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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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NASA NTRS2022

Clean Air Policies Are Key for Successfully Mitigating Arctic Warming

A tighter integration of modeling frameworks for climate and air quality is urgently needed to assess the impacts of clean air policies on future Arctic and global climate. We combined a new model emulator and comprehensive emissions scenarios for air pollutants and greenhouse gases to assess climate and human health co-benefits of emissions reductions. Fossil fuel use is projected to rapidly decline in an increasingly sustainable world, resulting in far-reaching air quality benefits. Despite human health benefits, reductions in sulfur emissions in a more sustainable world could enhance Arctic warming by 0.8 °C in 2050 relative to the 1995–2014, thereby offsetting climate benefits of greenhouse gas reductions. Targeted and technically feasible emissions reduction opportunities exist for achieving simultaneous climate and human health co-benefits. It would be particularly beneficial to unlock a newly identified mitigation potential for carbon particulate matter, yielding Arctic climate benefits equivalent to those from carbon dioxide reductions by 2050.

Atmospheric chemistry↗
NASA NTRS1985

An evaluation of MES (2(N-Morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid) and Amberlite IRC-50 as pH buffers for nutrient solution studies

All buffering agents used to stabilize pH in hydroponic research have disadvantages. Inorganic buffers are absorbed and may become phytotoxic. Solid carbonate salts temporarily mitigate decreasing pH but provide almost no protection against increasing pH, and they alter nutrient absorption. Exchange resins are more effective, but we find that they remove magnesium and manganese from solution. We have tested 2(N-Morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (MES) as a buffering agent at concentrations of 1 and 10 mol m-3 (1 and 10 mM) with beans, corn, lettuce, tomatoes, and wheat. MES appears to be biologically inert and does not interact significantly with other solution ions. Relative growth rates among controls and MES treatments were nearly identical for each species during the trial period. The pH was stabilized by 1 mol m-3 MES. This buffer warrants further consideration in nutrient research.

Alkanesulfonic Acids/chemistry/pharmacology↗
NASA NTRS2005

Journal of Air Transportation, Volume 10, No. 2

Topics discussed include: Mitigation Alternatives for Carbon Dioxide Emissions by the Air Transport Industry in Brazil; Air Transport Regulation Under Transformation: The Case of Switzerland; An Estimation of Aircraft Emissions at Turkish Airports; Guide to the Implementation of Iso 14401 at Airports; The Impact of Constrained Future Scenarios on Aviation and Emissions; The Immediate Financial Impact of Transportation Deregulation on the Stockholders of the Airline Industry; Aviation Related Airport Marketing in an Overlapping Metropolitan Catchment Area: The Case of Milan's Three Airports; and Airport Pricing Systems and Airport Deregulation Effects on Welfare.

Bowen, Brent↗
NASA NTRS2013

How Cities Breathe: Ground-Referenced, Airborne Hyperspectral Imaging Precursor Measurements To Space-Based Monitoring

