The METAFOR project: preserving data through metadata standards for climate models and simulations

Climate modeling is a complex process, requiring accurate and complete metadata in order to identify, assess and use climate data stored in digital repositories. The preservation of such data is increasingly important given the development of ever-increasingly complex models to predict the effects of global climate change. The EU METAFOR project has developed a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe climate data and the models and modelling environments that produce this data. There is a wide degree of variability between different climate models and modelling groups. To accommodate this, the CIM has been designed to be highly generic and flexible, with extensibility built in. METAFOR describes the climate modelling process simply as "an activity undertaken using software on computers to produce data." This process has been described as separate UML packages (and, ultimately, XML schemas). This fairly generic structure canbe paired with more specific "controlled vocabularies" in order to restrict the range of valid CIM instances. The CIM will aid digital preservation of climate models as it will provide an accepted standard structure for the model metadata. Tools to write and manage CIM instances, and to allow convenient and powerful searches of CIM databases,. Are also under development. Community buy-in of the CIM has been achieved through a continual process of consultation with the climate modelling community, and through the METAFOR team’s development of a questionnaire that will be used to collect the metadata for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model runs

Reference material for radionuclides in sediment IAEA-384 (Fangataufa Lagoon sediment)

Author Posting. © Springer, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 273 (2007): 383-393, doi:10.1007/s10967-007-6898-4.A reference material designed for the determination of anthropogenic and natural radionuclides in sediment, IAEA-384 (Fangataufa Lagoon sediment), is described and the results of certification are presented. The material has been certified for 8 radionuclides (40K, 60Co, 155Eu, 230Th, 238U, 238Pu, 239+240Pu and 241Am). Information values are given for 12 radionuclides (90Sr, 137Cs, 210Pb (210Po), 226Ra, 228Ra, 232Th, 234U, 235U, 239Pu, 240Pu and 241Pu). Less reported radionuclides include 228Th, 236U, 239Np and 242Pu. The reference material may be used for quality management of radioanalytical laboratories engaged in the analysis of radionuclides in the environment, as well as for the development and validation of analytical methods and for training purposes. The material is available from IAEA in 100 g units

In Search of the Quality of Micro and Nano Plastics Analysis and Reference Materials.

The environmental monitoring of plastics is positioned high on the agenda of countries and international organisations worldwide. Large scale national and regional monitoring programs are however hampered by the lack of urgently needed harmonised analytical methods and reference materials for QA/QC of these methods. Data on the presence of plastics in the environment varies largely regarding quality and comparability. Robust and validated harmonised methods and QA/QC tools still missing. Interlaboratory studies are an efficient way to achieve this and both gather information on the state of the art, can be used to validate the methods in terms of uncertainty and to select candidate reference materials. Here we will present the result of two ILS studies of which one is currently on-going and the approach of the new EU project EUROqCHARM which will focus on the harmonisation of analytical methods for nano-, micro- and macro plastic in environmental samples and the production of reference material

Results of WEPAL-QUASIMEME/NORMANs first global interlaboratory study on microplastics reveal urgent need for harmonization

To survey the conformity and quality of results among laboratories for microplastics determination worldwide, an international laboratory intercomparison and development exercise was organized. The 34 participants were requested to determine the polymer type and number or mass of polymer particles in 12 samples, i.e. six samples containing of pre-production pellets, five dissolvable soda tablets containing different (smaller) polymer particles and one blank soda tablet. A novel method for providing the test materials in aluminium strips was used. Thirty laboratories (88%) submitted data using their own method of choice, resulting in a variety of identification and quantification methods (n = 7). The majority of the labs (53–100%) correctly identified the type of polymer in all samples but one. The performance of the laboratories in quantifying and weighing the pellets was very good. The analysis of the number of the particles in the soda tablets varied considerably between laboratories (29–91%). The results of this study highlight the complexity of microplastics analysis and the need for harmonization of both reporting format and methods. Continued development and assessment of the comparability among analytical methods and laboratories are urgently needed to support monitoring programmes, research and decision-making.</p

In Search of the Quality of Micro and Nano Plastics Analysis and Reference Materials.

The environmental monitoring of plastics is positioned high on the agenda of countries and international organisations worldwide. Large scale national and regional monitoring programs are however hampered by the lack of urgently needed harmonised analytical methods and reference materials for QA/QC of these methods. Data on the presence of plastics in the environment varies largely regarding quality and comparability. Robust and validated harmonised methods and QA/QC tools still missing. Interlaboratory studies are an efficient way to achieve this and both gather information on the state of the art, can be used to validate the methods in terms of uncertainty and to select candidate reference materials. Here we will present the result of two ILS studies of which one is currently on-going and the approach of the new EU project EUROqCHARM which will focus on the harmonisation of analytical methods for nano-, micro- and macro plastic in environmental samples and the production of reference material

Corrigendum to “Results of WEPAL-QUASIMEME/NORMANs first global interlaboratory study on microplastics reveal urgent need for harmonization”: [Sci. Total Environ. 772 (2021) 145071 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145071 (ISSN 0048-9697)]

In the printed version of the above article the following contributors, Luca Nizzetto, Nina Buenaventura and Rachel Hurley were mistakenly not included in the final list of authors for their role in the development of the concept for the reference materials and the effervescent pills vectors used in the study

Consistency of climate change projections from multiple global and regional model intercomparison projects

We present an unprecedented ensemble of 196 future climate projections arising from different global and regional model intercomparison projects (MIPs): CMIP3, CMIP5, ENSEMBLES, ESCENA, EURO- and Med-CORDEX. This multi-MIP ensemble includes all regional climate model (RCM) projections publicly available to date, along with their driving global climate models (GCMs). We illustrate consistent and conflicting messages using continental Spain and the Balearic Islands as target region. The study considers near future (2021–2050) changes and their dependence on several uncertainty sources sampled in the multi-MIP ensemble: GCM, future scenario, internal variability, RCM, and spatial resolution. This initial work focuses on mean seasonal precipitation and temperature changes. The results show that the potential GCM–RCM combinations have been explored very unevenly, with favoured GCMs and large ensembles of a few RCMs that do not respond to any ensemble design. Therefore, the grand-ensemble is weighted towards a few models. The selection of a balanced, credible sub-ensemble is challenged in this study by illustrating several conflicting responses between the RCM and its driving GCM and among different RCMs. Sub-ensembles from different initiatives are dominated by different uncertainty sources, being the driving GCM the main contributor to uncertainty in the grand-ensemble. For this analysis of the near future changes, the emission scenario does not lead to a strong uncertainty. Despite the extra computational effort, for mean seasonal changes, the increase in resolution does not lead to important changes