Convergence or divergence?: Status and prospects for US climate strategy

The objective of this paper is to assess recent developments and prospects for future changes in United States (US) climate strategy. In doing so, the paper explores some of the key factors that have shaped strategies and policies to date, distinguishing between factors related to institutional and governance structures, linkages between science and policy, energy technology and the role of interest groups. Against this background, the paper attempts to explore future development paths for US climate policy. More specifically, the paper assesses opportunities for policy changes compared to the preferences of the current administration, and the prospects for future linkages between US and international climate change strategies. In brief, the paper argues that substantial changes are unlikely to take place in the near to medium term, leaving open, however, the possibility of wide-ranging changes in domestic politics or major incidents that could facilitate a shift in the perceived need for near-term action.     

Credited forest carbon sinks: how the cost reduction is allocated among countries and sectors

Forest carbon sinks have been included in the Kyoto Protocol as one of the mechanisms for mitigating climate change. Consequently, credited sinks decrease the need to reduce emissions. We analyse in detail both the economywide and the sectoral effects of inclusion of carbon sinks as agreed upon in Bonn and Marrakesh for the first commitment period of 2008–2012. The focus of our analysis is the special treatment for Canada and Japan that allows them larger sinks. The analysis is performed with the multi-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) model GTAP-E.New Zealand benefits most from the inclusion of sinks as it gains large carbon sinks from afforestation. Also in Sweden, Canada and Japan the costs of achieving the emission target are considerably reduced. Of these countries, only Canada has high costs without sinks. Thus credited sinks partly reduce the difference in economic burden of achieving the Kyoto target among countries. Even though larger sinks clearly benefit Canada and Japan, their effect on other countries, either on the economywide or on the sectoral level, remains marginal. Allowing larger sinks is, indeed, of relatively minor importance for the world economy and emission reduction, compared to the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.     

Rapid development of an unusual peat-accumulating ecosystem in the Chilean Altiplano

Stratigraphic relationships, radiocarbon dating, sediment and peat characteristics, and rates of peat and carbon accumulation from a soligenous peatland, or “bofedal,” in the Chilean Altiplano shows the peatland to be unusually young, dynamic, and sensitive to environmental changes. The site lies in the National Park Nevado de Tres Cruces in the puna desert grassland at an elevation of 4300 m a.s.l. Eight peat cores were extracted from a 1.75-km transect yielding a maximum of 3.6 m of organic sediment. Organic matter began to accumulate 1700-1100 cal yr B.P. under a progressively arid local climate, after a period when regional climate is believed to have been more humid than at present. Areas of greater relief and better drainage in the valley bottom eventually fostered the growth of a riparian cushion plant community after water flowing down the valley began to diminish. This led to rapid lateral expansion of the riparian peatland communities over open water in topographic depressions at a rate heretofore unprecedented in the peatland literature. It appears that development of the peatland has been encouraged by autoregulation of internal hydrology. The drainage impediment created by organic mass accumulation in lower-relief areas probably reduced the amount of water arriving at the lower reaches of the peatland. These areas have become progressively drier and have since died and oxidized. Through endogenous peat accumulation and a concomitant drainage impediment, the ecosystem has been migrating upstream over the past 50 years.     

天山地震活动区地下水中碳同位素的初步研究

介绍了中国新疆维吾尔自治区地震局和乌兹别克斯坦共和国科学院地震研究所近 1 0年来地震科技合作在地下水碳同位素方面的基本研究成果。结合天山主要地震活动区 2 0 0余个水点的碳同位素观测资料 (其中乌鲁木齐地下水中碳同位素资料是第一次公布 ) ,分析了水中碳同位素的区域分布规律、来源及影响因素 ,探讨了碳同位素地震前兆异常的某些特征。     

人工神经网络法在烃源岩测井评价中的应用

运用有机地球化学方法分析岩芯、岩屑样品的有机炭含量存在着昂贵、时且不准确等问题。利用测井方法的优点是经济、准确。在测井评价中使用人工神经网络法具有极大的优越性和适用性。本文结合Kohonen和BP网络方法，完成了塔里木台盆区19口井的寒武、奥陶系烃源岩层段的识别与评价，并通过测井资料处理成果和岩芯有机地化资料、地质录井情况的相互检验，证实，其本上能够满足评价烃源岩的需要，从而为利用测井资料进行烃源岩评价做出了新的尝试。     