Methane's (CH4) large global warming potential (Shindell et al., 2012) and likely increasing future emissions due to global warming feedbacks emphasize its importance to anthropogenic greenhouse warming (IPCC, 2007). Furthermore, CH4 regulation has far greater near-term climate change mitigation potential versus carbon dioxide CO2, the other major anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas (GHG) (Shindell et al., 2009). Uncertainties in CH4 budgets arise from the poor state of knowledge of CH4 sources - in part from a lack of sufficiently accurate assessments of the temporal and spatial emissions and controlling factors of highly variable anthropogenic and natural CH4 surface fluxes (IPCC, 2007) and the lack of global-scale (satellite) data at sufficiently high spatial resolution to resolve sources. Many important methane (and other trace gases) sources arise from urban and mega-urban landscapes where anthropogenic activities are centered - most of humanity lives in urban areas. Studying these complex landscape tapestries is challenged by a wide and varied range of activities at small spatial scale, and difficulty in obtaining up-to-date landuse data in the developed world - a key desire of policy makers towards development of effective regulations. In the developing world, challenges are multiplied with additional political access challenges. As high spatial resolution satellite and airborne data has become available, activity mapping applications have blossomed - i.e., Google maps; however, tap a minute fraction of remote sensing capabilities due to limited (three band) spectral information. Next generation approaches that incorporate high spatial resolution hyperspectral and ultraspectral data will allow detangling of the highly heterogeneous usage megacity patterns by providing diagnostic identification of chemical composition from solids (refs) to gases (refs). To properly enable these next generation technologies for megacity include atmospheric radiative transfer modeling the complex and often aerosol laden, humid, urban microclimates, atmospheric transport and profile monitoring, spatial resolution, temporal cycles (diurnal and seasonal which involve interactions with the surrounding environment diurnal and seasonal cycles) and representative measurement approaches given traffic realities. Promising approaches incorporate contemporaneous airborne remote sensing and in situ measurements, nocturnal surface surveys, with ground station measurement

Leifer, Ira↗
NASA NTRS2022

Soil Carbon Losses Reduce Soil Moisture in Global Climate Model Simulations

Most agricultural soils have experienced substantial soil organic carbon losses in time. These losses motivate recent calls to restore organic carbon in agricultural lands to improve biogeochemical cycling and for climate change mitigation. Declines in organic carbon also reduce soil infiltration and water holding capacity, which may have important effects on regional hydrology and climate. To explore the regional hydroclimate impacts of soil organic carbon changes, we conduct new global climate model experiments with NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE that include spatially explicit soil organic carbon concentrations associated with different human land management scenarios. Compared to a “no land use” case, a year 2010 soil degradation scenario, in which organic carbon content (OCC; weight %) is reduced by a factor of ∼0.12 on average across agricultural soils, resulted in soil moisture losses between 0.5 and 1 temporal standard deviations over eastern Asia, northern Europe, and the eastern United States. In a more extreme idealized scenario where OCC is reduced uniformly by 0.66 across agricultural soils, soil moisture losses exceed one standard deviation in both hemispheres. Within the model, these soil moisture declines occur primarily due to reductions in porosity (and to a lesser extent infiltration) that overall soil water holding capacity. These results demonstrate that changes in soil organic carbon can have meaningful, large-scale effects on regional hydroclimate and should be considered in climate model evaluations and developments. Further, this also suggests that soil restoration efforts targeting the carbon cycle are likely to have additional benefits for improving drought resilience.

Atmosphere-land interaction↗
NASA NTRS2012

Understanding Climate Policy Data Needs. NASA Carbon Monitoring System Briefing: Characterizing Flux Uncertainty, Washington D.C., 11 January 2012

