Implications of governance structures on urban climate action: evidence from Italy and Spain

47 p.

How are Italian and Spanish cities tackling climate change? A local comparative study

27 p.

New climate scenario framework implementation in the GCAM integrated assessment model

48 p.

A dynamic CGE modelling approach for analyzing trade-offs in climate change policy options: the case of Green Climate Fund

38 p.

The use of “Bonus-Malus” schemes for promoting energy-efficient household appliances: a case study for Spain

32 p.

Hunting spectro-temporal information in unevenly spaced paleoclimate time series

18 p.

La pobreza energética y sus implicaciones

32 p.

Climate Change and Its Socioeconomic Importance

25 p.

The Costs of Drought: the Exceptional 2007-2008 Case of Barcelona

35 p.

Analyses of planetary atmospheres across the spectrum : from Titan to exoplanets

Planetary atmospheres exist in a seemingly endless variety of physical and chemical environments. There are an equally diverse number of methods by which we can study and characterize atmospheric composition. In order to better understand the fundamental chemistry and physical processes underlying all planetary atmospheres, my research of the past four years has focused on two distinct topics. First, I focused on the data analysis and spectral retrieval of observations obtained by the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) instrument onboard the Cassini spacecraft while in orbit around Saturn. These observations consisted of stellar occultation measurements of Titan's upper atmosphere, probing the chemical composition in the region 300 to 1500 km above Titan's surface. I examined the relative abundances of Titan's two most prevalent chemical species, nitrogen and methane. I also focused on the aerosols that are formed through chemistry involving these two major species, and determined the vertical profiles of aerosol particles as a function of time and latitude. Moving beyond our own solar system, my second topic of investigation involved analysis of infra-red light curves from the Spitzer space telescope, obtained as it measured the light from stars hosting planets of their own. I focused on both transit and eclipse modeling during Spitzer data reduction and analysis. In my initial work, I utilized the data to search for transits of planets a few Earth masses in size. In more recent research, I analyzed secondary eclipses of three exoplanets and constrained the range of possible temperatures and compositions of their atmospheres.

Measurement of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in ambient air by fluorescence spectroscopic techniques

250 p. + anexos

激光尘埃粒子计数器微型光学传感器的研究

研制成功便携式激光尘埃粒子计数器的核心部件——微型光学传感器。该传感器采用直角散射光收集形式。以高功率半导体激光器作为光源，同时采用高性能的PIN型光电二极管作为光电探测器。散射光收集系统为单一大数值孔径的球面反射镜，其对粒子散射光的收集角范围从20°到160°。粒子散射光信号是脉冲信号，其频谱成份主要在高频段，所以在PIN型光电二极管后用一个带通式前置放大器来消除外界的低频噪声．根据米氏散射理论计算了该光学传感器的光散射响应特性，并用聚苯乙烯标准粒子实测了该光学传感器的性能。结果表明，该系统具有高的信噪

The effect of low solubility organic acids on the hygroscopicity of sodium halide aerosols

In order to accurately assess the influence of fatty acids on the hygroscopic and other physicochemical properties of sea salt aerosols, hexanoic, octanoic or lauric acid together with sodium halide salts (NaCl, NaBr and NaI) have been chosen to be investigated in this study. The hygroscopic properties of sodium halide sub-micrometre particles covered with organic acids have been examined by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy in an aerosol flow cell. Covered particles were generated by flowing atomized sodium halide particles (either dry or aqueous) through a heated oven containing the gaseous acid. The obtained results indicate that gaseous organic acids easily nucleate onto dry and aqueous sodium halide particles. On the other hand, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images indicate that lauric acid coating on NaCl particles makes them to aggregate in small clusters. The hygroscopic behaviour of covered sodium halide particles in deliquescence mode shows different features with the exchange of the halide ion, whereas the organic surfactant has little effect in NaBr particles, NaCl and NaI covered particles experience appreciable shifts in their deliquescence relative humidities, with different trends observed for each of the acids studied. In efflorescence mode, the overall effect of the organic covering is to retard the loss of water in the particles. It has been observed that the presence of gaseous water in heterogeneously nucleated particles tends to displace the cover of hexanoic acid to energetically stabilize the system.