Impact of foliar diseases in organically grown barley: Influence of fertilization, nutrient content in leaves, varietal disease resistance characteristics and yield potential

Significant increase in severity of powdery mildew,leaf rust and net blotch with increasing N-content in plant leaves 30 days after germination (all years where the relevant diseases were present at a substantial level). This may explain: · Most of the environmental main effects (field) on disease. · Effect of treatments, i.e., treament 4 resulted in reduced N/increased K content in leaves, which coincided with reduced levels of disease. We observed no clear effect of P, Ca, S, and Zn content in leaves on disease. Micronutrients as Cu, Mo and Mn showed significant effects on powdery mildew in one year but not the other; further interpretation may not be possible due to inter-correlation among the effect of micro-nutrients. The diseases had a significant yield reducing effect, in particular powdery mildew and net blotch, which occurred at highest severities. In addition, net blotch affected root development, resulting in significant shorter roots, whereas powdery mildew did not. The effect of disease on root length was of the same order of magnitude as the factor 'variety', but larger than effects of 'year'

Regional emission metrics for short-lived climate forcers from multiple models

For short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), the impact of emissions depends on where and when the emissions take place. Comprehensive new calculations of various emission metrics for SLCFs are presented based on radiative forcing (RF) values calculated in four different (chemical-transport or coupled chemistry–climate) models. We distinguish between emissions during summer (May–October) and winter (November–April) for emissions in Europe and East Asia, as well as from the global shipping sector and global emissions. The species included in this study are aerosols and aerosol precursors (BC, OC, SO2, NH3), as well as ozone precursors (NOx, CO, VOCs), which also influence aerosols to a lesser degree. Emission metrics for global climate responses of these emissions, as well as for CH4, have been calculated using global warming potential (GWP) and global temperature change potential (GTP), based on dedicated RF simulations by four global models. The emission metrics include indirect cloud effects of aerosols and the semi-direct forcing for BC. In addition to the standard emission metrics for pulse and sustained emissions, we have also calculated a new emission metric designed for an emission profile consisting of a ramping period of 15 years followed by sustained emissions, which is more appropriate for a gradual implementation of mitigation policies. For the aerosols, the emission metric values are larger in magnitude for emissions in Europe than East Asia and for summer than winter. A variation is also observed for the ozone precursors, with largest values for emissions in East Asia and winter for CO and in Europe and summer for VOCs. In general, the variations between the emission metrics derived from different models are larger than the variations between regions and seasons, but the regional and seasonal variations for the best estimate also hold for most of the models individually. Further, the estimated climate impact of an illustrative mitigation policy package is robust even when accounting for the fact that the magnitude of emission metrics for different species in a given model is correlated. For the ramping emission metrics, the values are generally larger than for pulse or sustained emissions, which holds for all SLCFs. For SLCFs mitigation policies, the dependency of metric values on the region and season of emission should be considered

Forecast of Herbage Production Under Continuous Grazing

The utilization of pasture is very sensitive to oscillations in herbage growth. The farmer’s daily planning involves decisions on pasture use as well as on the amount and composition of supplement feeding. In this planning, expected daily growth rate is an important factor. Often the knowledge and experience about the growth rate is first available after changes in management should have been made. A different growth rate than expected should lead to changes in the grazing area or in the supplement feeding. Therefore, a simple model of grass/clover growth under grazing and irrigated conditions was developed. From spring 2004, the model was used to compute a forecast of grass/clover growth, which has been available to Danish farmers and advisors in the online crop information system PlanteInfo (for a version in English, see planteinfo.dk/english)

