What it would take to discover life on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus

Surrounded by a vast ocean underneath a thick ice shell, Enceladus is a hot candidate for potentially harboring alien life. A team of researchers led by the University of Arizona concluded that a future mission could provide answers even without landing 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

 

IMAGE: ARTIST'S IMPRESSION OF THE CASSINI SPACECRAFT FLYING THROUGH PLUMES ERUPTING FROM THE SOUTH POLE OF SATURN'S MOON ENCELADUS. THESE PLUMES ARE MUCH LIKE GEYSERS AND EXPEL A COMBINATION OF WATER VAPOR, ICE GRAINS, SALTS, METHANE AND OTHER ORGANIC MOLECULES. view more 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH

The mystery of whether microbial alien life might inhabit Enceladus, one of Saturn's 83 moons, could be solved by an orbiting space probe, according to a new study led by University of Arizona researchers. In a paper published in The Planetary Science Journal, the researchers map out how a hypothetical space mission could provide definite answers.  

When Enceladus was initially surveyed in 1980 by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, it looked like a small, not overly exciting "snowball" in the sky. Later, between 2005 to 2017, NASA's Cassini probe zipped around the Saturnian System and studied Saturn's complex rings and moons in unprecedented detail. Scientists were stunned when Cassini discovered that Enceladus' thick layer of ice hides a vast, warm saltwater ocean outgassing methane, a gas that typically originates from microbial life on Earth.  

The methane, along with other organic molecules that build the foundations of life, were detected when Cassini flew through giant water plumes erupting from the surface of Enceladus. As the tiny moon orbits the ringed gas giant, it is being squeezed and tugged by Saturn's immense gravitational field, heating up its interior due to friction. As a result, spectacular plumes of water jet from cracks and crevices on Enceladus' icy surface into space.  

Last year, a team of scientists at UArizona and Université Paris Sciences et Lettres in Paris calculated that if life could have emerged on Enceladus, there is a high likelihood that its presence could explain why the moon is burping up methane.  

"To know if that is the case, we must go back to Enceladus and look," said Régis Ferrière, senior author of the new paper and associate professor in the UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. 

In their latest paper, Ferrière and his collaborators report that while the hypothetical total mass of living microbes in Enceladus' ocean would be small, a visit from an orbiting spacecraft is all that would be needed to know for sure whether Earthlike microbes populate Enceladus' ocean underneath its shell.  

"Clearly, sending a robot crawling through ice cracks and deep-diving down to the seafloor would not be easy," Ferrière said, explaining that more realistic missions have been designed that would use upgraded instruments to sample the plumes like Cassini did, or even land on the moon's surface.  

"By simulating the data that a more prepared and advanced orbiting spacecraft would gather from just the plumes alone, our team has now shown that this approach would be enough to confidently determine whether or not there is life within Enceladus' ocean without actually having to probe the depths of the moon," he said. "This is a thrilling perspective." 

Located about 800 million miles from Earth, Enceladus completes an orbit around Saturn every 33 hours. While the moon isn't even as wide as the state of Arizona, it visually stands out because of its surface; like a frozen pond glinting in the sun, the moon reflects light like no other object in the solar system. Along the moon's south pole, at least 100 giant water plumes erupt through cracks in the icy landscape much like lava from a violent volcano.  

Scientists believe that water vapor and ice particles ejected by these geyser-like features contribute to one of Saturn's iconic rings. This ejected mixture, which brings up gases and other particles from deep inside Enceladus' ocean, was sampled by the Cassini spacecraft.

The excess methane Cassini detected in the plumes conjures images of extraordinary ecosystems found in the lightless depths of Earth's oceans: hydrothermal vents. Here, at the edges of two adjacent tectonic plates, hot magma below the seafloor heats the ocean water in porous bedrock, creating "white smokers," vents spewing scorching hot, mineral-saturated seawater. With no access to sunlight, organisms depend on energy stored in chemical compounds released by the white smokers to make a living.   

"On our planet, hydrothermal vents teem with life, big and small, in spite of darkness and insane pressure," Ferrière said. "The simplest living creatures there are microbes called methanogens that power themselves even in the absence of sunlight."  

