A study by researchers from Purdue University and the universities of Colorado and Maryland concluded that greener land cover contributes to cooler temperatures, and almost any other change leads to warmer temperatures. The study, published on line and set to appear in the Royal Meteorological Society’s International Journal of Climatology later this year, is further evidence that land use should be better incorporated into computer models projecting future climate conditions, said Purdue doctoral student Souleymane Fall, the article’s lead author.

“What we highlight here is that a significant trend, particularly the warming trend in terms of temperatures, can also be partially explained by land-use change,” said Dev Niyogi, a Purdue earth and atmospheric sciences and agronomy professor, and the Indiana state climatologist. He is the study's corresponding author.

The results indicate that "unless these landscape effects are properly considered, the role of greenhouse warming in increasing surface temperatures will be significantly overstated," said Roger Pielke Sr., a study co-author. Pielke is a senior research scientist in atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Niyogi and Fall say the idea that land use helps drive climate change has been poorly understood compared to factors such as greenhouse gas emissions. But that is changing.

“People realize that land use cover also is an important force and not only at the local but also at the regional scale,” said Fall, whose doctoral research focuses on the impacts of land surface properties on near-surface temperature trends.

The researchers used higher resolution temperature data than previous studies, meaning the data was more detailed, Niyogi said. They also employed dynamic data on land-use changes from 1992-2001, which was derived from satellite imagery.

Niyogi said having an understanding of land use's affects on climate change could have climatic and other benefits. For instance, creating green spaces and buffer zones in and around urban areas also could be aesthetically attractive, he said.

Among the study's findings:
* In general, the greener the land cover, the cooler is surface temperature.
* Conversion to agriculture results in cooling, while conversion from agriculture generally results in warming.
* Deforestation generally results in warming, with the exception of a shift from forest to agriculture. No clear picture emerged from the impact of planting or seeding new forests.
* Urbanization and conversion to bare soils have the largest warming impacts.

In general, land use conversion often results in more warming than cooling.

The study took an approach called "observation minus reanalysis," or OMR. Through this process, the researchers used temperature data from local ground observations, observation and computer modeling, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical methods. They were able to separate the effects of land use or cover from greenhouse warming and isolate the impact from each land use or cover type. The more detailed data provided a clearer picture of the effects of land surface properties on near-surface temperature trends.

“We showed this quantitatively for the first time,” said University of Maryland atmospheric and oceanic science Professor Eugenia Kalnay, who developed the OMR method with Florida State University Professor Ming Cai. She also is a co-author of the study.

While the effects of greenhouses gases like carbon dioxide are clear, Kalnay said, the study does suggest land use needs to be considered carefully as well.

“I think that greenhouse warming is incredibly important, but land use should not be neglected,” she said. “It contributes to warming, especially in urban and desertic areas.”

Purdue's Gilbert Rochon and Alexander Gluhovsky also participated in the study. Rochon is associate vice president for collaborative research for Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) and director of ITaP's Purdue Terrestrial Observatory satellite and remote sensing data program. Gluhovsky is a Purdue professor in earth and atmospheric sciences and statistics.

The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Writer:
Greg Kline, 765-494-8167

Sources:
Souleymane Fall, 765-494-9138
Dev Niyogi, 765-494-6574

Purdue News Service, 765-494-2096

NEWS SOURCE: CIRES

Their flights, planned to continue through December, are part of the HIPPO Mission, a multiagency, multiyear effort to paint a three-dimensional portrait of the atmosphere. HIPPO, for HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations of Greenhouse Gases, is funded and operated jointly by the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and NOAA. HIAPER – the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform – is the NSF's Gulfstream V aircraft.

Steve Wofsy of Harvard University is leading HIPPO with a team of scientists from NOAA, NCAR, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of Miami, and Princeton University.

"While we have ground-based stations that measure carbon dioxide at specific locations, HIPPO is giving us a view of how carbon dioxide is distributed globally at different altitudes and during different seasons," said Jim Elkins, Ph.D., a NOAA ESRL atmospheric physicist. The team is pleased with the success of the first phase of HIPPO flights last January, which gathered data in cross-sections of the atmosphere from pole to pole, he said.

