Terrestrial net primary production (NPP) quantifies the amount of atmospheric carbon fixed by plants and accumulated as biomass. Previous studies have shown that climate constraints were relaxing with increasing temperature and solar radiation, allowing an upward trend in NPP from 1982 through 1999. The past decade (2000 to 2009) has been the warmest since instrumental measurements began, which could imply continued increases in NPP; however, our estimates suggest a reduction in the global NPP of 0.55 petagrams of carbon. Large-scale droughts have reduced regional NPP, and a drying trend in the Southern Hemisphere has decreased NPP in that area, counteracting the increased NPP over the Northern Hemisphere. A continued decline in NPP would not only weaken the terrestrial carbon sink, but it would also intensify future competition between food demand and proposed biofuel production.

Drought-Induced Reduction in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 2000 Through 2009

http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials

[1] The Community Land Model is the land component of the Community Climate System Model. Here, we describe a broad set of model improvements and additions that have been provided through the CLM development community to create CLM4. The model is extended with a carbon-nitrogen (CN) biogeochemical model that is prognostic with respect to vegetation, litter, and soil carbon and nitrogen states and vegetation phenology. An urban canyon model is added and a transient land cover and land use change (LCLUC) capability, including wood harvest, is introduced, enabling study of historic and future LCLUC on energy, water, momentum, carbon, and nitrogen fluxes. The hydrology scheme is modified with a revised numerical solution of the Richards equation and a revised ground evaporation parameterization that accounts for litter and within-canopy stability. The new snow model incorporates the SNow and Ice Aerosol Radiation model (SNICAR) - which includes aerosol deposition, grain-size dependent snow aging, and vertically-resolved snowpack heating – as well as new snow cover and snow burial fraction parameterizations. The thermal and hydrologic properties of organic soil are accounted for and the ground column is extended to ∼50-m depth. Several other minor modifications to the land surface types dataset, grass and crop optical properties, surface layer thickness, roughness length and displacement height, and the disposition of snow-capped runoff are also incorporated. The new model exhibits higher snow cover, cooler soil temperatures in organic-rich soils, greater global river discharge, and lower albedos over forests and grasslands, all of which are improvements compared to CLM3.5. When CLM4 is run with CN, the mean biogeophysical simulation is degraded because the vegetation structure is prognostic rather than prescribed, though running in this mode also allows more complex terrestrial interactions with climate and climate change.

/pdf/parameterization-improvements-and-functional-and-structural-4uhk3hsygs.pdf

Parameterization improvements and functional and structural advances in version 4 of the Community Land Model

Review of natural gas hydrates as an energy resource: Prospects and challenges ☆

Recent advancements in supercapacitor technology

(1) If the hydraulic permeability of crustal material is sufficiently high, convection driven advection of heat can be an equally or even much more efficient transfer mechanism, provided sufficiently strong driving forces are supplied by forced or free convection systems. This is often the case in sedimentary basins. However, fluid driven heat advection can be important also in crystalline rocks and on a crustal scale (Etheridge et al., 1983, Torgersen, 1990, Clauser, 1992).

Thermal Conductivity of Rocks and Minerals

SUMMARY

During the hydraulic-fracturing experiment in the German Continental Deep Drilling Borehole (KTB) in December 1994, microseismic activity was induced. Here we develop a technique for estimating permeability using the spatio-temporal distribution of the fluid-injection-induced seismic emission. The values we have obtained for the KTB experiment (0.25times10-16 to 1.0times10-16 1.0times10-16 m2) are in a very good agreement with the previous hydraulic-type permeability estimates from KTB deep-observatory studies. In addition, our estimates of the hydraulic diffusivity support the previously calculated value for the upper crust, which is of the order of 1 m2 s-1. However, this estimate now relates to the depth range 7.5-9 km.