Climate policy in the United States is currently guided by public-private partnerships and actions at the local and state levels. This mitigation strategy is made up of programs that focus on energy efficiency, renewable energy, agricultural practices and implementation of technologies to reduce greenhouse gases. How will policy makers know if these strategies are working, particularly at the scales at which they are being implemented? The NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) will provide information on carbon dioxide fluxes derived from observations of earth's land, ocean and atmosphere used in state of the art models describing their interactions. This new modeling system could be used to assess the impact of specific policy interventions on CO2 reductions, enabling an iterative, results-oriented policy process. In January of 2012, the CMS team held a meeting with carbon policy and decision makers in Washington DC to describe the developing modeling system to policy makers. The NASA CMS will develop pilot studies to provide information across a range of spatial scales, consider carbon storage in biomass, and improve measures of the atmospheric distribution of carbon dioxide. The pilot involves multiple institutions (four NASA centers as well as several universities) and over 20 scientists in its work. This pilot study will generate CO2 flux maps for two years using observational constraints in NASA's state-of -the-art models. Bottom-up surface flux estimates will be computed using data-constrained land and ocean models; comparison of the different techniques will provide some knowledge of uncertainty in these estimates. Ensembles of atmospheric carbon distributions will be computed using an atmospheric general circulation model (GEOS-5), with perturbations to the surface fluxes and to transport. Top-down flux estimates will be computed from observed atmospheric CO2 distributions (ACOS/GOSAT retrievals) alongside the forward-model fields, in conjunction with an inverse approach based on the CO2 model of GEOS ]Chem. The forward model ensembles will be used to build understanding of relationships among surface flux perturbations, transport uncertainty and atmospheric carbon concentration. This will help construct uncertainty estimates and information on the true spatial resolution of the top-down flux calculations. The relationship between the top-down and bottom-up flux distributions will be documented. Because the goal of NASA CMS is to be policy relevant, the scientists involved in the flux modeling pilot need to understand and be focused on the needs of the climate policy and decision making community. If policy makers are to use CMS products, they must be aware of the modeling effort and begin to design policies that can be evaluated with information. Improving estimates of carbon sequestered in forests, for example, will require information on the spatial variability of forest biomass that is far more explicit than is presently possible using only ground observations. Carbon mitigation policies being implemented by cities around the United States could be designed with the CMS data in mind, enabling sequential evaluation and subsequent improvements in incentives, structures and programs. The success of climate mitigation programs being implemented in the United States today will hang on the depth of the relationship between scientists and their policy and decision making counterparts. Ensuring that there is two-way communication between data providers and users is important for the success both of the policies and the scientific products meant to support them..

Brown, Molly E.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Mars atmospheric loss and isotopic fractionation by solar-wind-induced sputtering and photochemical escape

We examine the effects of the loss of Mars atmospheric constituents by solar-wind-induced sputtering and by photochemical escape during the past 3.8 billion years. Sputtering is capable of efficiently removing species from the upper atmosphere, including the light noble gases; nitrogen and oxygen are removed by photochemical processes as well. Due to diffusive separation (by mass) above the homopause, removal from the top of the atmosphere will fractionate the isotopes of each species, with the lighter mass being preferentially lost. For carbon and oxygen, this allows us to determine the size of nonatmospheric reservoirs which mix with the atmosphere; these reservoirs can be CO2 adsorbed in the regolith and H2O in the polar ice caps. We have constructed both simple analytical models and time-dependent models of the loss of volatiles from and supply to the martian atmosphere. Both argon and neon require continued replenishment from outgassing over geologic time. For argon, sputtering loss explains the fractionation of (Ar-36)/(Ar-38) without requiring a distinct epoch of hydrodynamic escape (although fractionation of Xe isotopes still requires very early hydrodynamic loss). For neon, the current (Ne-22)/(Ne-20) ratio represents a balance between loss to space and continued resupply from the interior; the similarity of the ratio to the terrestrial value is coincidental. For nitrogen, the loss by both sputtering and photochemical escape would produce a fractionation of (N-15)/(N-14) larger than observed; an early, thicker carbon dioxide atmosphere could mitigate the nitrogen loss and produce the observed fractionation, as could continued outgassing of juvenile nitorgen. Based on the isotopic constraints, the total amount of carbon dioxide lost over geologic time is probably on the order of tens of millibars rather than a substantial fraction of a bar. The total loss from solar-wind-induced sputtering and photochemical escape, therefore, does not seem able to explain the loss of a putative thick, early atmosphere withput requiring formation of extensive surface carbonate deposits or other nonatmospheric reservoirs for CO2.

