Influence of Population Income and Climate on Air Pollution in Cities Due to Buildings: The Case of Spain

Half of the world’s population lives in cities. In addition, more than 40% of greenhouse gas emissions are produced in buildings in the residential and tertiary sectors. Therefore, cities, and in particular their buildings, have a great influence on these emissions. In fact, they are reflected in several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Any measure taken to reach these goals has a significant impact from the point of view of reducing greenhouse gases. An understanding of these goals is the basis of greenhouse gas mitigation. This work analyzed the CO2 emissions from the buildings in cities as a function of the economic income of their inhabitants. For this, databases published by official sources were used. The origins of the CO2 are usually emitted by buildings were analyzed—electrical and thermal, in the form of natural gas. Another variable that influences these emissions is climate. To study only the income variable, the influence of climate has been eliminated. Also, to facilitate analysis, an index has been introduced. As an example of application of the proposed methodology, Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants were studied. The analysis was carried out by household and by inhabitant. The results showed the following: the higher the income of the citizens, the higher the total and thermal emissions; thermal consumption is elastic, while electrical consumption is inelastic; emissions of electrical origin are almost constant; emissions from electrical energy are greater than those from thermal energy; as income increases, the ratio between emissions of electrical and thermal origin decreases.

Autonomous heating system during transformation of thermal energy formed in server stations

Results of design modeling of air-conditioning and central air of premises of server stations are presented. The estimation of thermal balance of typical server station is made. The potential of thermal energy which can be used is estimated it is useful for needs of central heating, to save power resources, and not to pollute environment thermal emissions. The detailed analysis of components of is material-power balance is made. The mathematical model of central air is developed for these purposes. Analysis problems of the heat substances exchange processes, the drainage of air connected with processes, occurring at its cooling are considered. The designing and operation problems interfaced with the heat substances exchange in air coolers are considered. The heat pump scheme of system is offered the central heating, utilizing warmly server station at air conditioning indoors. The model is offered and results of optimization of parameters heat pump schemes are considered. Results can be applied at designing of central airs of premises of server stations with passing recycling of thermal emissions for needs of central heating.

Data centers environmental impact assessment features

Data centers became significant sources of environmental impact: each year global data centers consume TWh of electricity, generate comparable thermal emissions to the atmosphere and/or hydrosphere, create wastes of electronic equipment and life-expired batteries, and create other types of direct and indirect ecological footprint. In conformity with the sustainable development concept data centers environmental impact of all types should be numerically assessed to compare to the environmental capacity and move towards sustainability. It requires ecological footprint (carbon footprint in particular) to be assessed. Existing xUE Effectiveness Metrics used for data centers are all relative, so data centers’ environmental impact cannot be calculated directly from it. Methods of payment calculation for negative environmental impact, used in Russia, do not take into account data center features and can hardly be used for the assessment tasks. Data centers need to adapt existing and develop new assessment methods for its environmental impact, considering all the resources consumed and all the emissions generated.

The allometric scaling of thermal emissions from temperate and tropical cities

<p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p>Cities around the world develop energy balances that are different to their surroundings. This study examines the application of allometric scaling to the thermal emission of cities in temperate and tropical regions. Overpasses of UK and Nigeria of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), covering the period between 2000 and 2017 were sampled to examine the seasonal variability in night-time clear-sky upwelling long-wave energy for selected cities of the two countries. Total (area-integrated) emitted energy was calculated per city and interpreted by looking for ‘allometric’ (power law) scaling against the total population of the urban areas. Both sets of cities produce strong correlations (R<sup>2 </sup>³ 0.8 and R<sup>2</sup>≥0.7) of log (total emission) against log (population). Total night-time emitted energy is found to scale sub-linearly (i.e. with power law index < 1) with population on both countries. However, the slope derived from UK allometry (0.85 ± 0.03) is quite different from that derived for cities in Nigeria (0.4 ± 0.05). When scaled against log (city area), both sets of cities produce linear scalings, demonstrating that the total area of built surface is a more general predictor of thermal emissions than total population, a surprising result given the differences in built form in the two sets of cities. These results are robust to the method chosen to delineate the city boundary. We further investigate the factors underlying these allometric relationships using Local Climate Zone (LCZ) classifications.    </p>