Century-scale nitrogen and phosphorus controls of the carbon cycle

In recent decades, humans have become a very important force in the Earth system, demonstrating that emissions (gaseous, liquid, and solid) are the cause of many of our environmental issues. These emissions are responsible for major global reorganizations of the biogeochemical cycles. The oceans are now a net sink of atmospheric CO₂, whereas in their preindustrial state they were a source; the trophic state of the coastal oceans is progressively moving toward increased heterotrophy; and the terrestrial realm is now vacillating between trophic states, whereas in preindustrial times it was autotrophic. In this paper, we present model calculations that underscore the role of human-induced perturbations in changing Earth's climate, specifically the role of anthropogenic nitrogen and phosphorus in controlling processes in the global carbon cycle since the year 1850 with projections to the year 2035. Our studies show that since the late 1940's emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus have been sequestered in the terrestrial living phytomass and groundwater. This nutrient-enhanced fertilization of terrestrial biota, coupled with rising atmospheric CO₂ and global temperature, has induced a sink of anthropogenic CO₂ that roughly balances the emission of CO₂ owing to land use change. In the year 2000, for example, the model-calculated terrestrial biotic sink was 1730 Mtons C/year, while the emission of CO₂ from changes in land use was 1820 Mtons C/year, a net flux of 90 Mtons C/year emitted to the atmosphere. In the global aquatic environment, enhanced terrestrial inputs of biotically reactive phosphorus (about 8.5 Mtons P/year) and inorganic nitrogen (about 54 Mtons N/year), have induced increased new production and burial of organic carbon in marine sediments, which is a small sink of anthropogenic CO₂. It is predicted that the response of the global land reservoirs of C, N, and P to sustained anthropogenic perturbations will be maintained in the same direction of change over the range of projected scenarios of global population increase and temperature change for the next 35 years. The magnitude of change is significantly larger when the global temperature increase is maximum, especially with respect to the processes of remobilization of the biotically important nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus.     

Correlation between black carbon aerosols, carbon monoxide and tropospheric ozone over a tropical urban site

Black carbon aerosols plays an important role in the earth's radiative balance and little is known of their concentrations, distributions, source strength, and especially the aerosol chemistry of the developing world. The present study addresses the impact of back carbon aerosols on different atmospheric species like CO and tropospheric ozone over an urban environment, namely Hyderabad, India. Ozone concentration varies from 14 to 63 ppbv over the study area. Diurnal variations of ozone suggest that ozone concentration starts increasing gradually after sunrise, attaining a maximum value by evening time and decreasing gradually thereafter. Black carbon (BC) aerosol mass concentrations varies from 1471 to 11,175 ng m⁻³. The diurnal variations of BC suggest that the concentrations are increased by a factor of 2 during morning (06:00–09:00 h) and evening hours (18:00 to 22:00 h) compared to afternoon hours. Positive correlation has been observed between BC and CO (r²=0.74) with an average slope of 6.4×10⁻³ g BC/g CO. The slope between black carbon aerosol mass concentration and tropospheric ozone suggests that every 1 μg m⁻³ increase in black carbon aerosol mass concentration causes a 3.5 μg m⁻³ reduction in tropospheric ozone. The results have been discussed in detail in the paper.     

Restricted utility of δC of bulk organic matter as a record of paleovegetation in some loess-paleosol sequences in the Chinese Loess Plateau

Molecular stratigraphic analyses using gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry have been performed in the upper section (S₀, L₁, S₁) of the Yuanbo loess-paleosol sequences in northwest China, with a record extending from the last interglaciation through the present interglaciation. The CPI (Carbon Preference Index) values of both n-alkanols and n-alkan-2-ones display variations between loess deposits and paleosols, showing a correlation with the magnetic susceptibility record, an indicator of the East Asian summer monsoon. The observed variations in the indexes in relation to changes in lithology/paleoclimate are proposed to result from microbial degradation of higher plant lipids in the paleosols. The CPI values of n-alkanes, n-alkanols, and n-alkan-2-ones are negatively correlated with δ¹³C of bulk organic matter. The correlations suggest that the observed glacial-interglacial variations of δ¹³C data in the loess stratigraphy reflect the relative importance of the contribution of paleovegetation compared with microorganisms (including both the degradation and the addition of organic matter) and allochthonous loess/soil parent materials. It is thus necessary to evaluate the contributions of the latter two before the paleovegetation can be reconstructed based on the δ¹³C analysis of bulk organic matter in some loess-paleosol sequences of the Chinese Loess Plateau.     

Parameterizing turbulent exchange over sea ice: the ice station weddell results

A 4-month deployment on Ice Station Weddell (ISW) in the western Weddell Sea yielded over 2000 h of nearly continuous surface-level meteorological data, including eddy-covariance measurements of the turbulent surface fluxes of momentum, and sensible and latent heat. Those data lead to a new parameterization for the roughness length for wind speed, z₀, for snow-covered sea ice that combines three regimes: an aerodynamically smooth regime, a high-wind saltation regime, and an intermediate regime between these two extremes where the macroscale or `permanent' roughness of the snow and ice determines z₀. Roughness lengths for temperature, z_T, computed from this data set corroborate the theoretical model that Andreas published in 1987. Roughness lengths for humidity,z_Q, do not support this model as conclusively but are all, on average, within an order of magnitude of its predictions. Only rarely arez_Tand z_Q equal to z₀. These parameterizations have implications for models that treat the atmosphere-ice-ocean system.