Jakosky, Bruce M.↗
NASA NTRS2022

Boulder County Disasters: Mapping Forest Carbon Stocks to Understand Carbon Implications of Treatment and Wildfire

In recent years, record-breaking wildfire activities in the western US illustrate the need for fire mitigation efforts, such as forest fuels reduction treatments. Forests serve as crucial carbon sinks that combat the increasing effects of climate change while fuels reduction treatments may remove carbon from forested systems. As a result, forest managers need to find a balance between fire mitigation and carbon preservation. This project partnered with Boulder County Parks and Open Space (BCPOS) and the University of Colorado, Denver to investigate the 2020 Cal-Wood fire in Boulder County, Colorado. Using remote sensing data from Landsat 8 OLI, SRTM, Sentinel-2 MSI, and LiDAR, we mapped post-fire forest carbon pools and compared these values with values derived from measurements from plots on the ground. Results indicate that the correlations are R2=0.76 for aboveground live carbon, R2=0.44 for standing carbon, and R2=0.43 for aboveground dead carbon (R2=0.43), and R2=0.35 for total carbon (R2=0.35). Additionally, 38.5% of total carbon was stored in dead carbon and 14.4% was stored in live carbon. We next compared the post-fire pools between treated and untreated areas. Our analysis suggests fuels reduction treatments did not reduce carbon loss in the presence of wildfire enough to clearly distinguish the post-fire carbon in the treated and untreated areas. However, our final carbon maps still provide BCPOS and researchers with an opportunity to explore carbon estimation models based on remotely sensed data as well as a framework to evaluate fuels reduction treatment effectiveness and impact on forest carbon stocks for future wildfire events.

Sarah Hettema↗
NASA NTRS2016

Modeling Impact of Urbanization in US Cities Using Simple Biosphere Model SiB2

We combine Landsat- and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based products, as well as climate drivers from Phase 2 of the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2) in a Simple Biosphere land surface model (SiB2) to assess the impact of urbanization in continental USA (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). More than 300 cities and their surrounding suburban and rural areas are defined in this study to characterize the impact of urbanization on surface climate including surface energy, carbon budget, and water balance. These analyses reveal an uneven impact of urbanization across the continent that should inform upon policy options for improving urban growth including heat mitigation and energy use, carbon sequestration and flood prevention.

Zhang, Ping↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Mapping Forest Carbon Stocks to Understand Carbon Implications of Treatment on Wildfire for the Calwood Fire, Boulder County Colorado

Recent, record-breaking wildfire activity in the western U.S. illustrates the need for fire mitigation, such as forest fuels reduction treatments. Forests serve as crucial carbon sinks that combat the increasing effects of climate change, but fuels reduction treatments may remove carbon from forested systems. As a result, forest managers need to find a balance between fire mitigation and carbon preservation. This project partnered with Boulder County Parks and Open Space (BCPOS) and the University of Colorado, Denver to investigate the 2020 Cal-Wood fire in Boulder County, Colorado. Using remote sensing data from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Imagery, and LiDAR, we mapped post-fire forest carbon pools and compared these values with values derived from field measurements. The analysis suggested that fuels reduction treatments did not reduce carbon loss in the presence of wildfire enough to clearly distinguish post-fire carbon between treated and untreated areas. However, the final carbon maps provide BCPOS and researchers with an opportunity to explore carbon estimation models based on remote sensing data as well as a framework to evaluate fuels reduction treatment effectiveness and impact on forest carbon stocks for future wildfire events.

Sarah Hettema↗
NASA NTRS2016

Regional Disparities in the Beneficial Effects of Rising CO2 Emissions on Crop Water Productivity

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are expected to enhance photosynthesis and reduce crop water use. However, there is high uncertainty about the global implications of these effects for future crop production and agricultural water requirements under climate change. Here we combine results from networks of field experiments and global crop models to present a spatially explicit global perspective on crop water productivity (CWP, the ratio of crop yield to evapotranspiration) for wheat, maize, rice and soybean under elevated carbon dioxide and associated climate change projected for a high-end greenhouse gas emissions scenario. We find carbon dioxide effects increase global CWP by 10[0;47]%-27[7;37]% (median[interquartile range] across the model ensemble) by the 2080s depending on crop types, with particularly large increases in arid regions (by up to 48[25;56]% for rain fed wheat). If realized in the fields, the effects of elevated carbon dioxide could considerably mitigate global yield losses whilst reducing agricultural consumptive water use (4-17%). We identify regional disparities driven by differences in growing conditions across agro-ecosystems that could have implications for increasing food production without compromising water security. Finally, our results demonstrate the need to expand field experiments and encourage greater consistency in modeling the effects of rising carbon dioxide across crop and hydrological modeling communities.

