, and if so, how its volcanism is currently evolving. Hence, it is fundamental to analyze appropriate terrestrial analog sites for the study of possibly active volcanism on Venus. To this regard, we propose Mount Etna - one of the most active and monitored volcanoes on Earth - as a suitable terrestrial laboratory for remote and in-situ investigations to be performed by future missions to Venus. Being characterized by both effusive and explosive volcanic products, Mount Etna offers the opportunity to analyze multiple eruptive styles, both monitoring active volcanism and identifying the possible occurrence of pyroclastic activity on Venus. We directly compare Mount Etna with Idunn Mons, one of the most promising potentially active volcanoes of Venus. Despite the two structures show a different topography, they also show some interesting points of comparison, and in particular: a) comparable morpho-structural setting, since both volcanoes interact with a rift zone, and b) morphologically similar volcanic fields around both Mount Etna and Idunn Mons. Given its ease of access, we also propose Mount Etna as an analog site for laboratory spectroscopic studies to identify the signatures of unaltered volcanic deposits on Venus.

Beschreibung: Published

Beschreibung: 115959

Beschreibung: OSV2: Complessità dei processi vulcanici: approcci multidisciplinari e multiparametrici

Beschreibung: JCR Journal

Beschreibung: Aerosols interact with radiation and clouds. Substantial progress made over the past 40 years in observing, understanding, and modeling these processes helped quantify the imbalance in the Earth's radiation budget caused by anthropogenic aerosols, called aerosol radiative forcing, but uncertainties remain large. This review provides a new range of aerosol radiative forcing over the industrial era based on multiple, traceable, and arguable lines of evidence, including modeling approaches, theoretical considerations, and observations. Improved understanding of aerosol absorption and the causes of trends in surface radiative fluxes constrain the forcing from aerosol-radiation interactions. A robust theoretical foundation and convincing evidence constrain the forcing caused by aerosol-driven increases in liquid cloud droplet number concentration. However, the influence of anthropogenic aerosols on cloud liquid water content and cloud fraction is less clear, and the influence on mixed-phase and ice clouds remains poorly constrained. Observed changes in surface temperature and radiative fluxes provide additional constraints. These multiple lines of evidence lead to a 68% confidence interval for the total aerosol effective radiative forcing of -1.6 to -0.6 W m−2, or -2.0 to -0.4 W m−2 with a 90% likelihood. Those intervals are of similar width to the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment but shifted toward more negative values. The uncertainty will narrow in the future by continuing to critically combine multiple lines of evidence, especially those addressing industrial-era changes in aerosol sources and aerosol effects on liquid cloud amount and on ice clouds. Key Points: - An assessment of multiple lines of evidence supported by a conceptual model provides ranges for aerosol radiative forcing of climate change - Aerosol effective radiative forcing is assessed to be between -1.6 and -0.6 W m−2 at the 16–84% confidence level - Although key uncertainties remain, new ways of using observations provide stronger constraints for models

Beschreibung: Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a key technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes in a feasible, substantial, and timely manner. For geological CO2 storage to be safe, reliable, and accepted by society, robust strategies for CO2 leakage detection, quantification and management are crucial. The STEMM-CCS (Strategies for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Carbon Capture and Storage) project aimed to provide techniques and understanding to enable and inform cost-effective monitoring of CCS sites in the marine environment. A controlled CO2 release experiment was carried out in the central North Sea, designed to mimic an unintended emission of CO2 from a subsurface CO2 storage site to the seafloor. A total of 675 kg of CO2 were released into the shallow sediments (~3 m 49 below seafloor), at flow rates between 6 and 143 kg/d. A combination of novel techniques, adapted versions of existing techniques, and well-proven standard techniques were used to detect, characterise and quantify gaseous and dissolved CO2 in the sediments and the overlying seawater. This paper provides an overview of this ambitious field experiment. We describe the preparatory work prior to the release experiment, the experimental layout and procedures, the methods tested, and summarise the main results and the lessons learnt.