This graphic depicts how scientists believe water interacts with rock at the bottom of Enceladus’ ocean to create hydrothermal vent systems. These same chimney-like vents are found along tectonic plate borders in Earth’s oceans, approximately 7000 feet below the surface.

CREDIT

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Southwest Research Institute

Methanogens convert dihydrogen and carbon dioxide to gain energy, releasing methane as a byproduct. Ferrière's research group modeled its calculations based on the hypothesis that Enceladus has methanogens that inhabit oceanic hydrothermal vents resembling the ones found on Earth. In this way, the researchers calculated what the total mass of methanogens on Enceladus would be, as well as the likelihood that their cells and other organic molecules could be ejected through the plumes. 

"We were surprised to find that the hypothetical abundance of cells would only amount to the biomass of one single whale in Enceladus' global ocean," said the paper's first author, Antonin Affholder, a postdoctoral research associate at UArizona who was at Paris Sciences & Lettres when doing this research. "Enceladus' biosphere may be very sparse. And yet our models indicate that it would be productive enough to feed the plumes with just enough organic molecules or cells to be picked up by instruments onboard a future spacecraft." 

Enceladus has garnered recent attention as a location to someday be revisited and more thoroughly scrutinized. One proposal, the "Enceladus Orbilander," designed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, envisions a mission that would collect extensive data about Enceladus by landing on and orbiting this celestial body beginning in the 2050s.   

"Our research shows that if a biosphere is present in Enceladus' ocean, signs of its existence could be picked up in plume material without the need to land or drill," said Affholder, "but such a mission would require an orbiter to fly through the plume multiple times to collect lots of oceanic material." 

The paper includes recommendations about the minimum amount of material that must be collected from the plumes to confidently search for both microbial cells and certain organic molecules. Observable cells would show direct evidence of life.  

"The possibility that actual cells could be found might be slim," Affholder said, "because they would have to survive the outgassing process carrying them through the plumes from the deep ocean to the vacuum of space – quite a journey for a tiny cell."  

Instead, the authors suggest that detected organic molecules, such as particular amino acids, would serve as indirect evidence for or against an environment abounding with life.  

"Considering that according to the calculations, any life present on Enceladus would be extremely sparse, there still is a good chance that we'll never find enough organic molecules in the plumes to unambiguously conclude that it is there," Ferrière said. "So, rather than focusing on the question of how much is enough to prove that life is there, we asked, 'What is the maximum amount of organic material that could be present in the absence of life?'" 

If all measurements were to come back above a certain threshold, it could signal that life is a serious possibility, according to the authors.  

"The definitive evidence of living cells caught on an alien world may remain elusive for generations," Affholder said. "Until then, the fact that we can't rule out life's existence on Enceladus is probably the best we can do." 

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JOURNAL

The Planetary Science Journal

DOI

10.3847/PSJ/aca275 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Putative methanogenic biosphere in Enceladus's deep ocean: Biomass, productivity, and implications for detection

Cheerful chatbots don’t necessarily improve customer service

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: HAN ZHANG view more 

CREDIT: GEORGIA TECH

Imagine messaging an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot about a missing package and getting the response that it would be “delighted” to help. Once the bot creates the new order, they say they are “happy” to resolve the issue. After, you receive a survey about your interaction, but would you be likely to rate it as positive or negative?

This scenario isn’t that far from reality, as AI chatbots are already taking over online commerce. By 2025, 95% of companies will have an AI chatbot, according to Finance Digest. AI might not be sentient yet, but it can be programmed to express emotions.

Humans displaying positive emotions in customer service interactions have long been known to improve customer experience, but researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business wanted to see if this also applied to AI. They conducted experimental studies to determine if positive emotional displays improved customer service and found that emotive AI is only appreciated if the customer expects it, and it may not be the best avenue for companies to invest in.

“It is commonly believed and repeatedly shown that human employees can express positive emotion to improve customers’ service evaluations,” said Han Zhang, the Steven A. Denning Professor in Technology & Management. “Our findings suggest that the likelihood of AI’s expression of positive emotion to benefit or hurt service evaluations depends on the type of relationship that customers expect from the service agent.”