Emission metrics for quantifying regional climate impacts of aviation

This study examines the impacts of emissions from aviation in six source regions on global and regional temperatures. We consider the NOx-induced impacts on ozone and methane, aerosols and contrail-cirrus formation and calculate the global and regional emission metrics global warming potential (GWP), global temperature change potential (GTP) and absolute regional temperature change potential (ARTP). The GWPs and GTPs vary by a factor of 2–4 between source regions. We find the highest aviation aerosol metric values for South Asian emissions, while contrail-cirrus metrics are higher for Europe and North America, where contrail formation is prevalent, and South America plus Africa, where the optical depth is large once contrails form. The ARTP illustrate important differences in the latitudinal patterns of radiative forcing (RF) and temperature response: the temperature response in a given latitude band can be considerably stronger than suggested by the RF in that band, also emphasizing the importance of large-scale circulation impacts. To place our metrics in context, we quantify temperature change in four broad latitude bands following 1 year of emissions from present-day aviation, including CO2. Aviation over North America and Europe causes the largest net warming impact in all latitude bands, reflecting the higher air traffic activity in these regions. Contrail cirrus gives the largest warming contribution in the short term, but remain important at about 15 % of the CO2 impact in several regions even after 100 years. Our results also illustrate both the short- and long-term impacts of CO2: while CO2 becomes dominant on longer timescales, it also gives a notable warming contribution already 20 years after the emission. Our emission metrics can be further used to estimate regional temperature change under alternative aviation emission scenarios. A first evaluation of the ARTP in the context of aviation suggests that further work to account for vertical sensitivities in the relationship between RF and temperature response would be valuable for further use of the concept

Implementing a sectional scheme for early aerosol growth from new particle formation in the Norwegian Earth System Model v2 : comparison to observations and climate impacts

Aerosol-cloud interactions contribute to a large portion of the spread in estimates of climate forcing, climate sensitivity and future projections. An important part of this uncertainty is how much new particle formation (NPF) contributes to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and, furthermore, how this changes with changes in anthropogenic emissions. Incorporating NPF and early growth in Earth system models (ESMs) is, however, challenging due to uncertain parameters (e.g. participating vapours), structural issues (numerical description of growth from similar to 1 to similar to 100 nm) and the large scale of an ESM grid compared to the NPF scale. A common approach in ESMs is to represent the particle size distribution by a certain number of log-normal modes. Sectional schemes, on the other hand, in which the size distribution is represented by bins, are considered closer to first principles because they do not make an a priori assumption about the size distribution. In order to improve the representation of early growth, we have implemented a sectional scheme for the smallest particles (5-39.6 nm diameter) in the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM), feeding particles into the original aerosol scheme. This is, to our knowledge, the first time such an approach has been tried. We find that including the sectional scheme for early growth improves the aerosol number concentration in the model when comparing against observations, particularly in the 50-100 nm diameter range. Furthermore, we find that the model with the sectional scheme produces much fewer particles than the original scheme in polluted regions, while it produces more in remote regions and the free troposphere, indicating a potential impact on the estimated aerosol forcing. Finally, we analyse the effect on cloud-aerosol interactions and find that the effect of changes in NPF efficiency on clouds is highly heterogeneous in space. While in remote regions, more efficient NPF leads to higher cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC), in polluted regions the opposite is in fact the case.Peer reviewe

Simulation of effect of climate, soils and management on N2O emission from grassland

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas with a high contribution from agricultural soils and emissions that depend on soil type, climate, crops and management practices. The N2O emissions therefore need to be included as an integral part of environmental assessment of agricultural production systems. A dynamical algorithm for N2O production and emission from agricultural soils was developed and included in the FASSET whole-farm model. The model simulated carbon and nitrogen (N) turnover on a daily basis. Both nitrification and denitrification was included in the model as sources for N2O production, and the N2O emissions were simulated to depend on soil microbial and physical conditions. The model was tested on experimental data of N2O emissions from grasslands in UK, Finland and Denmark, differing in climatic conditions, soil properties and management. The model simulated the general time course of N2O emissions and captured the observed effects of fertiliser and manure management on emissions. However, emissions from a soil with high clay content were overestimated with the model. Scenario analyses for grazed and cut grasslands were conducted to evaluate the effects of soil type, climatic conditions, grassland management and N fertilisation on N2O emissions. The soils varied from sandy to sandy loam and the climatic variation was taken to represent the climatic variation within Denmark. N fertiliser rates were varied from 0 to 500 kg N ha-1. The simulated N2O emissions showed a non-linear response to increasing N rates with increasing emission factors at higher N rates. The simulated emissions increased with increasing soil clay contents. There was no effect of climatic conditions. Emissions were slightly higher from grazed grasslands compared with cut grasslands at similar rates of total N input (fertiliser and animal excreta). The results indicate higher emission factors and thus higher potentials for reducing N2O emissions for intensively grazed grasslands on fine textured soils than for extensive cut based grasslands on sandy soils

