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    Making Sense of Complex Carbon and Metal/Carbon Systems by Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2019) Abrams, Kerry J.; Dapor, Maurizio; Stehling, Nicola; Azzolini, Martina; Kyle, Stephan J.; Schäfer, Jan; Quade, Antje; Mika, Filip; Kratky, Stanislav; Pokorna, Zuzana; Konvalina, Ivo; Mehta, Danielle; Black, Kate; Rodenburg, Cornelia
    Carbon and carbon/metal systems with a multitude of functionalities are ubiquitous in new technologies but understanding on the nanoscale remains elusive due to their affinity for interaction with their environment and limitations in available characterization techniques. This paper introduces a spectroscopic technique and demonstrates its capacity to reveal chemical variations of carbon. The effectiveness of this approach is validated experimentally through spatially averaging spectroscopic techniques and using Monte Carlo modeling. Characteristic spectra shapes and peak positions for varying contributions of sp2-like or sp3-like bond types and amorphous hydrogenated carbon are reported under circumstances which might be observed on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces as a result of air or electron beam exposure. The spectral features identified above are then used to identify the different forms of carbon present within the metallic films deposited from reactive organometallic inks. While spectra for metals is obtained in dedicated surface science instrumentation, the complex relations between carbon and metal species is only revealed by secondary electron (SE) spectroscopy and SE hyperspectral imaging obtained in a state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope (SEM). This work reveals the inhomogeneous incorporation of carbon on the nanoscale but also uncovers a link between local orientation of metallic components and carbon form.
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    Photosynthetic productivity and its efficiencies in ISIMIP2a biome models: Benchmarking for impact assessment studies
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2017) Ito, Akihiko; Nishina, Kazuya; Reyer, Christopher P.O.; François, Louis; Henrot, Alexandra-Jane; Munhoven, Guy; Jacquemin, Ingrid; Tian, Hanqin; Yang, Jia; Pan, Shufen; Morfopoulos, Catherine; Betts, Richard; Hickler, Thomas; Steinkamp, Jörg; Ostberg, Sebastian; Schaphoff, Sibyll; Ciais, Philippe; Chang, Jinfeng; Rafique, Rashid; Zeng, Ning; Zhao, Fang
    Simulating vegetation photosynthetic productivity (or gross primary production, GPP) is a critical feature of the biome models used for impact assessments of climate change. We conducted a benchmarking of global GPP simulated by eight biome models participating in the second phase of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP2a) with four meteorological forcing datasets (30 simulations), using independent GPP estimates and recent satellite data of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence as a proxy of GPP. The simulated global terrestrial GPP ranged from 98 to 141 Pg C yr−1 (1981–2000 mean); considerable inter-model and inter-data differences were found. Major features of spatial distribution and seasonal change of GPP were captured by each model, showing good agreement with the benchmarking data. All simulations showed incremental trends of annual GPP, seasonal-cycle amplitude, radiation-use efficiency, and water-use efficiency, mainly caused by the CO2 fertilization effect. The incremental slopes were higher than those obtained by remote sensing studies, but comparable with those by recent atmospheric observation. Apparent differences were found in the relationship between GPP and incoming solar radiation, for which forcing data differed considerably. The simulated GPP trends co-varied with a vegetation structural parameter, leaf area index, at model-dependent strengths, implying the importance of constraining canopy properties. In terms of extreme events, GPP anomalies associated with a historical El Niño event and large volcanic eruption were not consistently simulated in the model experiments due to deficiencies in both forcing data and parameterized environmental responsiveness. Although the benchmarking demonstrated the overall advancement of contemporary biome models, further refinements are required, for example, for solar radiation data and vegetation canopy schemes.
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    Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for future greenhouse warming
    (Washington, DC [u.a.] : Assoc., 2016) Friedrich, Tobias; Timmermann, Axel; Tigchelaar, Michelle; Elison Timm, Oliver; Ganopolski, Andrey
    Global mean surface temperatures are rising in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The magnitude of this warming at equilibrium for a given radiative forcing-referred to as specific equilibrium climate sensitivity (S)-is still subject to uncertainties. We estimate global mean temperature variations and S using a 784,000-year-long field reconstruction of sea surface temperatures and a transient paleoclimate model simulation. Our results reveal that S is strongly dependent on the climate background state, with significantly larger values attained during warm phases. Using the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 for future greenhouse radiative forcing, we find that the range of paleo-based estimates of Earth's future warming by 2100 CE overlaps with the upper range of climate simulations conducted as part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Furthermore, we find that within the 21st century, global mean temperatures will very likely exceed maximum levels reconstructed for the last 784,000 years. On the basis of temperature data from eight glacial cycles, our results provide an independent validation of the magnitude of current CMIP5 warming projections.