The researchers presented their findings in the paper, “Bots With Feelings: Should AI Agents Express Positive Emotion in Customer Service?,” in Information Systems Research in December.

Studying AI Emotion

The researchers conducted three studies to expand the understanding of emotional AI in customer service transactions. Although they changed the participants and scenario in each study, AI chatbots imbued with emotion used positive emotional adjectives, such as excited, delighted, happy, or glad. They also deployed more exclamation points.

The first study focused on whether customers responded more favorably to positive emotion if they knew the customer agent was a bot or person. Participants were told they were seeking help for a missing item in a retail order. The 155 participants were then randomly assigned to four different scenarios: human agents with neutral emotion, human agents with positive emotion, bots with neutral emotion, and bots with positive emotion. Then they asked participants about service quality and overall satisfaction. The results indicated that positive emotion was more beneficial when human agents exhibited it, but it had no effect when bots exhibited it.

The second study examined if customers’ personal expectations determined their reaction to the bot. In this scenario, the 88 participants imagined returning a textbook and were randomly assigned to either emotion-positive or emotion-neutral bots. After chatting with the bot, they were asked to rate if they were communal (social) oriented or exchange (transaction) oriented on a scale. If the participant was communal-focused, they were more likely to appreciate the positive emotional bot, but if they expected the exchange as merely transactional, the emotionally positive bot made their experience worse.

“Our work enables businesses to understand the expectations of customers exposed to AI-provided services before they haphazardly equip AIs with emotion-expressing capabilities,” Zhang said.

The final study explored why a bot’s positive emotion influences customer emotions, following 177 undergraduate students randomly assigned to emotive or non-emotive bots. The results explained why positive bots have less of an effect than anticipated. Because customers do not expect machines to have emotions, they can react negatively to emotion in a bot.

The results across the studies show that using positive emotion in chatbots is challenging because businesses don’t know a customer’s biases and expectations going into the interaction. A happy chatbot could lead to an unhappy customer.

“Our findings suggest that the positive effect of expressing positive emotion on service evaluations may not materialize when the source of the emotion is not a human,” Zhang said. “Practitioners should be cautious about the promises of equipping AI agents with emotion-expressing capabilities.”

 

CITATION: Han, Elizabeth and Yin, Dezhi and Zhang, Han (2022) Bots with Feelings: Should AI Agents Express Positive Emotion in Customer Service?. Information Systems Research.

Published online in Articles in Advance 02 Dec 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1179

 

######

 

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 46,000 students, representing 50 states and more than 150 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

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JOURNAL

Information Systems Research

DOI

10.1287/isre.2022.1179 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Bots with feelings: Should AI agents express positive emotion in customer service?

Walking “Teabag style” for a few minutes a day could help adults meet physical activity targets

Monty Python inspired study suggests that increasing the inefficiency of physical activity could have important public health benefits

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Adults could achieve global physical activity targets by walking inefficiently for just a few minutes each day, finds a study in the Christmas issue of The BMJ.

Global rates of physical inactivity have not budged in the past 20 years, despite campaigns to increase physical activity and boost cardiovascular fitness in adults. 

The inefficient walking styles of Mr Teabag and Mr Putey, acted by John Cleese and Michael Palin in the 1971 Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, have been shown to be more variable than usual walking, but their energy expenditure has never been measured.

To fill this vital research gap, a team of US researchers set out to compare the energy expenditure of low efficiency walking with high efficiency walking.

Their findings are based on data from 13 healthy adults (six women, seven men) aged 22-71 years (average age 34) with no history of heart or lung disease, and no known gait disorder.

Height and body weight were measured and each participant was shown a video of the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch before performing three walking trials, each lasting five minutes, around an indoor 30 metre course. 

In the first trial, participants walked in their usual style at a freely chosen pace. For the next two trials, participants were asked to recreate, to the best of their ability, the walks of Mr Teabag and Mr Putey they had seen in the video.

Distance covered during the five minute walks was used to calculate average speed. Oxygen uptake (mL/kg/min), energy expenditure (kcal/kg/min) and exercise intensity (METs) - the amount of calories expended per minute of physical activity - were also measured. 

