Conditional probabilistic estimates of 21st century greenhouse gas emissions based on the storylines of the IPCC-SRES scenarios

The conditional probabilistic scenario analysis combines statistical methods of uncertainty analysis at parameter level with storylines which recognize the deep uncertainty that exists for several underlying trends. The model calculations indicate that cumulative 21st century emissions could range from 800 to 2500 GtC in the absence of climate policy. This range originates partly from the underlying storylines, and partly from the probabilistic analysis. Among the most important parameters contributing to the uncertainty range are uncertainty in income growth, population growth, parameters determining energy demand, oil resources and fuel preferences. The contribution of these factors is also scenario-dependent.     

松辽盆地徐家围子断陷火山岩气藏天然气成因类型和气源对比

松辽盆地徐家围子断陷发育营城组火山岩气藏.钻井统计、地球化学特征及天然气组份分析和碳同位素研究表明徐中和徐东地区天然气源岩有机质偏腐泥型,生气潜力更大.对主力源岩层沙河子组和次要源岩层营城组源岩分布有了新的认识.对营城组天然气的烃类气体和CO₂气的来源进行对比和探讨,认为烃类气受气源的控制,CO₂气藏受深大断裂的控制,与火山岩分布关系不大.连通地幔的气藏中,也没有发现无机烃类气体聚集.徐家围子断陷营城组天然气以烃类气占绝对优势,而且主要为甲烷,二氧化碳成藏并不普遍.天然气甲烷成因类型以煤型气为主,甲烷碳同位素变化范围较小.乙烷、丙烷和丁烷碳同位素均有较大的变化范围,而且具有较好的相关性,说明母质类型多样,乙烷、丙烷和丁烷具有相同的来源.含量大于50%的二氧化碳来源于地幔,属无机成因.含量小于50%的二氧化碳既有无机成因,也有有机成因.     

It starts at home? Climate policies targeting household consumption and behavioral decisions are key to low-carbon futures

Through their consumption behavior, households are responsible for 72% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, they are key actors in reaching the 1.5 °C goal under the Paris Agreement. However, the possible contribution and position of households in climate policies is neither well understood, nor do households receive sufficiently high priority in current climate policy strategies. This paper investigates how behavioral change can achieve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in European high-income countries. It uses theoretical thinking and some core results from the HOPE research project, which investigated household preferences for reducing emissions in four European cities in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden. The paper makes five major points: First, car and plane mobility, meat and dairy consumption, as well as heating are the most dominant components of household footprints. Second, household living situations (demographics, size of home) greatly influence the household potential to reduce their footprint, even more than country or city location. Third, household decisions can be sequential and temporally dynamic, shifting through different phases such as childhood, adulthood, and illness. Fourth, short term voluntary efforts will not be sufficient by themselves to reach the drastic reductions needed to achieve the 1.5 °C goal; instead, households need a regulatory framework supporting their behavioral changes. Fifth, there is a mismatch between the roles and responsibilities conveyed by current climate policies and household perceptions of responsibility. We then conclude with further recommendations for research and policy.     

It starts at home? Climate policies targeting household consumption and behavioral decisions are key to low-carbon futures

Through their consumption behavior, households are responsible for 72% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, they are key actors in reaching the 1.5 °C goal under the Paris Agreement. However, the possible contribution and position of households in climate policies is neither well understood, nor do households receive sufficiently high priority in current climate policy strategies. This paper investigates how behavioral change can achieve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in European high-income countries. It uses theoretical thinking and some core results from the HOPE research project, which investigated household preferences for reducing emissions in four European cities in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden. The paper makes five major points: First, car and plane mobility, meat and dairy consumption, as well as heating are the most dominant components of household footprints. Second, household living situations (demographics, size of home) greatly influence the household potential to reduce their footprint, even more than country or city location. Third, household decisions can be sequential and temporally dynamic, shifting through different phases such as childhood, adulthood, and illness. Fourth, short term voluntary efforts will not be sufficient by themselves to reach the drastic reductions needed to achieve the 1.5 °C goal; instead, households need a regulatory framework supporting their behavioral changes. Fifth, there is a mismatch between the roles and responsibilities conveyed by current climate policies and household perceptions of responsibility. We then conclude with further recommendations for research and policy.     

日光温室的纹理特征分层提取

针对高分辨率影像上日光温室的信息提取问题,该文提出了利用支持向量机、最近邻算法结合纹理特征在不同层上分别提取连片日光温室和独栋日光温室的方法。实验表明:纹理特征能提高分类精度,在大尺度的层上,分类精度提升幅度较大,但在小尺度的层上,分类精度提升幅度会比较小;并不是参与运算特征数越多,分类精度越高,多数情况下光谱+纹理组合的分类精度最高;提取连片日光温室的最优方案是支持向量机和光谱+形状+纹理(7像素×7像素),总精度为92.86%,Kappa系数为0.90,而提取独栋日光温室最优方案为SVM和光谱+纹理(11像素×11像素),总精度为88.39%,Kappa系数为0.86。     

Emission of methane and nitrous oxides from agricultural soils and related global warming potentials of Murshidabad District,West Bengal

Agricultural activities emit substantial amounts of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxides (N2O), the two important greenhouse gases (GHG) with high global warming potentials (GWP). So far, many studies have already been carried out at national and state level, but lack micro‐level (district or block‐level) inventory in India. The present study sheds light on the flux of CH4 and N2O (from all possible sources) from agricultural soil of various blocks in the Murshidabad district, based on the inventory prepared, using the IPCC methodology, with adjusted emission factors and coefficients appropriate for the local level. The economy of the Murshidabad district almost completely rests on agriculture as more than 80 per cent of the population is directly or indirectly dependent on it for their livelihood. Paddy is the dominating crop, cultivated on more than 60 per cent of the gross cropped area. The present work is based on the review of various literature and reports collected from respective state government offices and websites. Results show that CH4 and N2O emission from the agricultural fields are 126.405 Gg and 0.652 Gg respectively for the year 2011?12 with a large scale spatial variation (block‐level) within the district.     

