Andreas LUTHER (TU Munich) + Bradley MATTHEWS (Umweltbundesamt)

The Vienna Urban Carbon Laboratory (VUCL) is currently testing options for monitoring local carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) emissions in Vienna using in-situ measurements and ground-based remote sensing. Building upon the CarboWien pilot project, VUCL has extended and expanded the eddy covariance system that was set-up at the A1 Arsenal tower in December 2017 to measure CO₂ fluxes at 144 m above the city. In May 2022, additional instruments were added to the measurement setup at Arsenal to observe CH₄ fluxes, as well as ambient CO₂ mole fractions and respective ¹³C/¹²C ratios.

Furthermore, between May and July 2022, four EM27/SUN spectrometers of the Munich Urban Carbon Column network (MUCCnet) were operated in Vienna to measure horizontal gradients in total column CO₂ and CH₄ mole fractions. This contribution to the University of Vienna Meteorologisch-Geophysikalisches Kolloquium will provide brief introductions to the VUCL and MUCCnet projects. Moreover, first analyses of the 2022 combined campaign of eddy covariance- and EM27/SUN spectrometer measurements will be presented and discussed.

Tuesday, 16.30h to 18.00h

Location: Room 2F513, (Exner-Raum), Josef-Holaubek-Platz 2, UZA 2, 1090 Vienna and online!

Riccardo BIONDI (University of Padova)

Over the past decades, communication and outreach have become a fundamental concern of research communities. The relationship between science and society has begun to change radically and communication has become a necessity. Important decisions involving scientists' research are no longer made by the scientific community but by politicians, private companies and media. Moreover, the decisions often involve the general public whose opinion influences the politicians and the media behavior, so it is fundamental to convey the value of a scientific way of thinking even to those who have nothing to do with science.

Furthermore, the scientists’ career is nowadays based and evaluated on paper metrics, conference presentations, project funding and international relevance. This makes it important to improve the way to share results with the scientific community, in order to enhance the quality of the research, to facilitate collaborations and to get projects funded.

During this seminar we will see some best practices of science communication and dissemination and we will work with practical examples.

For the recorded talk click here. Passcode: 4*DSr0$T

Matthew RIGBY (University of Bristol)

Over the last decade, we have used data from the JAXA satellite, GOSAT, to infer methane emissions over India, Brazil, China and North Africa. This has been achieved using a hierarchical Bayesian “top-down” inversion framework and the UK Met Office NAME Lagrangian particle dispersion model (LPDM). These studies have revealed several notable findings, including top-down methane emissions for India that are consistent with inventory reports, a trend in wetland and anthropogenic emissions in Brazil, and a previously unidentified seasonal source in the Nile delta. New space-based instruments such as TROPOMI represent an exciting new area for methane emissions inference. However, because of the step-change in data volumes, compared to GOSAT, these datasets are extremely challenging for studies using LPDMs, which require a new model evaluation for each data point.

To address this issue, we have developed a proof-of-concept machine learning emulator, which can calculate LPDM outputs in a fraction of a second using meteorological inputs. Here, I will discuss recent inversion results and outline a possible future direction for methane inversions using satellite data and machine learning emulation of LPDMs.

Tuesday, 16.30h to 18.00h

Location: Online only!

Alexandra BRAUSMANN (University of Vienna)

We often here in the media about the devastating impacts of climate change but what are they exactly? What are the impacts on the economy and society and which policies can be applied in order to mitigate these impacts. In this talk I will address these and related questions from the economics perspective.

Tuesday, 16.30h to 18.00h

Location: Room 2F513, (Exner-Raum), Josef-Holaubek-Platz 2, UZA 2, 1090 Vienna and online!

Steffen BIRK (Universität Graz)

Groundwater is a hidden freshwater resource that sustains ecosystems and provides the majority of drinking water in many countries. As opposed to surface water, groundwater usually responds more slowly to changes in the water cycle, making impacts of climate change or human interventions such as water abstraction or hydraulic engineering less obvious. It is therefore important to identify and understand the changes and their drivers in groundwater systems. Using examples from Austria, this talk aims to illustrate how groundwater systems function and how they may be affected by changes in the water cycle.

Tuesday, 16.30h to 18.00h

Location: Room 2F513, (Exner-Raum), Josef-Holaubek-Platz 2, UZA 2, 1090 Vienna and online!

Post-colloquium at 18:30, join us for food and drinks with our speaker at Fischerbräu, Billrothstrasse 17, 1190 Wien.

Wouter DORIGO (TU Wien)

Satellite observations of the land surface provide valuable insights into the distribution of water in space and time and its interaction with ecosystem dynamics. In Earth system models, these interactions are often poorly represented, which can lead to considerable uncertainties in forecasts of moisture fluxes at multiple time scales. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the various climate data records produced by our team and examples of how they have been used to improve Earth system modelling. This includes model benchmarking, model calibration, data assimilation, and the use of machine learning to disentangle multi-variate controls on vegetation dynamics and to make data-driven forecasts.

Tuesday, 16.30h to 18.00h

Location: Room 2F513, (Exner-Raum), Josef-Holaubek-Platz 2, UZA 2, 1090 Vienna and online!

Post-Colloquium at 19:00 h, join us for food and drinks with our speaker at Fischerbräu, Billrothstrasse 17, 1190 Wien.