The researchers found that only the Teabag walk resulted in a significantly greater energy expenditure—about 2.5 times that of usual walking.

For men and women combined, oxygen uptake during normal walking was 11.3 mL/kg/min (or 3.2 METs), which was similar to that of the Putey walk (12.3 mL/kg/min, or 3.5 METs). However, the Teabag walk elicited an oxygen uptake of 27.9 mL/kg/min, or 8 METs, which qualifies as vigorous intensity exercise.

In terms of energy expenditure, exchanging just one minute of usual walking style with one minute of Teabag walking was associated with an increase in energy expenditure of 8 kcal/min for men and 5 kcal/min for women.

The researchers estimate that adults could achieve 75 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity per week by walking in Teabag style—rather than their usual style—for about 11 min/day. And substituting usual style steps with Teabag style steps for about 12-19 min/day would increase daily energy expenditure by approximately 100 kcal. 

This amount of walking in Teabag style would likely increase cardiorespiratory fitness, reduce mortality risk, and would require no extra time commitment because it replaces movement adults already do with higher energy physical activity, they add.

This is an experimental study based on a small sample, and the researchers acknowledge that some people, including those with disabilities, gait disorders, joint disease, or other health conditions might not be able to perform the Putey or Teabag walks. “But they might be able to otherwise increase energy expenditure in their daily movements, with inefficiency as the goal,” they say.

They also note that bursts of physical activity as short as one to two minutes, accumulated over time, can produce cardiovascular benefits, so people could engage in regular bursts of inefficient walking, at times and places that are most convenient for them, including indoors. 

“Our analysis of the energy consumed during different styles of walking seeks to empower people to move their own bodies in more energetic—and hopefully joyful—ways,” they write. “Efforts to boost cardiovascular fitness should embrace inclusivity and inefficiency for all.”

TRAINING VIDEO 

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2022-072833 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Quantifying the benefits of inefficient walking: Monty Python inspired laboratory based experimental study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

 

Model analysis of atmospheric observations reveals methane leakage in North China

Findings based on Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite “IBUKI” (GOSAT) observations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

 

IMAGE: EMISSION ESTIMATES FOR 2010–2018 IN CHINA. THE FOUR REGIONS ANALYZED INCLUDE NORTH CHINA (NE), SOUTH CHINA (SE), NORTH-WEST CHINA (NW), AND THE QINGHAI-TIBETAN PLATEAU (TP). view more 

CREDIT: NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

1. Background

Natural gas is a relatively clean burning fossil fuel, that causes less air pollution than coal and is widely used in the world. Recent studies have shown that the natural gas leaks from production, supply chain, and end-use facilities are a large source of atmospheric methane (CH4), and the leaking budget is underestimated in many places by bottom-up inventories. CH4 is the second most important greenhouse gas (GHG) contributing to global warming after carbon dioxide (CO2), with a relatively shorter lifetime, making the reduction of CH4 emission a suitable target for implementing rapid and achievable mitigation strategies of the Paris Agreement.

Over the last decade, natural gas has become the fastest-growing fossil energy source in China due to the coal-to-gas government initiative that has been implemented to reduce air pollution and CO2 emissions. Natural gas consumption has increased dramatically from 108.5 billion standard cubic meters (bcm) (4% of primary energy consumption) in 2010 to a record level of 280 bcm (7.6% of primary energy consumption) in 2018. In addition, according to China’s energy plan, the share of primary energy from gas will keep increasing and is likely to reach 15% by 2030, while coal and oil consumption will decline. From 2010 to 2018, the length of gas supply pipelines in urban areas of China increased approximately three-fold from 298 to 842 thousand kilometers. However, CH4 leakage from those pipelines has not been actively reported, and there is limited publicly available data on upstream emissions and local distribution of natural gas emissions in China.

