ALBERT

Description: Cloud and aerosol information is needed in trace gas retrievals from satellite measurements. The Fast REtrieval Scheme for Clouds from the Oxygen A band (FRESCO) cloud algorithm employs reflectance spectra of the O2 A band around 760 nm to derive cloud pressure and effective cloud fraction. In general, clouds contribute more to the O2 A band reflectance than aerosols. Therefore, the FRESCO algorithm does not correct for aerosol effects in the retrievals and attributes the retrieved cloud information entirely to the presence of clouds, and not to aerosols. For events with high aerosol loading, aerosols may have a dominant effect, especially for almost cloud-free scenes. We have analysed FRESCO cloud data and Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI) data from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME-2) instrument on the Metop-A satellite for events with typical absorbing aerosol types, such as volcanic ash, desert dust and smoke. We find that the FRESCO effective cloud fractions are correlated with the AAI data for these absorbing aerosol events and that the FRESCO cloud pressures contain information on aerosol layer pressure. For cloud-free scenes, the derived FRESCO cloud pressures are close to those of the aerosol layer for optically thick aerosols. For cloudy scenes, if the strongly absorbing aerosols are located above the clouds, then the retrieved FRESCO cloud pressures may represent the height of the aerosol layer rather than the height of the clouds. Combining FRESCO cloud data and AAI, an estimate for the aerosol layer pressure can be given, which can be beneficial for aviation safety and operations in case of e.g. volcanic ash plumes.

Description: Huabei is a part of eastern China located between 32° N and 42° N latitude. Administratively it is a region including Beijing and Tianjin Municipalities, Hebei and Shanxi Provinces, and Inner-Mongolia Autonomous Region. Over the past decades, the region has experienced dramatic changes in air quality and climate, and has become a major focus of environmental research in China. Here we present a new inventory of air pollutant emissions in Huabei for the year 2003 developed as part of the project Influence of Pollution on Aerosols and Cloud Microphysics in North China (IPAC-NC). Our estimates are based on the data from the statistical yearbooks of state and provinces as well as local districts including major sectors and activities of power generation, industrial energy consumption, industrial processing, civil energy consumption, crop straw burning, oil and solvent evaporation, manure, and motor vehicles. The emission factors are selected from a variety of literature and those from local measurements in China are used whenever available. The estimated total emissions in the Huabei administrative region in 2003 are 4.73 Tg SO2, 2.72 Tg NOx (in equivalent NO2), 1.77 Tg VOC, 24.14 Tg CO, 2.03 Tg NH3, 4.57 Tg PM10, 2.42 Tg PM2.5, 0.21 Tg EC, and 0.46 Tg OC. For model convenience, we consider a larger Huabei region with Shandong, Henan and Liaoning Provinces included in our inventory. The estimated total emissions in the larger Huabei region in 2003 are: 9.55 Tg SO2, 5.27 Tg NOx (in equivalent NO2), 3.82 Tg VOC, 46.59 Tg CO, 5.36 Tg NH3, 10.74 Tg PM10, 5.62 Tg PM2.5, 0.41 Tg EC, and 0.99 Tg OC. The estimated emission rates are projected into grid cells at a horizontal resolution of 0.1° latitude by 0.1° longitude. Our gridded emission inventory consists of area sources, which are classified into industrial, civil, traffic, and straw burning sectors, and large industrial point sources, which include 345 sets of power plants, iron and steel plants, cement plants, and chemical plants. The estimated regional NO2 emissions are about 2–3 % (administrative Huabei region) or 5 % (larger Huabei region) of the global anthropogenic NO2 emissions. We compare our inventory (IPAC-NC) with a global emission inventory EDGAR-CIRCE and an Asian emission inventory INTEX-B. While the total emissions in Huabei are comparable with each other, large differences up to a factor of 2–3 for local emissions in the areas such as the Beijing and Tianjin megacities are found. We expect that our inventory will provide more practical spatial distributions of air pollutant emissions in the Huabei region of China and can be applied for air pollution and chemistry research on this region in the future.

