资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Applying a bias correction to a state-of-the-art dataset covering non-alpine regions of the Northern Hemisphere and to three other datasets yields a more constrained quantification of snow mass in March from 1980 to 2018.

A list of authors and their affiliations appears at the end of the paper New-particle formation is a major contributor to urban smog(1,2), but how it occurs in cities is often puzzling(3). If the growth rates of urban particles are similar to those found in cleaner environments (1-10 nanometres per hour), then existing understanding suggests that new urban particles should be rapidly scavenged by the high concentration of pre-existing particles. Here we show, through experiments performed under atmospheric conditions in the CLOUD chamber at CERN, that below about +5 degrees Celsius, nitric acid and ammonia vapours can condense onto freshly nucleated particles as small as a few nanometres in diameter. Moreover, when it is cold enough (below -15 degrees Celsius), nitric acid and ammonia can nucleate directly through an acid-base stabilization mechanism to form ammonium nitrate particles. Given that these vapours are often one thousand times more abundant than sulfuric acid, the resulting particle growth rates can be extremely high, reaching well above 100 nanometres per hour. However, these high growth rates require the gas-particle ammonium nitrate system to be out of equilibrium in order to sustain gas-phase supersaturations. In view of the strong temperature dependence that we measure for the gas-phase supersaturations, we expect such transient conditions to occur in inhomogeneous urban settings, especially in wintertime, driven by vertical mixing and by strong local sources such as traffic. Even though rapid growth from nitric acid and ammonia condensation may last for only a few minutes, it is nonetheless fast enough to shepherd freshly nucleated particles through the smallest size range where they are most vulnerable to scavenging loss, thus greatly increasing their survival probability. We also expect nitric acid and ammonia nucleation and rapid growth to be important in the relatively clean and cold upper free troposphere, where ammonia can be convected from the continental boundary layer and nitric acid is abundant from electrical storms(4,5).

Carbon dioxide enrichment of a mature forest resulted in the emission of the excess carbon back into the atmosphere via enhanced ecosystem respiration, suggesting that mature forests may be limited in their capacity to mitigate climate change.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment (eCO(2)) can enhance plant carbon uptake and growth(1-5), thereby providing an important negative feedback to climate change by slowing the rate of increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration(6). Although evidence gathered from young aggrading forests has generally indicated a strong CO2 fertilization effect on biomass growth(3-5), it is unclear whether mature forests respond to eCO(2) in a similar way. In mature trees and forest stands(7-10), photosynthetic uptake has been found to increase under eCO(2) without any apparent accompanying growth response, leaving the fate of additional carbon fixed under eCO(2) unclear(4,5,7-11). Here using data from the first ecosystem-scale Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment in a mature forest, we constructed a comprehensive ecosystem carbon budget to track the fate of carbon as the forest responded to four years of eCO(2) exposure. We show that, although the eCO(2) treatment of +150 parts per million (+38 per cent) above ambient levels induced a 12 per cent (+247 grams of carbon per square metre per year) increase in carbon uptake through gross primary production, this additional carbon uptake did not lead to increased carbon sequestration at the ecosystem level. Instead, the majority of the extra carbon was emitted back into the atmosphere via several respiratory fluxes, with increased soil respiration alone accounting for half of the total uptake surplus. Our results call into question the predominant thinking that the capacity of forests to act as carbon sinks will be generally enhanced under eCO(2), and challenge the efficacy of climate mitigation strategies that rely on ubiquitous CO2 fertilization as a driver of increased carbon sinks in global forests.

The X-ray crystal structure of the potassium channel TASK-1 reveals the presence of an X-gate, which traps small-molecule inhibitors in the intramembrane vestibule and explains their low washout rates from the channel.