2. Research Outline and Results

In this study, we used nine years (2010–2018) of CH4 observations by the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite “IBUKI” (GOSAT) and surface station data from the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) to estimate CH4 emissions in different regions of China. GOSAT observes the column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CH4 in the atmosphere, and the surface stations monitor CH4 concentrations near surface. The observation data were used for simulations by the high-resolution inverse model NTFVAR (NIES-TM-FLEXPART-variational) to infer the surface flux of CH4 emissions. Inverse modelling optimizes prior flux estimates, which are constrained so that an acceptable agreement between the simulated and observed atmospheric concentrations is achieved.

Figure 1 shows the model-estimated CH4 fluxes in four regions of China. The four regions, North China (NE), South China (SE), North-west China (NW), and the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (TP), vary with respect climate, geographical features, types of agriculture, major economic activities, and CH4 emission sources. The model-estimated average CH4 emissions from the four subregions over the period 2010–2018 are 30.0±1.0 (average ± standard deviation) Tg CH4 yr-1 from the SE region, 23.3±2.7 Tg CH4 yr-1 from the NE region, 2.9±0.2 Tg CH4 yr-1 from the NW region, and 1.7±0.1 Tg CH4 yr-1 from the TP region. The trends in CH4 emissions have varied in the different regions of China over the last nine years, with significant increase trends detected in the NE region and the whole China.

We focused our analysis on the NE region where natural gas production and consumption have increased dramatically and are likely one of the main contributors to the increase estimated in regional total CH4 emissions. The CH4 emissions from natural gas, including leakage from fuel extraction, processing, transport, and the end-use stage, were estimated using an approach that combined data for the province-level emissions inventory and published inverse model studies. The model-estimated total CH4 emissions and the estimated natural gas emissions both increased significantly during 2010–2018 (Figure 2). The total amount of natural gas emissions due to leakages constitutes a significant waste of energy and value. For example, in 2018, natural gas consumption in the NE region was 101.5 bcm and the estimated total natural gas emissions were 3.2%–5.3% of regional consumption.

Figure 3 shows the changes in estimated CH4 emissions from natural gas and the model-estimated total CH4 emissions for 2010-2018 compared to previous years in the NE region. The year-over-year change in the model-estimated total CH4 emission closely follows the changes in CH4 emissions from natural gas. In January 2016, record cold wave hit the region causing a sudden increase in natural gas use, and natural gas suppliers recorded an increase in natural gas loss (i.e., the difference between the amount of gas purchased and the amount of gas sold). Simultaneously, the atmospheric observations also captured the emission changes, as reflected in our inverse estimates (Figure 3). The analysis shows a strong correlation between trends in natural gas use and the increase in the atmospheric CH4 concentration over the NE region, which is indicative the ability of GOSAT to monitor variations in regional anthropogenic sources.

3. Future Perspectives

The findings of our study highlight that the increase in natural gas use threatens China’s carbon reduction efforts. The increase in CH4 leaks from natural gas production and the supply chain will adversely affect the interests of diverse stakeholders, despite the introduction of carbon reduction measures. Given that the large natural gas distribution pipelines span more than 900 thousand kilometers in China, natural gas leaks constitute a significant waste of energy and value. The year-over-year changes in regional emissions and trends were detected by satellite and surface observations in this study. In the future, additional observations using high-resolution satellites will help to more accurately quantify emissions and provide scientific directions for emission reduction measures. There is also a need to further detect and locate such leaks using advanced mobile platforms in order to effectively mitigate CH4 emissions in China and bring about economic, environmental, and health benefits.

4. Data Availability

GOSAT data used in this study are available from the GOSAT Data Archive Service https://data2.gosat.nies.go.jp/index_en.html

In-situ methane observation data are archived on the WDCGG Global Network: https://gaw.kishou.go.jp/

Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) emission inventories are available for download at

https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) fire emissions Database are from https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/global-fire-assimilation-system

Wetland emission by Vegetation Integrative SImulator for Trace gases (VISIT) model are available at

https://www.nies.go.jp/doi/10.17595/20210521.001-e.html

The NIES airborne and Japan-Russia Siberian Tall Tower Inland Observation network (JR STATION) data are available at

https://db.cger.nies.go.jp/ged/en/index.html

The Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55) data from the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) are available at

https://search.diasjp.net/en/dataset/JRA55

5. Supplementary Information

○ Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite “IBUKI” (GOSAT)

