Evaluating the effects of microfinance

According to the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report, microfinance reaches more than 175 million of the poorest families and is helping 100 million of those families rise out of poverty. That so many have been reached shows just how far microfinance institutions (MFIs) have come since the early days in rural Bangladesh 40 years ago. Financial services are now extending beyond the conventional financial system to some of the world’s poorest people

Determinants of the exchange rate and policy implications for Zambia

Exchange rate policy in Zambia – as in most countries – excites a certain amount of emotion and controversy. On one side, politicians often want to see a ‘strong’ currency (i.e. where a unit of the local currency buys more rather than less foreign currency), since imports, especially those of consumption goods, would then be cheaper. On the other side, many economists want to see a ‘competitive’ currency (i.e. where a unit of the local currency buys less foreign currency), since that makes exports and import-substitutes cheaper, enabling local businesses, especially in businesses outside of the traditional mining products, to compete more effectively and grow their markets

A sensitivity analysis of the impact of rain on regional and global sea-air fluxes of CO2 (dataset)

Directories containing the results from several different runs of the FluxEngine software (see Shutler et al 2015 http://www.oceanflux-ghg.org). These directories are named according o the parameterisation used to derive the results within. 'SOCAT' or 'takahashi' refers to the source of pCO2 climatology used in the software. 'Nonlinear raink' or 'raink' refer to the parameterisation used for estimating rain enhancement of gas transfer velocity (Harrison et al 2012 & Ho et al. 2004 respectively). 'wetdep' and 'wet deposition' refer to the direct deposition of carbon to the surface ocean by rain. 'reference' data sets do not include the effects of rain. Within the directories, results are in netCDF files within sub-directories for year and month. Net Fluxes and summary statistics have been calculated and are provided as text files. The names are again according to the parameterisation used to derive them. More details are in the associated paper References: Shutler JD, Land PE, Piolle J-F, Woolf DK, Goddijn-Murphy L, Paul F, et al. FluxEngine: A flexible processing system for calculating atmosphere-ocean carbon dioxide gas fluxes and climatologies. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. 2015; (Early release). doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-14-00204.1. Harrison EL, Vernon F, Ho DT, Reid MR, Orton P, McGillis WR. Nonlinear interaction between rain- and wind-induced air-water gas exchange. Journal of Geophysical Research. 2012;117(C03034). doi: 10.1029/2011JC007693. Ho DT, Zappa CJ, McGillis WR, Bliven LF, Ward B, Dacey JWH, et al. Influence of rain on air-sea gas exchange: Lessons from a model ocean. Journal of Geophysical Research. 2004;109(C08S18). doi: 10.1029/2003JC001806.The article associated with this dataset is available in ORE at http://hdl.handle.net/10871/22888Data sets calculated using the FluxEngine software to examine the sensitivity of global estimates of CO2 exchange between ocean and atmosphere to rainfall. These data contribute to the publication 'A sensitivity analysis of the impact of rain on regional and global sea-air fluxes of CO2', accepted for publication by PlosOneThis work was funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) Support to Science Element (STSE) through the OceanFlux Greenhouse Gases project (contract 4000104762/11/I-AM) and the OceanFlux Greenhouse Gases Evolution project (contract 4000112091/14/I-LG). http://due.esrin.esa.int/stse

Reduced air–sea CO2 exchange in the Atlantic Ocean due to biological surfactants

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this recordOcean CO2 uptake accounts for 20–40% of the post-industrial sink for anthropogenic CO2. The uptake rate is the product of the CO2 interfacial concentration gradient and its transfer velocity, which is controlled by spatial and temporal variability in near-surface turbulence. This variability complicates CO2 flux estimates and in large part reflects variable sea surface microlayer enrichments in biologically derived surfactants that cause turbulence suppression. Here we present a direct estimate of this surfactant effect on CO2 exchange at the ocean basin scale, with derived relationships between its transfer velocity determined experimentally and total surfactant activity for Atlantic Ocean surface seawaters. We found up to 32% reduction in CO2 exchange relative to surfactant-free water. Applying a relationship between sea surface temperature and total surfactant activity to our results gives monthly estimates of spatially resolved ‘surfactant suppression’ of CO2 exchange. Large areas of reduced CO2 uptake resulted, notably around 20° N, and the magnitude of the Atlantic Ocean CO2 sink for 2014 was decreased by 9%. This direct quantification of the surfactant effect on CO2 uptake at the ocean basin scale offers a framework for further refining estimates of air–sea gas exchange up to the global scale.This work was supported by grants from the Leverhulme Trust to R.C.U.G. (RPG-303) and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to R.C.U.G. (NE/K00252X/1) and J.D.S. (NE/K002511/1). Both NERC grants are components of RAGNARoCC (Radiatively Active Gases from the North Atlantic Region and Climate Change), which contributes to NERC's Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedbacks programme (www.nerc.ac.uk/research/funded/programmes/greenhouse). J.D.S. and I.A. acknowledge additional support from the European Space Agency (grant 4000112091/14/I-LG). R.P. acknowledges support from T. Wagner. This study is a contribution to the international IMBeR project and was supported by UK NERC National Capability funding to Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. This is contribution no. 324 of the AMT programme

Wave energy testing in Cornwall: Were the waves during winter 2013/14 exceptional?

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ASRAnetCornwall in the south west UK is an emerging centre for wave energy test facilities at sea, which experienced a series of high profile winter storms during winter 2013/14. This paper presentsmeasurements of these storms in the context of long term statistics for the wave conditions in the region.The Falmouth Bay Test site (FaBTest) provides an ideal test location for device development, with easy access to a major port, streamlined consenting, and a wave resource combiningtesting conditions andfrequent site access. Wave Hubis situated in a more exposed location off the North Cornwall coastand provides a pre-commercial test bed with 20MW grid connection, again in a pre-consented site. Throughoutthe development of these projects, the University of Exeter has provided significant resource assessment work to establishthe wave and current conditions throughout the region. Results from these studies are reviewed here,providingan overview of the conditions at the two test sites.In particular, measurements from recent storms are put into context of the long term resource at the sites, including the largest waves ever measured at the FaBTest site.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Regional Growth Fun

Revised estimates of ocean-atmosphere CO2 flux are consistent with ocean carbon inventory

This is the final version. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.The ocean is a sink for ~25% of the atmospheric CO2 emitted by human activities, an amount in excess of 2 petagrams of carbon per year (PgC yr−1 ). Time-resolved estimates of global ocean-atmosphere CO2 flux provide an important constraint on the global carbon budget. However, previous estimates of this flux, derived from surface ocean CO2 concentrations, have not corrected the data for temperature gradients between the surface and sampling at a few meters depth, or for the effect of the cool ocean surface skin. Here we calculate a time history of ocean-atmosphere CO2 fluxes from 1992 to 2018, corrected for these effects. These increase the calculated net flux into the oceans by 0.8–0.9 PgC yr−1 , at times doubling uncorrected values. We estimate uncertainties using multiple interpolation methods, finding convergent results for fluxes globally after 2000, or over the Northern Hemisphere throughout the period. Our corrections reconcile surface uptake with independent estimates of the increase in ocean CO2 inventory, and suggest most ocean models underestimate uptake.European Space AgencyEuropean CommissionBONUS Secretariat (EEIG