Abstract. A biogenic emission scheme based on the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) version 2.1 (Guenther et al., 2012) has been integrated into the ECHAM6-HAMMOZ chemistry climate model in order to calculate the emissions from terrestrial vegetation of 32 compounds. The estimated annual global total for the reference simulation is 634 Tg C yr−1 (simulation period 2000–2012). Isoprene is the main contributor to the average emission total, accounting for 66 % (417 Tg C yr−1), followed by several monoterpenes (12 %), methanol (7 %), acetone (3.6 %), and ethene (3.6 %). Regionally, most of the high annual emissions are found to be associated with tropical regions and tropical vegetation types. In order to evaluate the implementation of the biogenic model in ECHAM-HAMMOZ, global and regional biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions of the reference simulation were compared to previous published experiment results with MEGAN. Several sensitivity simulations were performed to study the impact of different model input and parameters related to the vegetation cover and the ECHAM6 climate. BVOC emissions obtained here are within the range of previous published estimates. The large range of emission estimates can be attributed to the use of different input data and empirical coefficients within different setups of MEGAN. The biogenic model shows a high sensitivity to the changes in plant functional type (PFT) distributions and associated emission factors for most of the compounds. The global emission impact for isoprene is about −9 %, but reaches +75 % for α-pinene when switching from global emission factor maps to PFT-specific emission factor distributions. The highest sensitivity of isoprene emissions is calculated when considering soil moisture impact, with a global decrease of 12.5 % when the soil moisture activity factor is included in the model parameterization. Nudging ECHAM6 climate towards ERA-Interim reanalysis has an impact on the biogenic emissions, slightly lowering the global total emissions and their interannual variability.
Zusammenfassung. Wer vor Publikum auftreten muss, bereitet die Inhalte oft minutiös vor. Dem «Wie» einer Präsentation und dem eigenen Auftreten wird hingegen oft nur am Rande Beachtung geschenkt. Ein Workshop für Studierende der Höheren Fachschule Pflege hat mit Elementen aus der Theaterpädagogik an diesem Punkt angesetzt. Im Zentrum stand nicht die Bewältigung von individuellen Defiziten, sondern das Finden einer Grundhaltung: «Es gelingt».
Over the last years, several repositories with curated environmental datasets have been created so that scientific communities have gained access to large collections of data from various domains. The level of data harmonisation and FAIRness, technical readiness and scalability of these repositories differs substantially. This restricts data exploration opportunities and limits scientific exploration with modern data science methods, such as machine learning. In­ the domain of air quality research, we have pioneered a data infrastructure for global observations of surface ozone and other air pollutant measurements that comes with rich possibilities for online data analysis. The data in the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) database is collected from about 40 different resource providers, from national and international environmental agencies to individual research groups around the world.One of these data providers is OpenAQ, the world's first open, real-time air quality platform. Due to the higher standards of curation, the need for data harmonization, and the enriched metadata in the TOAR database, we had to develop an automated workflow to transport archived and real-time data from this provider to the TOAR database. The primary step is to clean and format all the OpenAQ records, according to the TOAR database schema, and concurrently, refine the metadata. The workflow includes tests for data sanity and checks if time series and station metadata can be amended, or whether new time series or station records must be created. The automation manager triggers the workflow hourly, so the database provides clean and updated air quality data at any time. The presentation describes the automated workflow and its design principles and discusses how such a workflow might be re-used in other environmental domains. All TOAR-related codes are open source.
Abstract. A biogenic emission scheme based on the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) version 2.1 (Guenther et al., 2012) has been integrated into the ECHAM6-HAMMOZ chemistry climate model in order to calculate the emissions from terrestrial vegetation of 32 compounds. The estimated annual global total for the simulation period (2000–2012) is 634 Tg C yr−1. Isoprene is the main contributor to the average emission total accounting for 66 % (417 Tg C yr−1), followed by several monoterpenes (12 %), methanol (7 %), acetone (3.6 %) and ethene (3.6 %). Regionally, most of the high annual emissions are found to be associated to tropical regions and tropical vegetation types. In order to evaluate the implementation of the biogenic model in ECHAM-HAMMOZ, global and regional BVOC emissions of the reference simulation were compared to previous published experiment results with the MEGAN model. Several sensitivity simulations were performed to study the impact of different model input and parameters related to the vegetation cover and the ECHAM6 climate. BVOC emissions obtained with the biogenic model are within the range of previous published estimates. The large range of emission estimates can be attributed to the use of different input data and empirical coefficients within different setups of the MEGAN model. The biogenic model shows a high sensitivity to the changes in plant functional type (PFT) distributions and associated emission factors for most of the compounds. The global emission impact for isoprene is about −9 %, but reaches +75 % for α-pinene when switching to PFT-dependent emission factor distributions. Isoprene emissions show the highest sensitivity to soil moisture impact, with a global decrease of 12.5 % when the soil moisture activity factor is included in the model parameterization. Nudging ECHAM6 climate towards ERA-Interim reanalysis has impact on the biogenic emissions, slightly lowering the global total emissions and their interannual variability.
Abstract. Atmospheric methane concentrations increased considerably from pre-industrial (PI) to present times largely due to anthropogenic emissions. However, firn and ice core records also document a notable rise of methane levels between the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the pre-industrial era, the exact cause of which is not entirely clear. This study investigates these changes by analyzing the methane sources and sinks at each of these climatic periods. Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane and play a key role in determining methane budget changes in particular in the absence of anthropogenic sources. Here, a simple wetland parameterization suitable for coarse-scale climate simulations over long periods is introduced, which is derived from a high-resolution map of surface slopes together with various soil hydrology parameters from the CARAIB vegetation model. This parameterization was implemented in the chemistry general circulation model ECHAM5-MOZ and multi-year time slices were run for LGM, PI and present-day (PD) climate conditions. Global wetland emissions from our parameterization are 72 Tg yr−1 (LGM), 115 Tg yr−1 (PI), and 132 Tg yr−1 (PD). These estimates are lower than most previous studies, and we find a stronger increase of methane emissions between LGM and PI. Taking into account recent findings that suggest more stable OH concentrations than assumed in previous studies, the observed methane distributions are nevertheless well reproduced under the different climates. Hence, this is one of the first studies where a consistent model approach has been successfully applied for simulating methane concentrations over a wide range of climate conditions.
The significance of bottom-up approaches initiated by civil society as well as the importance of the local level as the level for implementation is often overlooked when dealing with megacity developments. The main aim of this volume is to retrospectively trace participatory and local action approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas from seven case studies of the programme. By bringing together experiences gained from pilot projects and action research, the volume narrates the “stories behind” individual activities and co-operation processes, illustrates ingenuous results and lessons learned, and formulates overarching conclusions and recommendations for future participatory field research and realisation of urban development projects.
