ReportWire

Tag: National Institute for Environmental Studies

  • We need to learn to live with less steel

    We need to learn to live with less steel

    [ad_1]

    Newswise — Steel is one of the most important materials in the world, integral to the cars we drive, the buildings we inhabit, and the infrastructure that allows us to travel from place to place. Steel is also responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, 45 countries made a commitment to pursue near-zero-emission steel in the next decade. But how possible is it to produce the steel we need in society with zero emissions?

    A new study focused on the Japanese steel industry shows that if we are truly committed to reaching zero emissions, we must be prepared for a scenario where the amount of steel we can produce is lower. Japan has set a target for a 46% reduction in emissions from steel by 2030, and zero emissions by 2050. So far, the roadmap for achieving this relies heavily on future innovations in technology. Hope is held out for developments in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen-based technologies.

    In the study, Dr. Takuma Watari, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan, currently working with the University of Cambridge, argues that there is no silver bullet. He says that current plans to cut carbon emissions underestimate how difficult it will be to develop CCS and hydrogen technologies and deploy them widely: “These technologies still face serious technical, economic, and social challenges, and have yet to be implemented at scale. And importantly, it is highly uncertain whether there will be sufficient non-emitting electricity to use these technologies.” We need to confront the possibility that technological innovations might not be ready in time to allow us to maintain current levels of steel production whilst cutting emissions to zero.

    The research involved mapping the current flows of steel in Japan’s industry and using a model to explore how the industry might change if a strict carbon budget were applied in future. Dr. Watari explains that with current practice, the quantity and quality of steel produced would dramatically decrease under a zero-emission carbon budget. This is because of a lack of resources and the practice of downcycling, in which scraps of steel containing impurities are used to make new products. It is difficult to remove these impurities, so the new products have different quality and functionality from the original steel.

    According to Dr. Watari, “zero-emission steel production is possible by 2050, but in limited quantity and quality compared to current total production. This is due to the limited availability of zero-emission compatible resources and downcycling practices of scrap steel.”

    The research indicates that with a carbon budget of zero emissions, the production of steel goods would be dramatically restricted compared to today, reaching about half the current levels at best. In this case, higher-quality steel production (e.g., sheet steel) would be especially hard hit.

    The implication is clear. It is not enough to rely on a technological silver bullet materialising to transform the supply of steel. We also need to look seriously at strategies to reduce demand by shifting our culture of steel use and improving our material efficiency. We also need to pursue upcycling to produce high-grade steel from scrap steel.

    This will require collaboration from those who use steel as well as those who produce it. Steel products could be made more resource efficient if they are designed to last longer or to be lightweight. Once steel products reach the end of their life, upcycling could be achieved through advanced sorting and shredding to remove impurities from scrap steel. As a society, Japan may also have to become less steel-dependent and shift to a model of ‘service use’ rather than ownership of products. Unlike today, when steel is abundant and cheap, a net-zero future will require us to use scarcer, more expensive steel resources with greater efficiency.

    Dr. Watari concludes that we do need to invest in technological innovations, but we cannot simply wait for them to appear. Instead, steel users need to prepare for a world where there is less steel available: “We do not deny the need to invest in innovative production technologies. Rather, what we want to highlight is that we should look for far more strategic options, instead of simply relying on silver bullet production technologies. Placing material efficiency and upcycling at the heart of decarbonisation plans can reduce the over-reliance on innovative production technologies and prepare for the risk that these technologies may not scale up sufficiently in time.”

    [ad_2]

    National Institute for Environmental Studies

    Source link

  • Model analysis of atmospheric observations reveals methane leakage in North China

    Model analysis of atmospheric observations reveals methane leakage in North China

    [ad_1]

    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).

    [ad_2]

    National Institute for Environmental Studies

    Source link

  • Global warming at least doubled the probability of extreme ocean warming around Japan

    Global warming at least doubled the probability of extreme ocean warming around Japan

    [ad_1]

    Newswise — In the past decade, the marginal seas of Japan frequently experienced extremely high sea surface temperatures (SSTs). A new study led by National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) researchers revealed that the increased occurrence frequency of extreme ocean warming events since the 2000s is attributable to global warming due to industrialization.