Information gathered during these flights will be critical for both climate modelers seeking to understand Earth's future and policymakers who rely on accurate science for decision-making. This research and decades of greenhouse gas monitoring are part of NOAA's suite of climate services.

Three more sets of flights are planned over the next two years to fill in additional data during different seasons and from areas where few previous measurements have been made. HIPPO's second phase will cover the central and eastern Pacific, departing from Colorado with stops in Alaska, Hawaii, Rarotonga of the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia, and the Solomon Islands. A fly-over of the NOAA American Samoa observatory is also planned.

NOAA scientists have been monitoring greenhouse gases through a ground-based, global network for nearly 40 years. As these gases move up through different layers of the atmosphere, they may persist for a time or be altered or destroyed in the upper atmosphere. The HIPPO Mission flights will give scientists a clearer picture of the distribution of greenhouse gases throughout the atmosphere.

NOAA scientists designed five instruments for analyzing air samples onboard HIPPO flights. They have the ability to detect and measure more than 30 major and minor greenhouse gases as well as water vapor, ozone, and soot particles.

"We are providing flight planning and weather support, measurements of all greenhouse gases and some carbon isotopes, and in-flight measurement of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases and black carbon," Elkins said.

Eric Hintsa of CIRES and Elkins will be flying on subsequent legs of HIPPO phase II. Other scientists involved in leadership, flight planning and overall coordination on the ground are Steven Montzka, David Fahey, Ru-shan Gao, and Karen Rosenlof of NOAA, and Geoff Dutton, Molly Heller, Ben Miller, J. David Nance, Eric Ray, Joshua Schwarz, Colm Sweeney, Jack Higgs, and Sonja Wolter of CIRES.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

NOAA Media Contact:
Linda Joy 301-734-1165

NEWS SOURCE: CIRES

NEWS SOURCE: College of Arts and Sciences

This award and others will be presented during International Education Week at a special awards ceremony and reception on Tuesday, November 17 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the British and Irish Studies Room in Norlin Library on the CU-Boulder campus.

This event is planned annually to award outstanding champions of international education, both faculty and students, global citizens, as well as to reveal the winners of the photo contest. The catered reception is open to all. Enjoy talking with students, faculty and staff who are internationally-minded and view the photo submissions for this year's contest.

NEWS SOURCE: Office of International Education

Andrews Hall houses the Engineering Honors Program and the program's director, Associate Professor Scot Douglass, lives in the hall with his wife and two daughters.

The new facility offers engineering students multiple opportunities to learn where they live, said Kambiz Khalili, executive director of Housing and Dining Services. Students experience daily faculty interaction and activities outside the classroom that relate to what is being studied inside the classroom.

"Not only is teaching enhanced, but first-year students benefit from the mentoring relationships and expectations set by upper-division students who have continued in the program," Khalili said. "This is a community of talented individuals coming together to challenge, inspire and learn from each other."

Andrews Hall features two classrooms, one faculty director's office, one staff office and six study rooms. Just over $14 million was spent on the 60,588-gross-square-foot renovation.

The rededication ceremony will include a talk by Douglass, music performed by Andrews Hall residents, tours of the residence hall and refreshments.

Andrews Hall is the second of four buildings being renovated in the Kittredge Complex and is on track to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, Gold certification.

Contacts:
Kambiz Khalili, 303-492-6494
Megan Rose, 303-492-8687

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

RASEI, a new joint institute between the University of Colorado at Boulder and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, made the announcement at CU-Boulder's Annual Energy Research Symposium taking place today in Boulder.

"NREL and CU-Boulder, along with research colleagues from Colorado State University and the Colorado School of Mines, are already working together on a variety of critical energy technologies that will help to ensure a clean and sustainable energy supply for our nation's future," said Robert McGrath, NREL deputy laboratory director for science and technology, and one of RASEI's chief architects. "The newly established RASEI significantly strengthens the structural platform enabling CU-Boulder and NREL researchers to take full advantage of the complementary strengths resident within each institution."

