The greenhouse effect is nothing new. In fact the phenomenon has been influencing the temperature of the Earth for billions of years. The existence of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere acts as a blanket, trapping heat and allowing the Earth’s temperature to remain warmer than it would be otherwise. But in the last 200 years, human activity has been adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at rates exceeding any natural process, making the carbon dioxide blanket thicker and warming the Earth even more. As the planet warms up, most of the additional energy from the enhanced greenhouse effect is stored in the ocean – about 93% in total. The rest is distributed among the continents, in the frozen ices known as the cryosphere, and in the atmosphere. Dr. Hugo Beltrami is a professor at the Climate & Atmospheric Sciences Institute, the Environmental Sciences Program at St. Francis Xavier University and a new Canada Research Chair in Climate Dynamics. He and his graduate students conduct research in the area of global-scale climate change. They are using geothermal data obtained from mining exploration boreholes, reaching deep into the ground to study the changes of the temperature at the continental surface during the last millennium. It’s a complicated process. “We have to go down about 500 metres just to measure the remnants of past ground surface temperature changes that occurred in the last millennium,” he says. “If we want to estimate changes further in the past, we have to go much deeper.” Beltrami’s research is attempting to measure how much energy is stored in the ground and also how energy is distributed between the ground and the atmosphere. It’s critical information for environmentalists, policy makers, planners and scientists. As the ground becomes warmer, more carbon dioxide is released from soils, increasing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Another aspect of Beltrami’s work relates to regional climate modelling. For example, he and his graduate students have conducted extensive research to project the potential effects of climate change on the propagation of the tick that carries Lyme disease in Nova Scotia and Ontario. He is also developing a climate services centre that will translate global climate model predictions into information that is useful at a local level. The information would allow individual municipalities to access local climate projections, increasing awareness of the potential consequences of climate change on things like infrastructure and public health. The service may also help to support the development of policies to build resilience and mitigate the societal impacts of a changing regional climate. Every part of Beltrami’s research requires his team to use intensive numerical modelling. The numbers are huge and the calculations would be impossible to run on a regular computer. He’s been a user of ACENET since the program started. “ACENET is an essential resource for us,” he says.
Showcase Tag: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
St. F.X. Scientist Uses ACENET Network to Study Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Dave Risk spends as much time outdoors as he does in his laboratory at St. Francis Xavier University. He likes it that way. The earth scientist and assistant professor studies gas emissions – CO2, hydrogen sulphide, methane and others – gases that emanate naturally from soils into the Earth’s atmosphere; a passion that takes him to remote places around the world. “We’ve recently set up research sites in Wisconsin, in Cape Breton, in Alaska, in Antarctica,” he says. “We’ve been pretty much in every part of the world from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica.” While much of Risk’s work falls into the realm of theoretical science, it all has a very practical application as well. CO2 and other greenhouse gases are widely accepted to be the culprits of climate change; understanding how they flow in and out of soils is vital for combatting the problem. Risk spends much of his time working in the field or in his Antigonish lab, but he has also enlisted the help of another valuable tool – the ACENET computer system. “I was fortunate to have a graduate student named Nick Nickerson who was very mathematically minded,” says Risk. “He connected with the ACENET Computational Research Consultant, Shah Razul and we talked about our research with him.” Razul looked at a study that Risk was working on from Oregon, measuring the rates of CO2 diffusion over a period of time and then building models to describe the process. “He looked at the study and said: ‘That’s exactly what a supercomputer does,’” says Risk. Razul explained to Risk how he could take the models and recreate them on the ACENET network. It was a eureka moment for the St. F.X. scientist. Today Risk requires all his graduate students to learn computational science skills. He’s also used the ACEnet supercomputer to test real-world instruments that he has developed through another part of his research. In 2011 two of Risk’s graduate students, including Nickerson, started a private company in Halifax called Forerunner Research that provides the techniques developed at St. F.X. to commercial companies in fields such as landfill operation, brownfield remediation, meteorology, mining and oil and gas. The company has received assistance from the Atlantic Innovation Fund and Innovacorp. Today Risk is using ACENET to conduct simulations of soil microbial communities that are producing greenhouse gases. “We’re looking specifically at how they react to higher temperatures – and whether they’ll produce a lot more of the greenhouse gases as a feedback. We have been working on the algorithms for some time, and there are tons of datasets that we now have the ability to digest. We are working with researchers around the world to get these datasets in one place, so that we can run the scripts on ACENET.” He also has plans to use the computer system for some upcoming projects, including new research into human performance. “We have been doing some computer work in this area, which I hope will scale up this coming year.” Risk’s current research could ultimately have a huge impact on the fight to combat greenhouse gas emissions. He says the ACENET computer network could speed up his work considerably. “The ACENET system allows us to see patterns in the field that might be hard to see otherwise. It’s rare to see a field researcher using computer modelling but the two disciplines work together really well.”
Understanding Greenhouse Gases
Karine Le Bris is an associate professor of physics at St. Francis Xavier University. Her research centres around the development of new optical detection techniques and characterization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Part of her research involves the identification of the spectral signatures of greenhouse gases and the calculation of their global warming potential, a measure of the amount of heat a particular greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere. The knowledge of the spectral signatures allows the detection of atmospheric gases using optical ground-based techniques or Earth-orbiting satellites, while the global warming potentials identify which gases should be mitigated in priority. The spectral signatures of most greenhouse gases are usually found experimentally using a device called a Fourier transform spectrometer, says Dr. Le Bris. However, the instrument does not always allow scientists access to the full spectral range of the gas. Sometimes, the isomeric composition of the gas is also not known. “Using a method called density functional theory, the spectral signature of a molecule – how much light a gas absorbs at a particular wavelength – can be estimated,” she says. “By comparing the theoretical data to the experimental ones, we can simulate the spectrum outside of the experimental range and sometimes have access to the isomeric distribution.” Dr. Le Bris enjoys spending time in the lab and conducts much of her research there, but she also relies on ACENET. “I’m mostly an experimentalist,” she says. “But I can’t do everything experimentally.” She uses the ACENET advanced computer systems to optimize the geometry of each isomer and find their vibrational frequencies – complex calculations that often take hours to run. “They are not the types of calculations I could do in a timely manner with a regular computer,” she says. While she admits to being motivated by a love of pure scientific research, Dr. Le Bris says that her work offers other researchers and scientists valuable data that they can use to understand and predict changes in the atmosphere – information that can help scientists, environmentalists and civic planners respond to the effects of climate change. “If we understand climate change in advance it helps us be prepared to deal with it.”