The UMEP plug-in integrated in the free QGIS software can now calculate the spatial variation of the wind speed within urban settings. This paper shows that the new wind model, URock, generally fits observations well and highlights the main needed improvements. According to this work, pedestrian wind fields and outdoor thermal comfort can now simply be estimated by any QGIS user (researchers, students, and practitioners).

The Quick Environmental Simulation (QES) tool is a low-computational-cost fast-response framework. It provides high-resolution wind and concentration information to study complex problems, such as spore or smoke transport, urban pollution, and air quality. This paper presents the particle dispersion model and its validation against analytical solutions and wind-tunnel data for a mock-urban setting. In all cases, the model provides accurate results with competitive computational performance.

The present paper introduces a floodplain scheme for a high-resolution land surface model river routing. It was developed and evaluated over one of the world’s largest floodplains: the Pantanal in South America. This shows the impact of tropical floodplains on land surface conditions (soil moisture, temperature) and on land–atmosphere fluxes and highlights the potential impact of floodplains on land–atmosphere interactions and the importance of integrating this module in coupled simulations.

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a CO₂ removal strategy that involves applying crushed rocks (e.g., basalt) to agricultural soils. However, unintended processes within the N cycle due to soil pH changes may affect the climate benefits of C sequestration. ERW could drive changes in soil emissions of non-CO₂ GHGs (N₂O) and trace gases (NO and NH₃) that may affect air quality. We present a new improved N cycling scheme for the land model (CLM5) to evaluate ERW effects on soil gas N emissions.

We developed a new supraglacial hydrology model for the Greenland Ice Sheet. This model simulates surface meltwater routing, meltwater drainage, supraglacial lake (SGL) overflow, and formation of lake ice. The model was able to reproduce 80 % of observed lake locations and provides a good match between the observed and modelled temporal evolution of SGLs.

Using machine learning, we estimated global surface soil moisture (SSM) to aid in understanding water, energy, and carbon exchange. Ensemble models outperformed individual algorithms in predicting SSM under different climates. The best-performing ensemble included K-neighbours Regressor, Random Forest Regressor, and Extreme Gradient Boosting. This is important for hydrological and climatological applications such as water cycle monitoring, irrigation management, and crop yield prediction.

Due to complex root system structures, representing the impacts of Rhizophora mangroves on flow in hydrodynamic models has been challenging. This study presents a new drag and turbulence model that leverages an empirical model for root systems. The model can be applied without rigorous measurements of root structures and showed high performance in flow simulations; this may provide a better understanding of hydrodynamics and related transport processes in Rhizophora mangrove forests.

Trace elements and isotopes (TEIs) are important tools to study the changes in the ocean environment both today and in the past. However, the behaviors of TEIs in marine sediments are poorly known, limiting our ability to use them in oceanography. Here we present a modeling framework that can be used to generate and run models of the sedimentary cycling of TEIs assisted with advanced numerical tools in the Julia language, lowering the coding barrier for the general user to study marine TEIs.

To identify the key factors affecting quantitative precipitation nowcasting (QPN) using deep learning (DL), we carried out a comprehensive evaluation and analysis. We compared four key factors: DL model, length of the input sequence, loss function, and ensemble approach. Generally, U-Net outperformed ConvLSTM. Loss function and ensemble showed potential for improving performance when they synergized well. The length of the input sequence did not significantly affect the results.

In this study, we estimate the global biogeochemical cycling of Hg in a state-of-the-art physical-ecosystem ocean model (high-resolution-MITgcm/Hg), providing a more accurate portrayal of surface Hg concentrations in estuarine and coastal areas, strong western boundary flow and upwelling areas, and concentration diffusion as vortex shapes. The high-resolution model can help us better predict the transport and fate of Hg in the ocean and its impact on the global Hg cycle.

Cities' materials and forms impact radiative fluxes. We evaluate the SPARTACUS-Urban multi-layer approach to modelling longwave radiation, describing realistic 3D geometry statistically using the explicit DART (Discrete Anisotropic Radiative Transfer) model. The temperature configurations used are derived from thermal camera observations. SPARTACUS-Urban accurately predicts longwave fluxes, with a low computational time (cf. DART), but has larger errors with sunlit/shaded surface temperatures.

We document the system development and application of a Regional multi-Air Pollutant Assimilation System (RAPAS v1.0). This system is developed to optimize gridded source emissions of CO, SO₂, NO_x, primary PM_2.5, and coarse PM₁₀ on a regional scale via simultaneously assimilating surface measurements of CO, SO₂, NO₂, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀. A series of sensitivity experiments demonstrates the advantage of the “two-step” inversion strategy and the robustness of the system in estimating the emissions.

We present a novel cyberinfrastructure system that uses National Ecological Observatory Network measurements to run Community Terrestrial System Model point simulations in a containerized system. The simple interface and tutorials expand access to data and models used in Earth system research by removing technical barriers and facilitating research, educational opportunities, and community engagement. The NCAR–NEON system enables convergence of climate and ecological sciences.

The new MUSICAv0 model enables the study of atmospheric chemistry across all relevant scales. We develop a MUSICAv0 grid for Africa. We evaluate MUSICAv0 with observations and compare it with a previously used model – WRF-Chem. Overall, the performance of MUSICAv0 is comparable to WRF-Chem. Based on model–satellite discrepancies, we find that future field campaigns in an eastern African region (30°E–45°E, 5°S–5°N) could substantially improve the predictive skill of air quality models.

Air quality forecasting models play a key role in fostering short-term measures aimed at reducing human exposure to air pollution. Together with this role comes the need for a thorough assessment of the model performances to build confidence in models’ capabilities, in particular when model applications support policymaking. In this paper, we propose an evaluation methodology and test it on several domains across Europe, highlighting its strengths and room for improvement.