The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite "IBUKI" (GOSAT) is the world’s first spacecraft to monitor the concentrations of the two major GHGs CO2 and CH4 from space. NIES has promoted the GOSAT series projects for GHG observation from space, together with the Ministry of the Environment, Japan (MOE) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). GOSAT (IBUKI) is the first satellite in the series and has been observing column-averaged concentrations of CO2 and CH4 for more than 13 years since its launch in 2009. The second satellite, GOSAT-2 (IBUKI-2) was launched in 2018 and started observing carbon monoxide in addition to CO2 and CH4. Furthermore, the third satellite, Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW) is under development and due for launch in Japanese fiscal year 2023.

○ Lifetime of methane in the atmosphere

Methane is the second most important well-mixed GHG contributing to human-induced climate change after CO2. The lifetime of CH4 in the atmosphere refers to the time that CH4 stays in the air after being emitted from a variety of sources. CH4 is removed from the atmosphere mostly by chemical reactions. The atmospheric lifetime of CH4 is 10 ± 2 years, which is relatively shorter than that of CO2 (approximately 5 to 200 years) (IPCC, 2013).

○ Methane emission sources

Methane is emitted from a variety of anthropogenic and natural sources. Approximately 60% of all CH4 emissions come from anthropogenic sources, such as agricultural activities, waste treatment, oil and natural gas systems, coal mining, stationary and mobile combustion, and certain industrial processes. Natural emissions include wetlands, freshwater bodies such as lakes and rivers, and geological sources such as terrestrial and marine seeps and volcanoes. Other smaller sources include ruminant wild animals, termites, hydrates and permafrost.

○ Underestimation of methane emissions from oil and gas using bottom-up inventories

Methane can leak into the atmosphere from upstream/downstream natural gas operations (i.e., extraction and gathering, processing, transmission and storage, and distribution) and end-use combustion. Atmospheric measurement studies have shown that a large amount of CH4 emissions from oil and gas production are unaccounted for in bottom-up inventories. Using high-resolution satellite observations, Zhang et al. (2020) estimated a leakage equivalent to 3.7% (~60% higher than the national average leakage rate) of all the gas extracted from the largest oil-producing basin in the United States. Chan et al. (2020) reported eight-year estimates of CH4 emissions from oil and gas operations in western Canada and found that they were nearly twice that from inventories. Weller et al. (2020) used an advanced mobile leak detection (AMLD) platform combined with GIS information of utility pipelines to estimate CH4 leakage from pipelines of local distribution systems in the United States. They found that the leakage from those pipelines was approximately five times greater than that reported in inventories compiled based on self-reported utility leakage data.

○ High-resolution inverse model NIES-TM-FLEXPART-variational (NTFVAR)

Inverse modeling is an important and essential method for estimating GHGs emissions. The model uses atmospheric observation data as a controller in atmospheric models to optimize bottom-up emission inventories (prior fluxes).

The NIES-TM-FLEXPART-variational (NTFVAR) global inverse model was developed by Dr.Shamil Maksyutov’s group at NIES. NTFVAR is combined with a joint Eulerian three-dimensional transport model, the National Institute for Environmental Studies Transport Model (NIES-TM) v08.1i, and a Lagrangian model, the FLEXPART model v.8.0. The transport model is driven by JRA-55 meteorological data from JMA. The prior fluxes include gridded anthropogenic emissions from the EDGAR database, such as energy, agriculture, waste and other sectors; wetland emissions estimated by the Wetland emission by the VISIT model; biomass burning emissions estimated by GFAS; and climatological emissions from oceanic, geological, and termite sources. The inverse modeling problem is formulated and solved to find the optimal value of corrections to prior fluxes minimizing mismatches between observations and modelled concentrations. Variational optimization is applied to obtain flux corrections to vary prior uncertainty fields at a resolution of 0.1° × 0.1° with bi-weekly time steps. A variational inversion scheme is combined with the high-resolution variant of the transport model and its adjoint described by Maksyutov et al. (2021).

