Earth Systems

In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa’s second most populous city, came very close to running out of water as the multi-year “Day Zero” drought depleted its reservoirs. Since then, researchers from Stanford University determined that climate change had made this extreme drought five to six times more likely, and warned that a lot more Day Zero events could occur in regions with similar climates in the future.

Scientists project increased risk to water supplies in South Africa this century due to rising temperatures and declining rainfall

Existing climate targets neither consider nor identify the impact of successful pathways that also achieve an environment that supports and protects human health. In addition, we have limited knowledge of the landscape of various health risk drivers. This projects aims to assess the relative impact on health (of humans and nature) of global progress towards global temperature targets. Ultimately, these targets with be illustrated with analysis and visualization platforms of the health impacts across the nexus of nature’s resources (i.e. air, water, energy, land) and infrastructure.

The Impact of Climate Change on Global Health

Methane (CH4) accounts for up to 25% of atmospheric warming to date, but large uncertainty exists in methane emissions estimates from wetlands (the largest natural CH4 source) using biogeochemistry models. This uncertainty arises largely because wetland CH4 dynamics depend on a diverse array of poorly-represented physical, biological and chemical processes, as well as a large number of poorly-constrained uncertain parameters to characterize these processes.

Advancing Methane Biogeochemistry Modeling with Machine Learning Technique

This project will apply the Darwin ocean ecology model and ECCO-MITgcm estimates of ocean circulation to study the relationship between upper ocean community production, particulate organic carbon export fluxes, interior ocean remineralization, and biological carbon stores, and compare observations with biogeochemical budget computations. 

Using a data-constrained global-ocean ecology and biogeochemistry model to study the role of ocean circulation and the biological pump in driving ocean carbon cycle variability

Atmospheric transport and inversion modeling will be used to assess the role of boreal forests affected by wildfires in the regional carbon budget and global atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Orbiting Carbon Observatory CO2 data and ecosystem model simulated carbon fluxes will be used as a prior for atmospheric inversions. The inversion surface atmospheric CO2 will be evaluated with GlobalView data, while the posterior carbon fluxes will be evaluated to assess the role of boreal forests and wildfires in the regional carbon budget.
 

The role of boreal wildfires in the global carbon budget: A process-based analysis using satellite-derived fire burn severity data

The preeminent conference for the advancement of Earth and space sciences, the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting draws more than 25,000 attendees from over 100 countries each year to share research findings and identify innovative solutions to complex problems. Organized around the theme “Science is Society,” this year’s AGU Fall Meeting will take place in New Orleans and online on December 13 - 17.

AGU Fall Meeting goes hybrid for 2021
Sustained methane emissions from China after 2012 despite declining coal production and rice-cultivated area

Abstract: China's anthropogenic methane emissions are the largest of any country in the world. A recent study using atmospheric observations suggested that recent policies aimed at reducing emissions of methane due to coal production in China after 2010 had been largely ineffective.

Here, based on a longer observational record and an updated modelling approach, we find a statistically significant positive linear trend (0.36 ± 0.04 ($\pm1\sigma$) Tg CH4 yr−2) in China's methane emissions for 2010–2017. This trend was slowing down at a statistically significant rate of -0.1 ± 0.04 Tg CH4 yr−3.

We find that this decrease in growth rate can in part be attributed to a decline in China's coal production. However, coal mine methane emissions have not declined as rapidly as production, implying that there may be substantial fugitive emissions from abandoned coal mines that have previously been overlooked. We also find that emissions over rice-growing and aquaculture-farming regions show a positive trend (0.13 ± 0.05 Tg CH4 yr−2 for 2010–2017) despite reports of shrinking rice paddy areas, implying potentially significant emissions from new aquaculture activities, which are thought to be primarily located on converted rice paddies.

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