Earth Thermal Emissions and Global Warming

When fossil fuels are extracted from the earth, they are naturally replaced by a layer of water. Water has high thermal conductivity as compared to coal, oil, and gas. This will increase the heat transfer rate from the underground in all directions but most importantly towards the surface of the earth and seas due to the greater temperature difference. Additionally, heat losses and thermal emissions from boreholes will be even higher and given that there are more than 4 million onshore hydrocarbon wells (producing and non-producing) around the world, the heat emissions could be significant. Added to this is the heat from thousands of coal mines across the world. We review the literature and report on temperature trends observed in areas subject to fossil fuel extraction. We find that land and sea areas subject to fossil fuel extraction are experiencing relatively high rates of temperature rise. We examine the case of the Arctic in some detail and compare sea-ice extent change in both the Arctic and Antarctica. We find that despite increasing levels of CO2 observed in the Polar Regions, sea-ice extent is shrinking in the Arctic and expanding in the Antarctic. We believe that a possible cause of shrinking sea-ice in the Arctic could be geothermal heat rising to the surface as a direct result of fossil fuel extraction in regions such as Siberia and Alaska. To provide a crude approximation of the heat released from the earth’s interior and subsequent impact on global average temperature as a result of earth insulation loss, we use worldwide oil and gas production data from 2007 until 2017. We find the subsequent impact on global surface temperature over this period to be 0.026°C compared with an observed temperature rise of 0.15°C. This amounts to 17% of total warming observed over the period attributable to earth insulation loss, which is significant. We end by making some suggestions on further research necessary to fully understand the possible effect of earth insulation loss on rising global temperature.

Optimal inverse estimation of ecosystem parameters from observations of carbon and energy fluxes

Canopy structural and leaf photosynthesis parameterizations such as maximum carboxylation capacity (Vcmax), slope of the Ball–Berry stomatal conductance model (BBslope) and leaf area index (LAI) are crucial for modeling plant physiological processes and canopy radiative transfer. These parameters are large sources of uncertainty in predictions of carbon and water fluxes. In this study, we develop an optimal moving window nonlinear Bayesian inversion framework to use the Soil Canopy Observation Photochemistry and Energy fluxes (SCOPE) model for constraining Vcmax, BBslope and LAI with observations of coupled carbon and energy fluxes and spectral reflectance from satellites. We adapted SCOPE to follow the biochemical implementation of the Community Land Model and applied the inversion framework for parameter retrievals of plant species that have both the C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways across three ecosystems. We present comparative analysis of parameter retrievals using observations of (i) gross primary productivity (GPP) and latent energy (LE) fluxes and (ii) improvement in results when using flux observations along with reflectance. Our results demonstrate the applicability of the approach in terms of capturing the seasonal variability and posterior error reduction (40 %–90 %) of key ecosystem parameters. The optimized parameters capture the diurnal and seasonal variability in the GPP and LE fluxes well when compared to flux tower observations (0.95>R2>0.79). This study thus demonstrates the feasibility of parameter inversions using SCOPE, which can be easily adapted to incorporate additional data sources such as spectrally resolved reflectance and fluorescence and thermal emissions.

Energy efficiency with the use of innovative materials in the Far North, using CAD

The relevance of this work lies primarily in the importance of this issue in the construction field. According to statistics, construction projects consume 40% of world energy. Industrial and residential buildings are becoming one of the main sources of thermal emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The second argument in favor of relevance is the use of basalt composite reinforcement for brickwork. And the third argument can be the use of CAD to simulate the energy consumption of the building. The practical value of the work is to use the recommendations for the construction and reconstruction of energy efficient buildings located in the Arctic zone. The theoretical value of the developed model and the proposed technology for determining energy efficiency indicators will allow it to be used for further calculations.