The effect of climate and climate change on ammonia emissions in Europe

We present here a dynamical method for modelling temporal and geographical variations in ammonia emissions in regional-scale chemistry transport models (CTMs) and chemistry climate models (CCMs). The method is based on the meteorology in the models and gridded inventories. We use the dynamical method to investigate the spatiotemporal variability of ammonia emissions across part of Europe and study how these emissions are related to geographical and year-to-year variations in atmospheric temperature alone. For simplicity we focus on the emission from a storage facility related to a standard Danish pig stable with 1000 animals and display how emissions from this source would vary geographically throughout central and northern Europe and from year to year. In view of future climate changes, we also evaluate the potential future changes in emission by including temperature projections from an ensemble of climate models. The results point towards four overall issues. (1) Emissions can easily vary by 20% for different geographical locations within a country due to overall variations in climate. The largest uncertainties are seen for large countries such as the UK, Germany and France. (2)Annual variations in overall climate can at specific locations cause uncertainties in the range of 20 %. (3) Climate change may increase emissions by 0–40% in central to northern Europe.(4) Gradients in existing emission inventories that are seen between neighbour countries (e.g. between the UK and France) can be reduced by using a dynamical methodology for calculating emissions. Acting together these four factors can cause substantial uncertainties in emission. Emissions are generally considered among the largest uncertainties in the model calculations made with CTM and CCM models. Efforts to reduce uncertainties are therefore highly relevant.It is therefore recommended that both CCMs and CTMs implement a dynamical methodology for simulating ammonia emissions in a similar way as for biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOCs) – a method that has been used for more than a decade in CTMs. Finally, the climate penalty on ammonia emissions should be taken into account at the policy level such as the NEC and IPPC directives

The governance of innovation diffusion – a socio-technical analysis of energy policy

This paper describes a dynamic price mechanism to coordinate electric power generation from micro Combined Heat and Power (micro-CHP) systems in a network of households. It is assumed that the households are prosumers, i.e. both producers and consumers of electricity. The control is done on household level in a completely distributed manner. Avoiding a centralized controller both eases computation complexity and preserves communication structure in the network. Local information is used to decide to turn on or off the micro-CHP, but through price signals between the prosumers the network as a whole operates in a cooperative way

Mystical experience and the emergence of creativity

Since the turn of the century, mystic researchers have pointed to the similarities between mystics on the one hand, and artists, poets, mathematicians, musicians, in short, all those who are involved in creative activity. One common denominator, using the terminology of the day, is a state of inspiration, a sort of creative ecstasy, an immediate insight of some form. However, the question of what psychological processes can activate "inspiration" seemed to be unanswerable. The word inspiration says something of the suddenness and unexpectedness of the creative process. This process can be understood as a daily phenomenon, albeit on a lower level of intensity. A crucial question is whether there exists a common model for understanding the similarities which many researchers have hinted at, between religious and profane creativity. This question is intimately linked with another extremely central but little discussed problem within mystic research: with which psychological concepts should one describe the special knowledge and experiences which mystics say they have? Various researchers believe that the experience of the suprahuman cannot occur via "ordinary perceptive processes", via the senses, but only immediately, intuitively. It therefore seems clear that mystic research, if it is to progress, is in need of a model for different (un)conscious perceptual and cognitive processes including insight into how they are activated

Reducing energy demand: a review of issues, challenges and approaches

Most commentators expect improved energy efficiency and reduced energy demand to provide the dominant contribution to tackling global climate change. But at the global level, the correlation between increased wealth and increased energy consumption is very strong and the impact of policies to reduce energy demand is both limited and contested. Different academic disciplines approach energy demand reduction in different ways: emphasising some mechanisms and neglecting others, being more or less optimistic about the potential for reducing energy demand and providing insights that are more or less useful for policymakers. This article provides an overview of the main issues and challenges associated with energy demand reduction, summarises how this challenge is ‘framed’ by key academic disciplines, indicates how these can provide complementary insights for policymakers and argues that a ‘sociotechnical’ perspective can provide a deeper understanding of the nature of this challenge and the processes through which it can be achieved. The article integrates ideas from the natural sciences, economics, psychology, innovation studies and sociology but does not give equal weight to each. It argues that reducing energy demand will prove more difficult than is commonly assumed and current approaches will be insufficient to deliver the transformation required

