Isoscape of amount-weighted annual mean precipitation tritium (3H) activity from 1976 to 2017 for the Adriatic–Pannonian region – AP3H_v1 database

Tritium (3H) as a constituent of the water molecule is an important natural tracer in hydrological sciences. The anthropogenic tritium introduced into the atmosphere unintentionally became an excellent tracer of processes on a time scale of up to 100 years. A prerequisite for tritium applications is to know the distribution of tritium activity in precipitation. Here we present a database of isoscapes derived from 41 stations for amount-weighted annual mean tritium activity in precipitation for the period 1976 to 2017 on spatially continuous interpolated 1 km × 1 km grids for the Adriatic–Pannonian region (called the AP3H_v1 database), with a special focus on post-2010 years, which are not represented by existing global models. Five stations were used for out-of-sample evaluation of the model performance, independently confirming its capability of reproducing the spatiotemporal tritium variability in the region. The AP3H database is capable of providing reliable spatiotemporal input for hydrogeological application at any place within Slovenia, Hungary, and their surroundings.Results also show a decrease in the average spatial representativity of the stations regarding tritium activity in precipitation from∼440 km in 1970s, when bomb tritium still prevailed in precipitation, to∼235 km in the2010s. The post-2010 isoscapes can serve as benchmarks for background tritium activity for the region, helping to determine potential future local increases in technogenic tritium from these backgrounds. The gridded tritium isoscape is available in NetCDF-4 at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.896938 (Kern et al., 2019)

A MOOC in Nuclear- and Radio-Chemistry: from the design to the feedback

Recently, the loss of expertise in the nuclear- and radio-chemistry (NRC) is becoming an issue of concern, because of few engaging curricula and career prospects. To counteract this trend, the Massive Open Online Course “Essential Radiochemistry for Society” has been developed with the intent of letting young students in scientific matters discover all the benefits of NRC to society and improving their awareness of these disciplines. The MOOC development process as well as the feedbacks collected in the first MOOC editions are analyzed by highlighting strong points and weakness of the followed strategy