Mitigation of oxygen decline in fjords by freshwater injection

The exchange of water masses between deep fjords and the open ocean is commonly constrained by a topographical barrier called the sill. While fjord water above the sill depth communicates relatively freely with the open ocean, water below the sill depth is caught inside the fjord basin. This basin water may remain stagnant in deep fjords for many successive years. During these periods, the biological consumption of dissolved oxygen is larger than the supply of new oxygen, and the fjord basin might experience hypoxia and even anoxia. Such deoxygenation is natural but can be amplified by warming and human activities involving supplies of organic matter and other nutrients. Here, we use a general circulation model to explore how deoxygenation can be mitigated by injecting fresh water into the fjord basin. The freshwater injection causes density reduction of the basin water with subsequent water exchange and oxygenation. Our results suggest that the basin water of Masfjorden, a 480 m deep fjord with a basin volume of 4 × 109 m3, can avoid deoxygenation with a continuous freshwater injection of 0.05 m3 s−1. We conclude that freshwater injection might be an efficient tool to mitigate the deoxygenation of fjord basins.publishedVersio

Loop integration results using numerical extrapolation for a non-scalar integral

Loop integration results have been obtained using numerical integration and extrapolation. An extrapolation to the limit is performed with respect to a parameter in the integrand which tends to zero. Results are given for a non-scalar four-point diagram. Extensions to accommodate loop integration by existing integration packages are also discussed. These include: using previously generated partitions of the domain and roundoff error guards.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, revised, contribution to ACAT03 (Dec. 2003

Regional temperature change potentials for short-lived climate forcers based on radiative forcing from multiple models

We calculate the absolute regional temperature change potential (ARTP) of various short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs) based on detailed radiative forcing (RF) calculations from four different models. The temperature response has been estimated for four latitude bands (90– 28S, 28S–28N, 28–60N, and 60–90N). The regional pattern in climate response not only depends on the relationship between RF and surface temperature, but also on where and when emissions occurred and atmospheric transport, chemistry, interaction with clouds, and deposition. We present four emissions cases covering Europe, East Asia,the global shipping sector, and the entire globe. Our study is the first to estimate ARTP values for emissions during Northern Hemisphere summer (May–October) and winter season (November–April). The species studied are aerosols and aerosol precursors (black carbon, organic carbon, SO2, NH3), ozone precursors (NOx , CO, volatile organic compound), and methane (CH4). For the response to BC in the Arctic, we take into account the vertical structure of the RF in the atmosphere, and an enhanced climate efficacy for BC deposition on snow. Of all SLCFs, BC is the most sensitive to where and when the emissions occur, as well as giving the largest difference in response between the latitude bands. The temperature response in the Arctic per unit BC emission is almost four times larger and more than two times larger than the global average for Northern Hemisphere winter emissions for Europe and East Asia, respectively. The latitudinal breakdown likely gives a better estimate of the global temperature response as it accounts for varying efficacies with latitude. An annual pulse of non-methane SLCF emissions globally (representative of 2008) lead to a global cooling. In contrast, winter emissions in Europe and East Asia give a net warming in the Arctic due to significant warming from BC deposition on snow