Description: No abstract available. doi:10.2204/iodp.sd.14.07.2012

Description: It has long been noticed that rapid short-term variations of high energy charged particle fluxes in near-Earth space occur more frequently several hours before the main shock of earthquakes. Physicists wish that this observation supply a possible precursor of strong earthquakes. Based on DEMETER data, we investigate statistical behaviors of flux fluctuations for high energy charged particles in near-Earth space. Long-term clustering, scaling, and universality in the temporal occurrence are found. There is high degree statistical similarity between high energy charged particle fluxes in near-Earth space and earthquakes. Thus, the observations of the high energy particle fluxes in near-Earth space may supply a useful tool in the study of earthquakes.

Description: Observing and monitoring the different components of the global water cycle and their dynamics are essential steps to understand the climate of the Earth, forecast the weather, predict natural disasters like floods and droughts, and improve water resources management. Earth observation technology is a unique tool to provide a global understanding of many of the essential variables governing the water cycle and monitor their evolution over time from global to basin scales. In the coming years an increasing number of Earth observation missions will provide an unprecedented capacity to quantify several of these variables on a routine basis. In this context, the European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), launched the Water Cycle Multi-Mission Observation Strategy (WACMOS) project in 2009. The project aims at developing and validating a novel set of geo-information products relevant to the water cycle covering the following thematic areas: evapotranspiration, soil moisture, cloud characterization and water vapour. The generation of these products is based on a number of innovative techniques and methods aiming at exploiting the synergies of different types of Earth observation data available today to the science community. This paper provides an overview of the major findings of the project with the ultimate goal of demonstrating the potential of innovative multi-mission based strategies to improve current observations by maximizing the synergistic use of the different types of information provided by the currently available observation systems.

Description: The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) has long espoused studies of deep subsurface life, and has targeted fundamental questions regarding subsurface life, including the following: "(1) What is the extent and diversity of deep microbial life and what are the factors limiting it? (2) What are the types of metabolism/carbon/energy sources and the rates of subsurface activity? (3) How is deep microbial life adapted to subsurface conditions? (4) How do subsurface microbial communities affect energy resources? And (5) how does the deep biosphere interact with the geosphere and atmosphere?" (Horsfield et al., 2014) Many ICDP-sponsored drilling projects have included a deep-life component; however, to date, not one project has been driven by deep-life goals, in part because geomicrobiologists have been slow to initiate deep biosphere-driven ICDP projects. Therefore, the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) recently partnered with the ICDP to sponsor a workshop with the specific aim of gathering potential proponents for deep-life-driven ICDP projects and ideas for candidate drilling sites. Twenty-two participants from nine countries proposed projects and sites that included compressional and extensional tectonic environments, evaporites, hydrocarbon-rich shales, flood basalts, Precambrian shield rocks, subglacial and subpermafrost environments, active volcano–tectonic systems, megafan deltas, and serpentinizing ultramafic environments. The criteria and requirements for successful ICDP applications were presented. Deep-life-specific technical requirements were discussed and it was concluded that, while these procedures require adequate planning, they are entirely compatible with the sampling needs of other disciplines. As a result of this workshop, one drilling workshop proposal on the Basin and Range Physiographic Province (BRPP) has been submitted to the ICDP, and several other drilling project proponents plan to submit proposals for ICDP-sponsored drilling workshops in 2016.