A national search will be conducted for RASEI's director. In addition to creating the resources to attract a top candidate to lead the new institute, CU-Boulder plans to designate as many as 10 new faculty hires to RASEI over the next several years, with exact levels of support contingent upon the Colorado economy and the university's budget.

Institute management and decision-making will be coordinated by the new director, a private-sector Leadership Board and a set of prominent research fellows appointed from NREL and CU-Boulder. The initial 34 RASEI fellows named today include 18 from CU-Boulder and 16 from NREL.

"CU has a long history of joint institutes with national laboratories that attract the highest caliber leadership and scientific talent," said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. "With this initiative, CU is fostering an invaluable working relationship with an important partner, and opening up new opportunities for CU researchers to collaborate with Stanford, MIT and other major American Association of Universities research institutions focusing on the development of new energy solutions."

RASEI will operate much like CU-Boulder's other independent research institutes, including JILA, which collaborates with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, which collaborates with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to McGrath, "RASEI will expand and build upon the work already initiated under the Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion, the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, the Center for Research and Education in Wind and other research centers affiliated with the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory."

The Collaboratory's partners include CU-Boulder, CSU, the Colorado School of Mines and NREL.

"Colorado's new energy economy is leading America toward a new energy future, and collaborations between our universities and national laboratories such as RASEI are leading the way," said Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter. "RASEI is poised to attract the best and brightest new research talent to the state of Colorado, which will also bring good jobs and advance clean energy technologies."

And with ConocoPhillips, a member of RASEI's industry-driven Leadership Board, building a new global technology center and corporate learning center at the Sun Microsystems/StorageTek site in Louisville, the new institute will spur greater overall investment in new energy development in Colorado, now seen as a national hub for clean energy technology creation. The new ConocoPhillips center will handle research and development of renewable energy and high-tech carbon fuels recovery.

"One of the key reasons ConocoPhillips plans to locate its new global technology center and corporate learning center in Colorado is the exceptional research talent pool in close proximity to our proposed campus," said Stephen Brand, ConocoPhillips' senior vice president for technology. "As a long-time collaborator with CU-Boulder, and member of the RASEI Leadership Council, ConocoPhillips is committed to making this new institute a world-class success."

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, comprised of the Midwest Research Institute, Battelle Memorial Institute, CU-Boulder, CSU, Colorado School of Mines, MIT and Stanford.

CU-Boulder is a leading U.S. public research university and the only American Association of Universities Tier One research institution in the Rocky Mountain region. CU-Boulder has four Nobel laureates, seven MacArthur "genius grant" winners, numerous Fulbright, Guggenheim and Packard fellows, 38 members of the National Academies and world-renowned joint research institutes with national labs such as NIST and NOAA.

RASEI, an interdisciplinary joint research effort between CU-Boulder and NREL located on the CU campus, is advancing solutions for producing energy economically from low-carbon sources and using energy more efficiently to meet the global energy challenge.

More information about RASEI.

Contacts:
Stein Sture, CU interim provost, 303-492-5537
Carl Koval, RASEI faculty director, 303-506-7042
Elaine Tucci, RASEI, 303-328-7368

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

"As a founding member of RASEI's Leadership Council, we see this as a natural fit for Toyota," said Chris Hostetter, Toyota Motor Sales group vice president, advanced product strategy and product planning. "Future customers will have high expectations for these emerging technologies. Demonstration programs like this will ensure that the vehicles we bring to market will not just meet customer expectations, but exceed them."

RASEI faculty director Carl Koval added, "This is a perfect illustration of how collaborative research from universities and federal laboratories combined with industry leadership can address the energy and technology challenges of the future."

The SmartGridCity project is the first fully functioning smart grid enabled city in the world. Its goal is to provide increased grid reliability and energy use information. It will also allow participating customers to remotely control in-home energy management devices.

RASEI, Xcel Energy and Toyota Motor Sales will use this program to gather data on vehicle performance and charging patterns, consumer behavior and preferences, as well as electric utility/customer interactions. The locale offers the additional benefit of monitoring high-altitude, cold climate performance of Toyota's first-generation lithium-ion battery.