温室气体强迫与东亚亚热带季风演变耦合效应及动力机制研究

基于主要温室气体（CO₂、CH₄和N₂O）强迫因子和石笋δ¹⁸О观测资料（1~2002 年）,分别利用关联性耦合模型和非线性统计-动力学方法,分析温室气体强迫与东亚亚热带季风演变耦合度的时序规律和定量反演模拟温室气体强迫对近2 000 a东亚亚热带季风演变影响的非线性趋势和相对贡献。研究发现：① 温室气体与季风演变耦合度的高低对应季风的强弱变化,即两者耦合作用越强,东亚亚热带季风越强;反之,两者耦合强度越小,东亚亚热带季风越弱;耦合度峰谷值对应季风极强降水和极端干旱时段。② 时序演变规律为：N₂O和CO₂相互作用与季风演变间耦合效应最强,成为东亚亚热带季风演变的主要驱动力。其次,N₂O一次项和CO₂非线性项对季风演变起主要的负反馈调节机制。③ 时序演变阶段上有所不同：1~180年,CH₄因子对季风演变主要起负反馈调节机制;180~1760年和1760~2002年,对季风演变起主要的驱动和调节机制分别为CO₂因子和N₂O因子;但1900年后N₂O和CO₂相互作用与季风演变的耦合驱动效应近百年来明显增强,耦合度在中等-较强（或极强）之间来回波动转换,耦合作用明显增强,在耦合度由较强（或极强）转弱至中等时,东亚亚热带季风也随之减弱。     

The impact of shale gas on the costs of climate policy

The use of shale gas is commonly considered as a low-cost option for meeting ambitious climate policy targets. This article explores global and country-specific effects of increasing global shale gas exploitation on the energy markets, on greenhouse gas emissions, and on mitigation costs. The global techno-economic partial equilibrium model POLES (Prospective Outlook on Long-term Energy Systems) is employed to compare policies which limit global warming to 2°C and baseline scenarios when the availability of shale gas is either high or low. According to the simulation results, a high availability of shale gas has rather small effects on the costs of meeting climate targets in the medium and long term. In the long term, a higher availability of shale gas increases baseline emissions of greenhouse gases for most countries and for the world, and leads to higher compliance costs for most, but not all, countries. Allowing for global trading of emission certificates does not alter these general results. In sum, these findings cast doubt on shale gas’s potential as a low-cost option for meeting ambitious global climate targets.

POLICY RELEVANCE

Many countries with a large shale gas resource base consider the expansion of local shale gas extraction as an option to reduce their GHG emissions. The findings in this article imply that a higher availability of shale gas in these countries might actually increase emissions and mitigation costs for these countries and also for the world. An increase in shale gas extraction may spur a switch from coal to gas electricity generation, thus lowering emissions. At the global level and for many countries, though, this effect is more than offset by a crowding out of renewable and nuclear energy carriers, and by lower energy prices, leading to higher emissions and higher mitigation costs in turn. These findings would warrant a re-evaluation of the climate strategy in most countries relying on the exploitation of shale gas to meet their climate targets.     

Tower-Based Greenhouse Gas Measurement Network Design——The National Institute of Standards and Technology North East Corridor Testbed

The North–East Corridor(NEC) Testbed project is the 3rd of three NIST(National Institute of Standards and Technology) greenhouse gas emissions testbeds designed to advance greenhouse gas measurements capabilities. A design approach for a dense observing network combined with atmospheric inversion methodologies is described. The Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting Model with the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport model were used to derive the sensitivity of hypothetical observations to surface greenhouse gas emissions(footprints). Unlike other network design algorithms, an iterative selection algorithm, based on a k-means clustering method, was applied to minimize the similarities between the temporal response of each site and maximize sensitivity to the urban emissions contribution. Once a network was selected, a synthetic inversion Bayesian Kalman filter was used to evaluate observing system performance. We present the performances of various measurement network configurations consisting of differing numbers of towers and tower locations. Results show that an overly spatially compact network has decreased spatial coverage, as the spatial information added per site is then suboptimal as to cover the largest possible area, whilst networks dispersed too broadly lose capabilities of constraining flux uncertainties. In addition, we explore the possibility of using a very high density network of lower cost and performance sensors characterized by larger uncertainties and temporal drift. Analysis convergence is faster with a large number of observing locations, reducing the response time of the filter. Larger uncertainties in the observations implies lower values of uncertainty reduction. On the other hand, the drift is a bias in nature, which is added to the observations and,therefore, biasing the retrieved fluxes.     

An Intercomparison of NO2 and OClO Measurements at Arrival Heights, Antarctica during Austral Spring 1996

For several years NO2 and OClO, two species important to understanding ozone destruction in the Antarctic stratosphere, have been measured at Arrival Heights, Antarctica by two groups: New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and the NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Using data independently collected by these two groups during the Austral spring of 1996, it is shown that the two data sets are in extremely close agreement. Besides offering validation of the instrumentation and analysis techniques of both groups, this result provides confidence in the more complete history of these species gained by combining the two data sets.