Modelování interakce atmosférické chemie a klimatu s důrazem na vliv metanu v regionálním až lokálním měřítku.

• Thesis title in Czech: Modelování interakce atmosférické chemie a klimatu s důrazem na vliv metanu v regionálním až lokálním měřítku.
• Thesis title in English: Modeling of chemistry-climate interaction with emphasis on methane impacts in regional and local scales.
• Key words: atmosférická chemie a klima|skleníkové plyny|RCM/CTM|metan|emise
• English key words: atmospheric chemistry and climate|green-house gases|RCM/CTM|methane|emission
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2025/2026
• Thesis type: dissertation
• Department: Department of Atmospheric Physics (32-KFA)
• Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Tomáš Halenka, CSc.
• Advisors: doc. Mgr. Peter Huszár, Ph.D.

Guidelines

While conclusions concerning the major contribution of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to global warming are considered to be known with high confidence, there are significant uncertainties in other well mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs) like methane (CH4) or N2O connected with other different anthropogenic sources as well, like agriculture, coal mining, waste, gas and oil industry, as well as natural sources, e.g. wetlands, and permafrost thawing, which provides a feedback to climate change. The subject will aim to identify significant knowledge gaps for methane and its impacts, to quantify the emissions from such sources, to understand the processes behind these emissions and to assess the processes of interaction in the atmosphere. This effort will be based on integrated in-situ and remote observations and measurements supported by atmospheric-chemistry modelling, with emphasis on regional and local (urban) scales. Another goal of the subject is to improve more detailed picture of the feedbacks of methane in the climate system on these resolutions. The methane effects are of extreme importance especially at shorter time-scale, which, in connection to air quality interaction, can impact the decissions on GHG mitigation actions. This will be studied over the scales, using up-to-date RCMs models coupled to atmospheric chemistry. Different scenarios of methane mitigation will be tested in future projection simulations of climate change and its impacts till 2050. More detailed scenarios of methane reductions will feed in the overal GHG and global warming mitigation process, especially under UNFCCC COPs activities and IPCC AR7 cycle development.

Specific tasks:
• High resolution data on emission sources (both anthropogenic and natural) will be compiled over Europe. For natural sources, available quantification methods will be studied, developed, implemented and validated.
• Familiarizing with the RCM/CTM model couple and implementing the methane emissions, with the parameterization for natural sources. Sensitivity tests will be performer to validate the implementation and to assess the interaction with other air pollution.
• Modeling based analysis of the effect of resolution, at European scale and local scales of urbanized region and the region of permafrost thawing, validation.
• Selected scenarios simulations, with methane mitigation options. The assessment of methane impacts on regional climate and interaction with benefits from methane reductions on air quality and climate.

References

Skamarock, W., J. Klemp, J. Dudhia, D. Gill, D. Barker, M. Duda, W. Wang, and J. Powers (2008), A description of the Advanced Research WRF Version 3, Tech. rep., NCAR.
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/supports/tutorial.html or at wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Research_and_Forecasting_Model

Giorgi F, Coppola E, Solmon F, Mariotti L, Sylla MB, Bi X, Elguindi N, Diro GT, Nair V, Giuliani G, Cozzini S, Güttler I, O’Brien TA, Tawfik AB, Shalaby A, Zakey AS, Steiner AL, Stordal F, Sloan LC, Brankovic C (2012) RegCM4: model description and preliminary tests over multiple CORDEX domains. Clim Res 52:7–29, http://gforge.ictp.it/gf/project/regcm/docman/?subdir=5

C. D. Elder, D. R. Thompson, A. K. Thorpe, H. A. Chandanpurkar, P. J. Hanke, N. Hasson, S. R. James, B. J. Minsley, N. J. Pastick, D. Olefeldt, K. M. Walter Anthony, and C. E. Miller (2020): Global Biogeochemical Cycles.