Description: Monsoon has earned increasing attention from the climate community since the last century, yet only recently regional monsoons have been recognized as a global system. It remains a debated issue, however, as to what extent and at which time scales the global monsoon can be viewed as a major mode of climate variability. For this purpose a PAGES Working Group (WG) was set up to investigate the concept of the global monsoon and its future research directions. The WG's synthesis is presented here. On the basis of observation and proxy data, the WG found that the regional monsoons can vary coherently, although not perfectly, at various time scales, ranging from interannual, interdecadal, centennial and millennial, up to orbital and tectonics time scales, conforming the global monsoon concept across time scales. Within the global monsoon system each subsystem has its own features depending on its geographic and topographic conditions. Discrimination of global and regional components in the monsoon system is a key to reveal the driving factors of monsoon variations, hence the global monsoon concept helps to enhance our understanding and to improve future projection of the regional monsoons. This paper starts with a historical review of the global monsoon concept in both modern and paleo-climatology, and an assessment of monsoon proxies used in regional and global scales. The main body of the paper is devoted to a summary of observation data at various time scales, providing evidence for the coherent global monsoon system. The paper concludes with a projection of future monsoon shifts into a warming world. The synthesis will be followed by a companying paper to discuss driving mechanisms and outstanding issues in the global monsoon studies.

Description: Monsoon has earned increasing attention from the climate community since the last century, yet only recently have regional monsoons been recognized as a global system. It remains a debated issue, however, as to what extent and at which timescales the global monsoon can be viewed as a major mode of climate variability. For this purpose, a PAGES (Past Global Changes) working group (WG) was set up to investigate the concept of the global monsoon and its future research directions. The WG's synthesis is presented here. On the basis of observation and proxy data, the WG found that the regional monsoons can vary coherently, although not perfectly, at various timescales, varying between interannual, interdecadal, centennial, millennial, orbital and tectonic timescales, conforming to the global monsoon concept across timescales. Within the global monsoon system, each subsystem has its own features, depending on its geographic and topographic conditions. Discrimination between global and regional components in the monsoon system is a key to revealing the driving factors in monsoon variations; hence, the global monsoon concept helps to enhance our understanding and to improve future projections of the regional monsoons. This paper starts with a historical review of the global monsoon concept in both modern and paleo-climatology, and an assessment of monsoon proxies used in regional and global scales. The main body of the paper is devoted to a summary of observation data at various timescales, providing evidence of the coherent global monsoon system. The paper concludes with a projection of future monsoon shifts in a warming world. The synthesis will be followed by a companion paper addressing driving mechanisms and outstanding issues in global monsoon studies.

Description: Prochlorococcus, the smallest but most abundant marine primary producer, plays an important role in carbon cycling of the global ocean. As a phototroph, Prochlorococcus is thought to be confined to the euphotic zone, with commonly observed maximum depths of ∼150–200 m. But here we show, using flow cytometry and cellular ribosomal content, for the first time the presence of abundant and active Prochlorococcus in the dark ocean ("deep Prochlorococcus" hereafter). Intensive studies at the Luzon strait in the western Pacific Ocean show that the deep Prochlorococcus populations are exported from the euphotic zone. Multiple physical processes including internal solitary waves could be responsible for the transportation. The unexpected abundance of the tiny phototrophs in the dark ocean reveals a novel mechanism for picoplankton carbon export other than the known mechanisms such as sinking of phytodetritus and aggregates or grazing-mediated transportation. Such direct transportation of picoplanktonic phototrophs from surface to deep waters is poorly understood, but could significantly contribute to both the biological pump (through particulate organic carbon) and the microbial carbon pump (through release of dissolved organic carbon from microbial processes) for carbon sequestration in the ocean.

Description: We present results from a new marine plankton model that combines selective biogeochemical processes with genetic information. The model allows for phytoplankton to adapt to a changing environment by invoking different utilization pathways for acquisition of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) in response to concentration changes. The simulations use simplified environmental conditions represented by a continuously stirred tank reactor, which is populated by 96 different types of phytoplankton that differ in their physiological characteristics and nutrient uptake/metabolism genes. The results show that the simulated phytoplankton community structure is conceptually consistent with observed regional and global phytoplankton biogeography, the genome content from the dominant types of phytoplankton reflects the imposed environmental constraints, and the transcription of the gene clusters is qualitatively simulated according to the environmental changes. The model shows the feasibility of including genomic knowledge into a biogeochemical model and is suited to understanding and predicting changes in marine microbial community structure and function, and to simulating the biological response to rapid environmental changes.