Deryng, Delphine↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

B Complex 5-Methyltetrahydrofolate, Riboflavin, Pyridoxine, and Methylcobalamin Supplementation as a Non-Mechanical Countermeasure to Mitigate Optic Disc Edema Changes During Strict 6º Head-Down Tilt Bed Rest

A subset of astronauts on International Space Station missions have experienced optic disc edema, part of what is characterized as Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS). While the precise cause of SANS is unknown, it is likely that there are multiple contributing factors, including genetic and environmental factors. Our recent work has shown that crewmembers with SANS have higher concentrations of metabolic biomarkers of impairments in the one-carbon metabolic pathway compared to unaffected astronauts - before, during, and after f light (1). B-vitamin status and the presence of one-carbon pathway single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variants predicted the incidence of SANS pathologies, including optic disc edema (2). Specifically, the G allele of methionine synthase reductase (MTRR) A66G and the C allele of serine hydroxymethyltransferase-1 (SHMT1) C1420T were associated with increased incidence of SANS pathologies (2). In a recent 30-d bed rest head-down tilt study with 0.5% CO2 exposure, 5 of 11 subjects developed optic disc edema (4) and the same SHMT1 C1420T and MTRR A66G genetic variants were associated with a larger increase in total retina thickness, a quantitative measure of optic disc edema (5). We published a multi-hit hypothesis of how genetics represents an indispensable element of SANS, which is a multifactorial problem (6). In brief: endothelial dysfunction secondary to genetic, biochemical/nutritional, and physiological (e.g., cardiovascular/fluid shift) f actors could lead to optic disc edema and the other ocular changes that occur in SANS. We expanded this hypothesis to include the possibility that genetic effects on B-vitamin status can alter nitric oxide synthesis and oxidative stress in the endothelium. This in turn could alter the turnover of structural components of the sclera, making it more susceptible to pathologic changes when faced with stressors related to the unrelenting headward fluid shift that occurs in weightlessness and strict head-down tilt bed rest (5). If the relationships that we have observed in flight and ground-based research hold true for the SANS Countermeasure Study, these genetic factors could predict who will be more susceptible to the development of SANS, and more importantly could also provide countermeasure options. As has been shown extensively in the literature, vitamin supplementation can serve to overcome genetic hindrances to one-carbon biochemistry and vascular physiology. Thus, based on our findings, publications, and hypotheses, supported by extensive supporting literature, we had hoped to test in the SANS Countermeasure Study the efficacy of a bioactive B-vitamin complex as a countermeasure to optimize function of the one-carbon pathway and prevent or mitigate optic disc edema during strict 6-degree head down tilt bed rest, and ultimately in space f light. While the supplement is no longer planned to be tested in the SANS Countermeasure Study because of laws regulating supplementation studies like this costing much more than initially planned, we will assess the contribution of one-carbon pathway genetics and B-vitamin status to SANS risk.

S R Zwart↗
NASA NTRS2017

Fragmentation Increases Impact of Wind Disturbance on Forest Structure and Carbon Stocks in a Western Amazonian Landscape

