Session programme

This general session of the ERE division gives an overview of its interdisciplinarity, which is needed to tackle the challenges of the future. Beside others, this is to provide adequate and reliable supplies of affordable energy and other resources, obtained in environmentally sustainable ways, which will be essential to economic prosperity, environmental quality and political stability around the world. This session also features contribution of general interest within the ERE community which are not covered by the other sessions.

Please note that this session will be organized as a PICO: https://egu2019.eu/abstracts_and_programme/pico.html

Public information:
Please note the information on the ERE special issue in ADGEO in the uploaded session materials.

Europe is facing a number of societal challenges that are firmly linked to subsurface resources: groundwater, geo-energy and raw materials. Our society needs economic wealth and the use of resources is fundamental to this, while at the same time a healthy and secure environment for all citizens needs to be ensured. The growing population and the demographic change add to the pressure on surface and subsurface resources and uses. Moreover, the industrial transformation envisaged by the EU will increase the need for coordinated subsurface research and innovation underpinned by reliable and easy access to subsurface data.
In order to support such transition, integrated European subsurface knowledge, development and sharing of improved processes and the use of new innovative technologies throughout the value chain will be essential. The Geological Survey Organisations of 32 countries within Europe laid the cornerstone to this achievement by establishing the GeoERA Programme. GeoERA’s main objectives to contribute to the more integrated and efficient management and more responsible exploitation and use of the subsurface are in line with several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

This session will address integrated European geoscience services that will provide advice and data to Europe towards a sustainable subsurface management, integrating geo-resources (energy, water, raw materials) and environmental conditions (energy storage, natural hazards, anthropogenic impacts, biodiversity, climate change mitigation and adaptation), supported by a cross-thematic online information platform.

Over the course of the last years, the Environmental Crisis has been persistendly deepening. Recent research in the field of Geosciences has been focusing on finding good solutions for making mitigating the crisis. However, the economy of most resources-based and fossil fuel-based technologies are based on a linear paradigm which has a detrimental effect on the Environment. To protect, preserve and restore the environment and make it flourishing again, research in the field of geosciences should be based on a new geo management paradigm which implies new economic models and business concepts. Green-economy, bio-economy, and smart and circular economy, are the most recent models that have proven to lead to a more sustainable development. Are they competing or supplementing each other? What opportunities do the most recent model of smart circular economy bring to Environmental protection? How does it reshapes or is going to reshape the entrepreneurial and management mentality? What business concepts may constitute a core of the new geo management paradigm? How do Circular City projects contribute to a new Geo management paradigm shaping by becoming its laboratories?
This session welcomes any contribution that demonstrates new geo management paradigm that leads to sustainable development while preserving the beauty of our natural resources.

Understanding the impact of climate change on natural and socio-economic outcomes plays an important role in informing a range of national and international policies, including energy, agriculture and health. Economic models of climate impacts used to guide policy rely on multiple components: projections of future climate change, damage functions, and policy responses, each of which comes with its own modelling challenges and uncertainties.

We invite research using process-based (e.g. Integrated Assessment Models) and empirical models of climate change to investigate future impacts, together with policy evaluation to explore effective mitigation, technology and adaptation pathways. Furthermore, we invite research on changes to, and new developments of climate-economic and econometric modelling.

Remaining carbon budgets specify the quantity of CO2 that can be emitted before a given warming level (such as the 1.5 °C target) is reached, and are thus of high interest to the public and policymakers. Yet, there are many sources of uncertainty which make it challenging to deduce this finite amount of CO2 emissions. The theoretical foundation of carbon budgets is based on the concept of the Transient Climate Response to cumulative CO2 Emissions (TCRE). This is the pathway-independent ratio of global warming per unit of cumulative CO2 emissions. However, accounting for non-CO2 forcings and changes in albedo or other Earth system feedbacks provides further challenges in calculating TCRE and the remaining carbon budgets.

This session aims to further our understanding of the climate response under different emission scenarios, and to advance our knowledge of associated carbon budgets consistent with meeting various levels of warming. We invite contributions that use a variety of tools, including fully coupled Earth System Models, Integrated Assessment Models, or simple climate model emulators. We welcome studies exploring different aspects related to carbon budgets and the TCRE framework, including: the governing mechanisms behind linearity of TCRE and its limitations, effects of different forcings and feedbacks (e.g. permafrost carbon feedback) and non-CO2 forcings (e.g. aerosols, and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases), estimates of the remaining carbon budget to reach a given temperature target (for example, the 1.5 °C warming level from the Paris Agreement), the role of pathway dependence, the climate-carbon responses to different emission scenarios (e.g. SSP scenarios, or idealized scenarios), and the behaviour of TCRE in response to artificial CO2 removal from the atmosphere (i.e. negative emissions). Contributions from the fields of climate policy and economics focused on applications of carbon budgets are also encouraged.

Accurate and precise atmospheric measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations reveal the rapid and unceasing rise of global GHG concentrations due to human activity. The resulting increases in global temperatures, sea-level, glacial retreat, and other negative impacts are clear. In response to this evidence, nations, states, and cities, private enterprises and individuals have been accelerating GHG reduction efforts while meeting the needs of global development. The urgency, complexity and economic implications of GHG reductions demand strategic investment in science-based information for planning and tracking emission reduction policies and actions. In response, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch Program (GAW) and its partners have initiated the development of an Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS). IG3IS combines atmospheric GHG concentration measurements and human-activity data in an inverse modeling framework to help decision-makers take better-informed action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants that reduce air quality. This service is based on existing and successful measurement and analysis methods and use-cases for which the scientific and technical skill is proven or emerging.

This session intends to gather presentations from researchers and decision-makers (user-community) on the development, implementation and use of atmospheric measurement-based “top-down” and data-driven “bottom-up” GHG emission inventory estimates, and the combination of both approaches, explicit in space and time, to deliver actionable emissions information at scales where human activity occurs and emission reduction is most effective. This session will also showcase the new projects and efforts to develop “good-practice” standards under the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS), which is part of WMO’s commitment to science-based services.