"We know that PHVs coupled with smart charging techniques can reduce carbon emissions," said Jay Herrmann, regional vice president for Xcel Energy. "Partnerships like this can bring us closer to delivering new solutions that can conserve energy, save natural resources and reduce dependence on foreign oil."

The 10 vehicles participating in the project are part of a 150 vehicle demonstration fleet arriving in the U.S. in early 2010. The Prius PHV is targeted to achieve a maximum electric only range of approximately 12 miles and will be capable of achieving highway speeds in electric only mode. For longer distances, the PHV concept reverts to "hybrid mode" and operates like a regular Prius.

The vehicles are targeted for delivery in March 2010.

Contacts: Contact: Toyota Environmental, Safety and Quality Communications
Jana Hartline (310) 468-7977
Amy Taylor (310) 468-6237

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

While environmental changes at the lake over the past millennia have been shown to be tightly linked with natural causes of climate change -- like periodic, well-understood wobbles in Earth's orbit -- changes seen in the sediment cores since about 1950 indicate expected climate cooling is being overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions. The research team reconstructed past climate and environmental changes at the lake on Baffin Island using indicators that included algae, fossil insects and geochemistry preserved in sediment cores that extend back 200,000 years.

"The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores," said lead study author Yarrow Axford of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. "We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes."

The study was published Oct. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study included researchers from CU-Boulder, the State University of New York's University at Buffalo, the University of Alberta, the University of Massachusetts and Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

The sediment cores were extracted from the bottom of a roughly 100-acre, 30-foot-deep lake near the village of Clyde River on the east coast of Baffin Island, which is several hundred miles west of Greenland. The lake sediment cores go back in time 80,000 years beyond the oldest reliable ice cores from Greenland and capture the environmental conditions of two previous ice ages and three interglacial periods.

The sediment cores showed that several types of mosquito-like midges that flourish in very cold climates have been abundant at the lake for the past several thousand years. But the cold-adapted midge species abruptly began declining in about 1950, matching their lowest abundances of the last 200,000 years. Two of the midge species adapted to the coldest temperatures have completely disappeared from the lake region, said Axford.

In addition, a species of diatom, a lake algae that was relatively rare at the site before the 20th century, has undergone unprecedented increases in recent decades, possibly in response to declining ice cover on the Baffin Island lake.

"Our results show that the human footprint is overpowering long-standing natural processes even in remote Arctic regions," said co-author John Smol of Queen's University. "This historical record shows that we are dramatically affecting the ecosystems on which we depend."

The ancient lake sediment cores are the oldest ever recovered from glaciated parts of Canada or Greenland. Massive ice sheets during ice ages generally scour the underlying bedrock and remove previous sediments.

"What is unique about these sediment cores is that even though glaciers covered this lake, for various reasons they did not erode it," said study co-author Jason Briner of the University at Buffalo. The result is that we have a really long sequence of sediment that has survived Arctic glaciations."

Axford emphasized the multiyear research project required expertise from each of the five institutions involved in the PNAS study. "This was a team effort all the way around, and each of the institutions has a unique set of skills that allowed us to carry out this study," she said. "We needed people who understood algae, insects, glaciers and geochemistry, not to mention how to drive snowmobiles and extract the cores."

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Geological Society of America.

A study published in Science magazine last month that involved CU-Boulder researchers and reconstructed past temperatures in the Arctic using ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments concluded that recent warming around the Arctic is overriding a cooling trend caused by Earth's periodic wobble. Earth is now about 0.6 million miles further from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice than it was in 1 B.C. -- a trend that has caused overall cooling in the Arctic until recently.

INSTAAR researcher and CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller was a co-author on both the PNAS study and the recent Science study.

Contacts:

Yarrow Axford, 303-492-7641
Gifford Miller, 303-492-6962
Jim Scott, 303-492-3114

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

Work on the 145-page document was launched when CU-Boulder became an early signatory of the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment in 2007. To carry out the requirements of the commitment, a working group was formed within the Chancellor's Committee for Energy, Environment and Sustainability chaired by CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Administration Frank Bruno.