Tropical second-growth forests could help mitigate climate change, but the degree to which their carbon potential is achieved will depend on exposure to disturbance. Wind disturbance is common in tropical forests, shaping structure, composition, and function, and influencing successional trajectories. However, little is known about the impacts of extreme winds in fragmented landscapes, though second-growth forests are often located in mosaics of forest, pasture, cropland, and other land cover types. Though indirect evidence suggests that fragmentation increases risk of wind damage, few studies have found such impacts following severe storms. In this study, we ask whether fragmentation and forest type (old vs. second growth) were associated with variation in wind damage after a severe convective storm in a fragmented production landscape in western Amazonia. We applied linear spectral unmixing to Landsat 8 imagery from before and after the storm, and combined it with field observations of damage to map wind effects on forest structure and biomass (Figure 4, 5). We also used Landsat 8 imagery to map land cover with the goals of identifying old- and second-growth forest and characterizing fragmentation. We used these data to assess variation in wind disturbance across 95,596 hectares of forest, distributed over 6,110 patches. We find that fragmentation is significantly associated with wind damage, with damage severity higher at forest edges and in edgier, more isolated patches (Figure 7). Damage was more severe in old-growth than in second-growth forests, but this effect was weaker than that of fragmentation (Figure 8). These results illustrate the importance of considering spatial configuration and landscape context in planning tropical forest restoration and predicting carbon sequestration in second-growth forests. Future research should address the mechanisms behind these results, to minimize wind damage risk in second-growth forests so their carbon potential can be maximally achieved.

Schwartz, Naomi B.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Land-Use Emissions Play a Critical Role in Land Based Mitigation for Paris Climate Targets

Scenarios that limit global warming to below 2 degrees Centigrade by 2100 assume significant land-use change to support large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) removal from the atmosphere by afforestation/reforestation, avoided deforestation, and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). The more ambitious mitigation scenarios require even greater land area for mitigation and/or earlier adoption of CO2 removal strategies. Here we show that additional land-use change to meet a 1.5 degrees Centigrade climate change target could result in net losses of carbon from the land. The effectiveness of BECCS strongly depends on several assumptions related to the choice of biomass, the fate of initial above ground biomass, and the fossil-fuel emissions offset in the energy system. Depending on these factors, carbon removed from the atmosphere through BECCS could easily be offset by losses due to land-use change. If BECCS involves replacing high-carbon content ecosystems with crops, then forest-based mitigation could be more efficient for atmospheric CO2 removal than BECCS.

Harper, Anna B.↗
NASA NTRS2022

Patterns and Controls on Island-Wide Aboveground Biomass Accumulation in Second-Growth Forests of Puerto Rico

Understanding the heterogeneity of biomass accumulation in second-growth tropical forests following land use abandonment is important for informing ecosystem carbon models and forest restoration efforts. There is an urgent need for a broad sample of second-growth forests to enhance our knowledge of carbon accumulation in human-dominated landscapes, especially for older forests. Puerto Rico has predominantly second-growth forests, ranging in age from approximately 25 to more than 80 years. We used an island-wide sample of airborne lidar from the NASA Goddard Lidar, Hyperspectral, and Thermal (G-LiHT) Airborne Imager collected on March 2017, forest inventory data, and data on forest age, precipitation, soils, and land use to estimate aboveground biomass stocks in moist and wet, second-growth tropical forests. Biomass accumulation rates in Puerto Rico were lower, on average, than in other Neotropical forests. Median biomass across >16,700 ha of older second-growth forests was 105 Mg ha−1, and sampled biomass rarely surpassed 250 Mg ha−1. Differences in biomass by age were large and persistent across different substrates and land uses, with a plateau in the pattern of island-wide biomass accumulation after about 33 years. A spatial regression model showed that multiple factors were related to biomass accumulation, including time since abandonment, geologic substrate, past land use as coffee or pasture, precipitation, topographic wetness index, and slope. Our findings have important consequences for the total carbon storage and expected climate mitigation benefits of large-scale reforestation efforts, and highlight the value of airborne lidar for quantifying biomass variability in complex tropical landscapes.

