Green House Gas

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) concludes that the "warming of the climate system is unequivocal." The AR4 includes projections of climate change based on General Circulation Model (GCM) simulation results for a series of green-house gas emission scenarios. Volume II of the AR4 report discusses potential impacts of climate change, adaptation measures, and vulnerability of coastal systems and low-lying areas. However, these assessments are limited to potential regional scale impacts and are not detailed nor certain enough to provide meaningful guidance for water resources management and planning at local scales. South Florida is home to 7.5 million people and has one of the most heavily managed water control systems in the world. Given uncertainties in the IPCC predictions, key vulnerabilities must be identified and addressed. Due to its low topographic relief, the region is extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise (SLR) with implications for water supply and flood control management. Due to the extremely porous nature of the groundwater system, the main source for water supply in south Florida, saltwater intrusion into coastal wellfields is of concern. SLR also reduces the flood control capacity of coastal gravity structures with serious implications. Precipitation and evapotranspiration are very close in magnitude for south Florida. Changes to either of these components as a result of climate change have implications for water resources planning and management. The south Florida climate is largely influenced by teleconnections to ENSO, AMO, PDO. To the degree that GCMs capture these phenomena, meaningful projections can be made for south Florida. Given uncertainties in GCM predictions for the region, statistical or dynamic downscaling methods may not provide additional value. Therefore, until the state of the science can provide more consistent and meaningful predictions for the region, a wide range of scenarios must be considered and it becomes imperative that future planning efforts focus on adding resilience to the water control system.

Soil gas surveys were performed along the Adriatic foredeep (Vasto, Ferrandina, Pisticci basins), in order to evaluate the relationship between neotectonics and gas leakage from hydrocarbon reservoirs. More than 4000 soil gas samples were collected in the area and analyzed for helium, which is a good fracture tracer due to its chemical inertness and high mobility. Furthermore, helium is enriched in more than 90% of known reservoirs, and displays many characteristics of the ideal geochemical tracer for buried faults and gas and oil reservoirs (abiogenic, non-reactive, and mobile). Statistical analysis shows an average helium concentration of 5.7 ppm in the foredeep basin areas (atmospheric value is 5.2 ppm). This value is higher than that calculated using over 30,000 soil gas samples collected throughout Italy in different geological scenarios (about 5.4 ppm). Results obtained using a geostatistical approach are consistent with the presence of high helium concentrations as linear or spot anomalies due to irregular, channelled flow along faults above hydrocarbon accumulations. Considering the Plio-Miocene age of the Adriatic foredeep reservoirs, the magnitude of these diffuse gas microseepages highlights that losses from hydrocarbon reservoirs should be low. Results indicate that despite the fact that the area is heavily faulted and that gas seepage has occurred from the reservoir over geological periods of time, no environmental effects are observed at surface. This fact lends support to the idea that geological sequestration of CO2 within a less structurallyactive area would result in the safe, long-term isolation of this green-house gas.

There is good evidence that higher global temperature will promote a rise of green house gas levels, implying a positive feedback which will increase the effect of the anthropogenic emissions on global temperatures. Here we present a review about the results which deal with the possible feedbacks between ecosystems and the climate system. There are a lot of types of

What are the characteristics of freight transport which have an impact on CO 2 emissions? Among those characteristics, what is the importance of the shipper’s logistical choices on CO2 emissions? To answer this question we use the 2004 French shipper survey. This survey describes the characteristics of 3 000 shippers, of 10 000 shipments, and of 20 000 different legs of the transport chains. We computed the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of each shipment, leg by leg and then summed it on the transport chain, per shipment. This CO2 emission, when related to the tonne-kilometres, gives the carbon intensity of the shipment, in grams of CO 2 per tonne-kilometre. We find that there is a very high variability of carbon intensity per shipment: from less than 0.01 to more than 100 kgCO2/tkm. We then analyse this carbon intensity per shipment according to two types of shipment characteristics: the shippers’ logistical choices (shipment frequency and mode choice) on the one hand and, on...

Microgrids have been significantly developed, enhanced by concerns about climate change and energy security, their decreasing costs and the development of renewable energy sources. However, an important concern is the limited information available to estimate these renewable resources. We develop an optimization model with cost and reliability objective functions for the design and operation of micro-networks using a nested strategy

Sustainable agricultural production systems offer opportunities for producing food while simultaneously mitigating climate change are receiving increasing attention. In many cases however, field level adoption of these technologies by smallholder farmers has generally been limited due in part to low investment, less supportive policy and institutional context, among other reasons. To bridge the adoption-policy gap, other approaches beyond moral persuasions and “wielding the stick” (regulations) are needed. Based on a field study in Zambia, this paper argues for the institutionalization of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) as an important additional option for promoting environmentally sustainable agricultural technologies. We discuss how incentive mechanisms could help address the problem of low adoption of technically proven sustainable land use management practices and, enhance the possibility for encouraging farmers to adopt practices that provide direct benefits to them (e.g....