References:

Chan, E. et al. Eight-Year Estimates of Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Operations in Western Canada Are Nearly Twice Those Reported in Inventories. Environmental Science & Technology 54, 14899-14909, doi:10.1021/acs.est.0c04117 (2020).

IPCC 2013: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [Stocker, T. F. Q. et al.]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Maksyutov, S. et al. Technical note: A high-resolution inverse modelling technique for estimating surface CO2 fluxes based on the NIES-TM - FLEXPART coupled transport model and its adjoint. Atmospheric Chemistry Physics 21, 1245–1266 doi:10.5194/acp-21-1245-2021(2021).

Weller, Z., Hamburg, S. & von Fischer, J. A National Estimate of Methane Leakage from Pipeline Mains in Natural Gas Local Distribution Systems. Environmental Science & Technology 54, 8958-8967, doi:10.1021/acs.est.0c00437 (2020).

Zhang, Y. et al. Quantifying methane emissions from the largest oil-producing basin in the United States from space. Science Advances 6, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz5120 (2020).

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-022-19462-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Atmospheric Observations Suggest Methane Emissions in North-east China Growing with Natural Gas Use

Energy crisis, the five challenges for 2023

Simone Tagliapietra, researcher in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, has outlined for the journal “Nature” some possible global energy scenarios

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITA CATTOLICA DEL SACRO CUORE

How will the map of global energy change? Will sky-high energy prices boost renewables? How will the industrial landscape shift? What will the lasting economic impacts be? How will the energy crisis affect climate action? These are the five crucial questions that researchers around the world will be asked to focus on in 2023. It will be up to them to find adequate answers to support government action in the coming months to deal with the emergency.

Identifying the crucial issues in an area that has become key for global politics and economics, is Simone Tagliapietra, researcher in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, whom was commissioned by the journal “Nature” to outline some possible energy scenarios for 2023. Together with the co-author of the article to be published in the end-of-year issue of the prestigious journal, Andreas Goldthau, director of the Willy Brandt School at the University of Erfurt, in addition to focusing on the new post-war world energy map in Ukraine, he tried to indicate the industrial, economic and social repercussions of the energy crisis. With a focus on the effects-potentially positive-that it will have in fostering the ecological transition.

“In 2022, energy markets have been on a roller coaster”, the researchers argue. For this reason, what is about to close will go down in history as an annus horribilis. Blame it on an “energy crisis” “triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and, as a result, the Kremlin’s “geopolitical use of natural gas flows” to Europe. Thus, 2023 will be a crucial year to understand how the energy crisis will evolve and how it will affect the choices that will be made globally to ensure a more sustainable future.

How will the map of global energy change? “The events of the past year have fundamentally altered Russia's position in global energy markets and the shape of those markets. New alliances are being built and old ones consolidated”, says Tagliapietra. For its part, the European Union is is approaching major gas suppliers such as Norway, Algeria and the United States, as well as producers in Africa and the Middle East of liquefied natural gas. Russia is shifting lost European exports to Asia. Europe will see lasting reductions in its consumption of natural gas as a result of greater energy efficiency, a switch to green alternatives. Faced with this scenario in 2023, “researchers need to consider whether such steps are enough to compensate for lost Russian imports and avoid global supply shortages”, says Tagliapietra. 

Will sky-high energy prices boost renewables?

The extent to which countries can fast-track the switch to green energy is a key question for 2023. High global oil and gas prices offer an incentive for households and businesses to install solar panels and heat pumps to lower their energy bills, as many did this year in Europe.

How will the industrial landscape shift?

High costs and limited supplies of energy will reorganize industries, including processes and locations. Some energy-intensive manufacturing sectors, including for aluminium, fertilizers and other chemicals, are starting to move to places offering cheaper energy, such as the United States or the Middle East. Other industries are innovating.

What will the lasting economic impacts be?

The coming year will bring clarity about trends in ‘deglobalization’ and economic nationalism. Some economists predict that reshoring will slow the global energy transition as markets fragment. Researchers also need to watch what happens to the global division of labour that drove the development of clean technologies and slashed the cost of solar panels in the first place - a blend of innovation in the United States, Chinese investments in manufacturing and subsidies in Europe. If countries act in isolation and do so purely competitively, this virtuous circle might break.

