Quantifying and modeling methane from the North Sea region with ICON-ART

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Scharun ◽  
Roland Ruhnke ◽  
Peter Braesicke

<p>The release of greenhouse gases (GHG) like CH<sub>4</sub> into the atmosphere plays a key role in driving the climate change. With the optimization of atmospheric chemistry climate models, the accuracy in assessing future scenarios is improved, which is an important factor in our efforts to mitigate climate change.</p> <p>Within this work we introduce the WALLACE workflow, a method for the quantification and adjustment of wrong or missing emissions in well-established GHG-inventories, which are used as input data in atmospheric chemistry transport or climate models. The overall goal of WALLACE is to highlight emission hotspots and it therefore includes spatiotemporal proxy data and a selection algorithm. For the North Sea as a show case region we apply WALLACE to quantify methane emission fluxes of oil and gas platforms. The adjusted emissions are implemented as pointsources into our model and idealized simulations are performed to derive their impact on the spatial distribution of methane and its global and regional budget. Additionally, we take a look at the anti-correlation between methane and its main sink in the atmosphere, the hydroxyl radical (OH), which is implemented as a simple OH-chemistry mechanism into the model. This work makes a new and innovative contribution to achieve an accurate quantification of environmentally harmful gases – in particular CH<sub>4</sub> - that drive man-made climate change.</p> <p>In conjunction with WALLACE we use the global model ICON-ART (ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic model - Aerosols and Reactive Trace gases). ART is an online-coupled model extension for ICON that includes chemical gases and aerosols. One aim of the model is the simulation of interactions between the trace substances and the state of the atmosphere by coupling the spatiotemporal evolution of tracers with atmospheric processes, thus testing the impact of WALLACE-adjusted emissions on the CH<sub>4</sub> distribution in the atmosphere.</p>

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Cogswell

AbstractHistorians have not paid close attention to the activities of freebooters operating out of Dunkirk in the late 1620s. This essay corrects that omission by first studying the threat from Dunkirk to England's east coast and then addressing how the central government, counties, and coastal towns responded. A surprisingly rich vein of manuscript material from Great Yarmouth and particularly from the Suffolk fishing community of Aldeburgh informs this case study of the impact of this conflict around the North Sea.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna K. Bluemel ◽  
Simon Fischer ◽  
David W. Kulka ◽  
Christopher P. Lynam ◽  
Jim R. Ellis

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 841-863 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Brenner ◽  
U. Braeckman ◽  
M. Le Guitton ◽  
F. J. R. Meysman

Abstract. It has been previously proposed that alkalinity release from sediments can play an important role in the carbonate dynamics on continental shelves, lowering the pCO2 of seawater and hence increasing the CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. To test this hypothesis, sedimentary alkalinity generation was quantified within cohesive and permeable sediments across the North Sea during two cruises in September 2011 (basin-wide) and June 2012 (Dutch coastal zone). Benthic fluxes of oxygen (O2), alkalinity (AT) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) were determined using shipboard closed sediment incubations. Our results show that sediments can form an important source of alkalinity for the overlying water, particularly in the shallow southern North Sea, where high AT and DIC fluxes were recorded in near-shore sediments of the Belgian, Dutch and German coastal zone. In contrast, fluxes of AT and DIC are substantially lower in the deeper, seasonally stratified, northern part of the North Sea. Based on the data collected, we performed a model analysis to constrain the main pathways of alkalinity generation in the sediment, and to quantify how sedimentary alkalinity drives atmospheric CO2 uptake in the southern North Sea. Overall, our results show that sedimentary alkalinity generation should be regarded as a key component in the CO2 dynamics of shallow coastal systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 105230
Author(s):  
Michael Weinert ◽  
Moritz Mathis ◽  
Ingrid Kröncke ◽  
Thomas Pohlmann ◽  
Henning Reiss