Estimating the crust permeability from fluid-injection-induced seismic emission at the KTB site

Electricity is produced by geothermal in 24 countries, five of which obtain 15-22% of their national electricity production from geothermal energy. Direct application of geothermal energy (for heating, bathing etc.) has been reported by 72 countries. By the end of 2004, the worldwide use of geothermal energy was 57 TWh/yr of electricity and 76 TWh/yr for direct use. Ten developing countries are among the top fifteen countries in geothermal electricity production. Six developing countries are among the top fifteen countries reporting direct use. China is at the top of the latter list. It is considered possible to increase the installed world geothermal electricity capacity from the current 10 GW to 70 GW with present technology, and to 140 GW with enhanced technology. Enhanced Geothermal Systems, which are still at the experimental level, have enormous potential for primary energy recovery using new heatexploitation technology to extract and utilise the Earth’s stored thermal energy. Present investment cost in geothermal power stations is 2-4.5 million euro/MWe, and the generation cost 40-100 euro/MWh. Direct use of geothermal energy for heating is also commercially competitive with conventional energy sources. Scenarios for future development show only a moderate increase in traditional direct use applications of geothermal resources, but an exponential increase is foreseen in the heat pump sector, as geothermal heat pumps can be used for heating and/or cooling in most parts of the world. CO2 emission from geothermal power plants in high-temperature fields is about 120 g/kWh (weighted average of 85% of the world power plant capacity). Geothermal heat pumps driven by fossil fuelled electricity reduce the CO2 emission by at least 50% compared with fossil fuel fired boilers. If the electricity that drives the geothermal heat pump is produced from a renewable energy source like hydropower or geothermal energy the emission savings are up to 100%. The total CO2 emission reduction potential of geothermal heat pumps has been estimated to be 1.2 billion tonnes per year or about 6% of the global emission. The CO2 emission from low-temperature geothermal water is negligible or in the order of 0-1 g CO2/kWh depending on the carbonate content of the water. Geothermal energy is available day and night every day of the year and can thus serve as a supplement to energy sources which are only available intermittently. Renewable energy sources can contribute significantly more to the mitigation of climate change by cooperating than by competing. Likely case scenarios are presented in the paper for electricity production and direct use of geothermal energy, as well as the mitigation potential of geothermal resources 2005-2050. These forecasts need to be elaborated on further during the preparation of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation.

The possible role and contribution of geothermal energy to the mitigation of climate change

http://engine.brgm.fr/web-offlines/conference-Mid-Term_Conference_-_Potsdam,_Germany/other_contributions/57-paper-3-legarthetal2005.pdf

Hydraulic fracturing in a sedimentary geothermal reservoir: Results and implications

Reservoir formation damage may seriously affect the productivity of a reservoir during various phases of fluid recovery from the subsurface. Hydraulic fracturing technology is one tool to overcome inflow impairments due to formation damage and to increase the productivity of reservoirs. However, the increase in productivity by hydraulic fracturing operations can be limited by permeability alterations adjacent to the newly created fracture face. Such an impairment of the inflow to the fracture is commonly referred to as fracture face skin (FFS). Here, we focus on mechanically induced fracture face skin, which may result from stress-induced mechanical interactions between proppants and reservoir rock during production. In order to achieve sustainable, long-term productivity from a reservoir, it is indispensable to understand the hydraulic and mechanical interactions in rock–proppant systems. We performed permeability measurements on tight sandstones with propped fractures under stress using two different flow cells, allowing to localise and quantify the mechanical damage at the fracture face. The laboratory experiments revealed a permeability reduction of this rock–proppant system down to 77% of initial rock permeability at 50 MPa differential stress leading to a permeability reduction in the fracture face skin zone up to a factor of 6. Considerable mechanical damage at the rock–proppant interface was already observed for stresses of about 5 MPa. Microstructure analysis identified quartz grain crushing, fines production, and pore space blocking at the fracture face causing the observed mechanically induced FFS. At higher stresses, damage and embedment of the ceramic proppants further reduces the fracture permeability. Therefore, even low differential stresses, which are expected under in-situ conditions, may considerably affect the productivity of hydraulic proppant fracturing stimulation campaigns, in particular in unconventional reservoirs where the fracture face is considerably larger compared to conventional hydraulic stimulations.

Ernst Huenges

Papers

Thermal Conductivity of Rocks and Minerals

Estimating the crust permeability from fluid-injection-induced seismic emission at the KTB site

The possible role and contribution of geothermal energy to the mitigation of climate change

Hydraulic fracturing in a sedimentary geothermal reservoir: Results and implications

Hydraulic fracturing stimulation techniques and formation damage mechanisms—Implications from laboratory testing of tight sandstone-proppant systems