“The energy crisis is exacerbating social inequality within and between countries. Vulnerable households and low- and middle-income nations have been hit hardest by energy cost hikes”, says Tagliapietra. “Researchers must evaluate the implications for national policies and multilateral aid, lending and development policies. They should shed light on the extent to which increasing energy poverty, energy price shocks and energy-induced inflation weaken social cohesion and threaten political stability. Rich nations can also be affected, as protests in the United Kingdom and Czech Republic attest”.

How will the energy crisis affect climate action?

The ramifications here are potentially severe. Low- and middle-income nations are uneasy with Western responses to the energy crisis; rich countries that are turning to coal to replace Russian imports while calling on poorer nations to do their utmost to decarbonize seem hypocritical

“Social and political scientists and economists need to identify which bilateral, regional and multilateral mechanisms are best placed to foster climate finance, technology transfer and capacity building as pledged under the Paris climate agreement. A re-examination is needed of cross-border carbon measures”, says Tagliapietra.

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JOURNAL

Nature

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

ARTICLE TITLE

Energy crisis, the five challenges for 2023

RITHMS, the new EU-funded project focused on technology to tackle illicit trafficking of Cultural Heritage

Funded by the European Union, the project is coordinated by Arianna Traviglia, Director at IIT’s Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology in Venice

Business Announcement

ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI TECNOLOGIA - IIT

Venice (Italy), 22nd December 2022 - Four police authorities, two border agencies, a police academy, companies and research institutes with expertise in the field of Cultural Heritage and technologies concerning integrated telecommunication systems and IT security protocols. This is the Consortium coordinated by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Tecnology) involved in RITHMS (Research, Intelligence and Technology for Heritage and Market Security), a project funded by the European Union. RITHMS aims to enhance, with the help of the most innovative technologies, the operational capacity of police forces and customs and border authorities in tackling the illicit trafficking of cultural goods, while investigating the mechanisms behind this phenomenon.

The illicit trafficking of Cultural Heritage has upgraded from a local phenomenon, limited to the initiative of a few individuals, to a highly organised activity, a highly profitable source of income for criminal organisations and terrorist groups that have exploited the opportunities offered by the web and social media to further expand an already flourishing market.  In this context, RITHMS proposes an interdisciplinary approach, also made necessary by the transnational nature of this type of crime, which will range from art market analysis to criminology, from legal studies to forensic science. The goal is the development of an artificial intelligence-based platform that will allow to identify organised criminal networks and to provide investigators with valuable information on their activity and possible evolution. In particular, the platform will exploit the potential of Social Network Analysis (SNA), a methodology that allows to better understand the behaviour of people involved in illicit trafficking through their online reactions and interactions.

The project received 5 million euros in funding from the European Union, under the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme [agreement n. 101073932]. The project’s coordinator is Arianna Traviglia, Director at IIT’s Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology in Venice (Italy).

“The broad Consortium will ensure that the RITHMS project will benefit from an articulated spectrum of expertise - explains Arianna Traviglia - relying on partners who are specialised in both information technology and legal and cultural sciences. Besides, the participation of such a variegated group of law enforcement agencies, from different countries, will allow to set the RITHMS digital platform on robust and detailed procedural and legal information, and to adapt and validate its functionalities at a supranational level."

The partners list includes: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italy, coordinator), StAG srl (Italy), VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland (Finland), European Software Institute - Central Eastern Europe (Bulgaria), RiniGARD DOO ZA USLUGE (Croatia), Houston Analytics (Finland), BEIA Consult International srl (Romania), SatCen - European Union Satellite Centre (Spain), Universidade da Coruña (Spain), Hochschule für den öffentlichen Dienst in Bayern (Germany), European Institute Foundation (Bulgaria), Italian Ministry of Defence with the Comando dei Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale (Italy), Spanish National Police (with the Brigada de Patrimonio Histórico), National Police of the Netherlands, Bulgarian Border Police, Moldavian Police, Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Involved also as Affiliated Entity the association Art Crime Project-APS (Italy), and as Associated Partner Conceptivity sarl (Switzerland).