Glocal spirituality for a brave new world

Spirituality, as it is presented in this article, can serve as an antidote to an all too disrespectful attitude towards our fellow human beings, towards life in general. Spirituality might unite a greater part of the world in the battle for survival. Our world, Gaia, is threatened, as we all know. Apart from the usual disasters as seemingly never-ending wars and conflicts we now also have to confront global threats such as climate changes, global pollution, and food distribution problems. In such a world everything has to be done in order to promote the fundamental idea that we only have one planet and one humanity.Spirituality addresses such issues. The purpose of this paper is to show that people who express the view that they are ‘spiritual, not religious’, people belonging to what can be called the new spirituality, despite their aversion to institutionalized religion never­theless exhibit elements in their belief-systems that are closely related to the great mystical traditions in world religion. These common denominators are, a good ground for dialogue. When theologians from especially the theistic traditions more often than not search for differences, mystics and representatives for the new spirituality are more inclined to find commonalities. At a time when elements of traditional Christianity such as the belief in a transcendent God show signs of being in decline, there seems to be an increasing interest in the predominant mystical and panentheistic view of God, stating that God is both immanent and transcendent

Quarantine Sunset

Marriah Geels is a senior pursuing a BFA in Art Education and BA in Music. Her studio concentrations are painting and ceramics. While studying at UARK, she has been in several theatre productions, participated in several of the Universities choirs, and she is an active member in the Association of Ceramic Enthusiasts and the Association of Art Educators. Marriah is passionate about all artistic mediums and hopes to spark that passion in future artists and students

A Note on the Psychology of Dhikr. The Halveti-Jerrahi Order of Dervishes in Istanbul

Ritual prayer (salat), performed five times a day, belongs to the fundamental obligations of all Muslims. In addition to this fact, there is another type of prayer, associated with mystical orders in all Islamic countries. Repetitive prayer (dhikr) in mystical Islam (Sufism) belongs to the most central activities of the orders. Despite the geographic spread of the Sufi orders (turuq), accounts of the dhikr in the literature are rare. Psychological commentaries are even more scarce. The aim of this paper is to describe this ritual as it exists today within the Halveti-Jerrahi order of dervishes in Istanbul, Turkey, and to present a preliminary psychological analysis of the ritual

Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field

The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’; but recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation – the international field of community currencies – which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external ‘landscape’ pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context

Influence of anthropogenic and meteorological drivers on temporal patterns of ammonia emissions from agriculture in the UK

Emissions of trace gases originating from anthropogenic activities are vital input data for chemical transport models (CTMs). Other key input datasets such as meteorological drivers, and biogeochemical and physical processes have been subject to detailed investigation and research in the recent past, while the representation of spatio-temporal aspects of emission data in CTMs has been somewhat neglected. Arguably, this has less impact on the regional to hemispheric or global scale, where the grid sizes of currently applied CTMs represent well mixed average concentrations or deposition values. Evaluating model output against ground-based observations or remote sensing results on these spatial levels may not to be overly sensitive to the temporal (and spatial) profiles of emission input data. With increasing level of detail and spatio-temporal resolution, CTMs applied to determine national or local scale air quality are likely prone to be more sensitive to the spatial and temporal patterns of anthropogenic emissions. The location and timing of emission events - for instance peaks of ammonia emissions following the spring and autumn application of manure and mineral fertilisers - may well determine local concentration or deposition episodes, while not necessarily affecting seasonal or even annual mean values. In the case of agriculture, both anthropogenic activities (e.g. manure spreading and fertilizer application) and meteorological factors (e.g. temperature and seasonality) have been investigated regarding their influence on the spatiotemporal distribution of NH3 emissions (see for instance [1], [2], [4], [5] and [6]). The discussion of results in this case will focus on the impact on the deposition of acidifying and eutrophying substances, as well as the contribution to the formation of ammonium nitrates and sulphates and hence ambient concentrations of secondary particulate matter. This paper discusses results of the application of the EMEP4UK CTM on a 5 km x 5 km resolution for the whole of the United Kingdom. To evaluate the effect of changing the temporal profiles, three different model setups, e.g. using rather coarse and potentially outdated temporal profiles of the EMEP unified model, with varying degrees of detail (in this case, a monthly profile (cf. [3]) vs. 3 hourly emission values[6]) are evaluated against the AGANET measurement network stations across the UK. The discussion of results will focus on (a) the effect of temporal emission profiles on modelled vs. measured concentration/deposition values, (b) the influence on deposition of reactive nitrogen on ecosystems near ammonia sources and (c) the magnitude of influence of anthropogenic activity vs. meteorology for the dispersion of ammonia from agriculture. The results presented in this paper will help to determine the appropriate degree of detail with regard to the temporal profiles of anthropogenic emission data, as collecting detailed statistical data on anthropogenic activities for high spatially resolved model applications can be very time consuming and expensive. In addition, the effect on improving the temporal representation of emissions influenced by both anthropogenic activities and meteorological parameters can contribute to reducing uncertainties in model results that are highly relevant for policy development, e.g. covering aspects of critical load exceedance in vulnerable ecosystems or the exceedance of concentrations of PM