Author(s):  
Ken P. Games ◽  
David I. Gordon

ABSTRACTSand waves are well known indicators of a mobile seabed. What do we expect of these features in terms of migration rates and seabed scour? We discuss these effects on seabed structures, both for the Oil and Gas and the Windfarm Industries, and consider how these impact on turbines and buried cables. Two case studies are presented. The first concerns a windfarm with a five-year gap between the planning survey and a subsequent cable route and environmental assessment survey. This revealed large-scale movements of sand waves, with the displacement of an isolated feature of 155 m in five years. Secondly, another windfarm development involved a re-survey, again over a five-year period, but after the turbines had been installed. This showed movements of sand waves of ∼50 m in five years. Observations of the scour effects on the turbines are discussed. Both sites revealed the presence of barchans. Whilst these have been extensively studied on land, there are few examples of how they behave in the marine environment. The two case studies presented show that mass transport is potentially much greater than expected and that this has implications for choosing turbine locations, the effect of scour, and the impact these sediment movements are likely to have on power cables.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1525-1557
Author(s):  
K. O'Driscoll ◽  
B. Mayer ◽  
J. Su ◽  
M. Mathis

Abstract. The fate and cycling of two selected legacy persistent organic pollutants (POPs), PCB 153 and γ-HCH, in the North Sea in the 21st century have been modelled with combined hydrodynamic and fate and transport ocean models. To investigate the impact of climate variability on POPs in the North Sea in the 21st century, future scenario model runs for three 10 yr periods to the year 2100 using plausible levels of both in situ concentrations and atmospheric, river and open boundary inputs are performed. Since estimates of future concentration levels of POPs in the atmosphere, oceans and rivers are not available, our approach was to reutilise 2005 values in the atmosphere, rivers and at the open ocean boundaries for every year of the simulations. In this way, we attribute differences between the three 10 yr simulations to climate change only. For the HAMSOM and atmospheric forcing, results of the IPCC A1B (SRES) 21st century scenario are utilised, where surface forcing is provided by the REMO downscaling of the ECHAM5 global atmospheric model, and open boundary conditions are provided by the MPIOM global ocean model. Dry gas deposition and volatilisation of γ-HCH increase in the future relative to the present. In the water column, total mass of γ-HCH and PCB 153 remain fairly steady in all three runs. In sediment, γ-HCH increases in the future runs, relative to the present, while PCB 153 in sediment decreases exponentially in all three runs, but even faster in the future, both of which are the result of climate change. Annual net sinks exceed sources at the ends of all periods.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolin Xu ◽  
Qing He ◽  
Kwok Pan Chun ◽  
Julian Klaus ◽  
Rémy Schoppach ◽  
...  

<p>Teleconnections relate regional pressure patterns to local climate anomalies, influencing the variation of vegetation patterns. Over west continental Europe, droughts have been widely investigated with persistent low-frequency atmospheric circulation patterns (e.g. the North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO) with the centers over the Atlantic based on the 500mb height anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the effects of teleconnection patterns with the centers of active variability over the North and Caspian Seas is largely unexplored for droughts related to vegetation patterns. In this study, we explored the impact of the North Sea-Caspian Pattern (NCP) on regional ecohydrologic conditions in the Greater Region of Luxembourg in Western Europe. Using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we first decomposed the annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling System (GIMMS) between 1981 and 2015. In the first PCA component, a distinctive greening trend of NDVI is detected since the late 1980s. However, the corresponding station observations and the ERA5 reanalysis data show that the region in west continental Europe became increasingly drier based on the difference between precipitation and evaporation. We explain the above paradoxical greening but drying patterns by the mechanism of NCP over the region. During the positive phase of NCP, the high pressure over the North Sea weakens circulation over the region and leads to warmer conditions in west continental Europe. These conditions are good for vegetation growth because the region was mainly energy-limited during the observed period at the annual scale based on a Budyko analysis. However, the positive phase of NCP also promotes divergent conditions at the lower troposphere and it reduces moisture flux over the region. In the Budyko space, the persistent positive phase of NCP would lead the energy-limited region to be water-limited. As the positive phase of NCP is expected to be more frequent along with the increasing global temperatures, the region may start to experience increasing water stress on vegetation. These results suggest that unforeseen droughts related to vegetation may be emerging in the region. New drought monitoring and management measures related to vegetation should be developed at west continental Europe, especially during the positive phase of NCP.</p>


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