Sebastián Martinuzzi↗
NASA NTRS2020

Empirical estimates of regional carbon budgets imply reduced global soil heterotrophic respiration

Resolving regional carbon budgets is critical for informing land-based mitigation policy. For nine regions covering nearly the whole globe, we collected inventory estimates of carbon-stock changes complemented by satellite estimates of biomass changes where inventory data are missing. The net land–atmospheric carbon exchange (NEE) was calculated by taking the sum of the carbon-stock change and lateral carbon fluxes from crop and wood trade, and riverine-carbon export to the ocean. Summing up NEE from all regions, we obtained a global ‘bottom-up’ NEE for net land anthropogenic CO2 uptake of –2.2±0.6 PgC/yr consistent with the independent top-down NEE from the global atmospheric carbon budget during 2000–2009. This estimate is so far the most comprehensive global bottom-up carbon budget accounting, which set up an important milestone for global carbon-cycle studies. By decomposing NEE into component fluxes, we found that global soil heterotrophic respiration amounts to a source of CO2 of 39 PgC/yr with an interquartile of 33–46 PgC/yr —a much smaller portion of net primary productivity than previously reported.

carbon budget↗
NASA NTRS2015

Implications of Climate Mitigation for Future Agricultural Production

Climate change is projected to negatively impact biophysical agricultural productivity in much of the world. Actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate future climate changes, are thus of central importance for agricultural production. Climate impacts are, however, not unidirectional; some crops in some regions (primarily higher latitudes) are projected to benefit, particularly if increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is assumed to strongly increase crop productivity at large spatial and temporal scales. Climate mitigation measures that are implemented by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations lead to reductions both in the strength of climate change and in the benefits of carbon dioxide fertilization. Consequently, analysis of the effects of climate mitigation on agricultural productivity must address not only regions for which mitigation is likely to reduce or even reverse climate damages. There are also regions that are likely to see increased crop yields due to climate change, which may lose these added potentials under mitigation action. Comparing data from the most comprehensive archive of crop yield projections publicly available, we find that climate mitigation leads to overall benefits from avoided damages at the global scale and especially in many regions that are already at risk of food insecurity today. Ignoring controversial carbon dioxide fertilization effects on crop productivity, we find that for the median projection aggressive mitigation could eliminate approximately 81% of the negative impacts of climate change on biophysical agricultural productivity globally by the end of the century. In this case, the benefits of mitigation typically extend well into temperate regions, but vary by crop and underlying climate model projections. Should large benefits to crop yields from carbon dioxide fertilization be realized, the effects of mitigation become much more mixed, though still positive globally and beneficial in many food insecure countries.

Mueller, Christoph↗
NASA NTRS2022

Scientist-Stakeholder Relationships Drive Carbon Data Product Transfer Effectiveness within NASA Program

Carbon cycle science is at the heart of research on global climate change and its long-term impacts, as it examines the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and the impact of fossil fuel emissions on this cycling. Given the urgency of the climate challenge, NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) requires all funded investigators to identify and work with stakeholder organizations at project inception to accelerate the transfer of the products developed by funded research into decision making systems. In this study, we contribute to the literature through the implementation of a quantitative analysis of 908 unique survey responses from funded investigators to explore the maturity of the scientist-stakeholder engagement. The paper employs multiple correspondence analysis to provide evidence to support policy options to increase stakeholder integration into research programs. Despite limitations of the dataset used, we demonstrated that multiple funding rounds, long-standing relationships between the stakeholder and scientist, and the scientific productivity of the PI, including the ability to produce datasets and research papers on these datasets, all contribute to carbon products moving from research to operational use. The maturity of relationships between scientists and stakeholders was shown to result improved stakeholder engagement. The use of carbon products should be identified in every stage of the program, and that capacity building is needed to support both existing and newly identified stakeholders better understand and use CMS products. As Federal, State, and local policy on climate adaptation and mitigation matures, the need for information on carbon will expand. Building of stakeholder-scientist relationships in CMS results in an effective generation and use of datasets to support this need and prototype ways that improved information needed for decision making can be created.

Monitoring↗