    In August 2020, the southern area of Japan and the northwestern Pacific Ocean experienced unprecedentedly high SSTs, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). A recent study published in January 2021 revealed that the record-high northwestern Pacific SST observed in August 2020 could not be expected to occur without human-induced climate changes. Since then, the JMA again announced that the record high SSTs were observed near Japan in July and October 2021 and from June to August 2022, but it remains unclear to what extent climate change has altered the occurrence likelihood of these regional extreme warming events.

    “Impacts of global warming is not uniform, rather show regional and seasonal differences,” said a co-author Hideo Shiogama, the head of the Earth System Risk Assessment Section at Earth System Division, NIES. “A comprehensive analysis on regional SSTs for a long period may provide a quantitative understanding of how much ocean condition near Japan has been and will be affected by global warming. This better informs policymakers to plan climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.”

    The paper published in Geophysical Research Letters today figures out the contribution of global warming to discrete monthly extreme ocean warming events in Japan’s marginal seas, which could occur less than once per 20 years in the preindustrial era. A climate research group at NIES focused on ten monitoring areas operationally used by the JMA, including the Japan Sea, East China Sea, Okinawa Islands, east of Taiwan, and the Pacific coasts of Japan. The scientists confirmed that observed SST changes from 1982 to 2021 were well reproduced by 24 climate models participating in the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), except for the region east of Hokkaido. Then, the extreme ocean warming events were identified in nine monitoring areas to reveal the contribution of climate change therein.

    Extreme ocean warming and climate change

    “In the present climate, every extreme ocean warming event is linked to global warming,” said corresponding lead author Michiya Hayashi, a research associate at NIES. The scientists estimated the occurrence frequencies of each event in the present and preindustrial climate conditions from January 1982 through July 2022 based on the CMIP6 climate models. “We found that the occurrence probability of almost all the extreme ocean warming events has already at least doubled since the 2000s than the preindustrial era. It is increased more than tenfold in sizeable cases since the mid-2010s, especially in southern Japan.”

    For instance, in July 2022, anomalously high SSTs observed in five monitoring areas, including the Japan Sea (Areas 1, 3), East China Sea (Areas 5, 8), and south of Okinawa near Taiwan (Area 10), are identified as the extreme ocean warming events. The updated results based on the preliminary data retrieved from the NEAR-GOOS RRTDB website on 15 September 2022 (not included in the published paper) show that, in August 2022, the events are also identified in six monitoring areas at the south of 35°N: the East China Sea (Areas 5, 8), south and east of Okinawa (Areas 10, 9), southeastern Kanto (Area 7), and seas off Shikoku and Tokai (Area 6). “We estimate that, in all of these identified events in July and August 2022, the occurrence frequencies are increased at least doubled due to climate change, and more than tenfold for those in the south of 35°N except for the north of East China Sea,” stated Hayashi.

    “Climate change impacts on extreme ocean warming events in northern Japan began to emerge relatively late compared to southern Japan,” noted Shiogama. The increased global aerosol emissions until the 1980s tend to cool the Earth’s surface, which is more substantial in the North Pacific especially near northern Japan via atmospheric large-scale circulation changes. In addition, the year-to-year natural variability of SST is large in northern Japan so the global warming signal was less detectable than in southern Japan. Since in the last decades global aerosol emissions have been reduced, the cooling effect becomes less dominant to human-induced greenhouse gas warming. “Our study indicates,“ continued Shiogama, “that the contribution of climate change to SST extremes has been already discernible beyond natural variability even in northern Japan under the present climate condition.”

    What about the ocean conditions expected in the future? The researchers further compared the probabilities of exceeding the monthly record high SSTs around Japan at different global warming levels from 0°C to 2°C using the 24 CMIP6 climate model outputs from 1901 to 2100. “Once global warming reaches 2°C, all of nine monitoring areas are expected to experience SSTs warmer than the past highest levels at least every two years,” said Tomoo Ogura, a co-author and the head of the Climate Modeling and Analysis Section at Earth System Division, NIES. He added, “Limiting global warming below 1.5°C is necessary not to have the record warm conditions in Japan’s marginal seas as the new normal climate.”

    The quantitative analysis of SSTs around Japan implies that climate change has already become the major factor for most of the record high SSTs in recent years. “In the future, dynamics of each extreme warming event need to be examined by taking the long-term climate change and year-to-year natural variability into account,” noted Hayashi. “Nevertheless, we expect that our statistical results based on the latest climate models will help to implement adaptation and mitigation measures for climate change.”

    [ad_2]

    National Institute for Environmental Studies

    Source link