Faculty, staff, students and community partners have contributed to the working group's writing of the plan that is now available on both the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment Web site and the CU-Boulder Web site.

"This is an important milestone for CU-Boulder," said Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. "The creation of this plan makes real our commitment to carbon neutrality and marks the next important step in our progress toward sustainability. I am challenging our campus to re-double our efforts, to expand our creativity and to innovate on a larger scale to help us reach the goals outlined in the conceptual plan. Working together, I know we can reach these goals."

The American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment was established to provide the higher education community a framework and support for implementing carbon emission reductions on campuses across the nation. Signatories are required to complete an emissions inventory, estimate a target date and interim milestones for becoming carbon neutral, take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, integrate sustainability into the curriculum and make the inventory, action plan and progress reports publicly available.

In addition to undertaking the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, CU-Boulder also embraced Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's executive orders in April 2007 that include a 20 percent per square foot energy conservation goal by 2012, a 20 percent greenhouse gas reduction goal by 2020, and an 80 percent greenhouse gas reduction goal by 2050.

Exceeding both the governor's charge and the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, Bruno formed Sustainability Action Teams in June of this year to monitor and advise in the areas of data collection, energy and water, and materials and recycling.

Efforts by students and the administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions began well before CU-Boulder became a signatory to the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment. In 1991, students voted to fund a student bus pass allowing students to ride fare-free on all Regional Transportation District bus routes and in 2000 students voted to fund wind energy production.

In 2001, CU-Boulder formalized its energy conservation program and has since cut energy consumption 2 to 5 percent each year. In 2004, the annual Buff Energy Star Awards were created to award campus building proctors for implementing energy conservation measures in their buildings.

Since 2005, major construction on campus has met Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards of a silver rating or better. LEED gold ratings were earned for the Wolf Law Building, ATLAS Center, Koelbel Business Building and Arnett Hall. A silver rating was earned for renovations to the University Memorial Center.

In 2008, zero-waste programs took effect in the CU Athletics Department and CU Dining Services, and continue to expand. CU-Boulder also joined the Colorado Carbon Fund, putting a projected $90,000 in student dollars over two years into new energy efficiency and renewable energy projects for statewide emission reduction.

To view the Conceptual Plan for Carbon Neutrality visit CU's Special Reports page or the ACUPCC Reporting System. CU-Boulder encourages feedback from interested parties to help inform periodic updates and revisions of the plan. Comments on the plan may be e-mailed to Carbon Neutral at CU.

Contacts:
Dave Newport, CU Environmental Center, 303-492-8309
Bronson Hilliard, CU News Services, 303-735-6183
Elizabeth Lock, CU News Services, 303-492-3117

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

Parking and Transportation Services manages all campus parking as well as buses, car sharing and bike use and parking.

"It used to be that our role was just parking cars, but now we don't see it that way at all," Jones said. "We have a number of really exciting initiatives."

Jones said that the department is focusing on minimizing and streamlining parking on campus as well as making more sustainable forms of transportation like biking, walking and riding the bus, more convenient and more integrated into the campus.

One of the things he is excited about is a car share program. Started last January it stages vehicles across campus. Members of the program-almost everyone on campus can join-can borrow the cars. This cuts down on the number of vehicles on campus, which reduces the amount of driving.

The department is also working to minimize car traffic on campus by making the parking system more efficient. Jones said that they are using new technology, like computer based parking monitors and a web-based system to make parking more convenient and more efficient.

Parking and Transportation also works on non car-based transportation. Jones says that they are looking to expand the Buff Bus system and make it more convenient, so that more people use it as an alternative to personal transportation.

Now, he is facing the challenge how to integrate bikes more smoothly into the campus transportation plan. As more and more people bike, bike parking becomes more crowded and pedestrians and bikers take up more of the same space. Jones said that plans for the future include finding a way to help walkers, skateboarders and bikers share the campus.

NEWS SOURCE: CU Environmental Center