Recorded workshops and webinars

Speaker: Dr Martin Steinbacher, ICOS Switzerland, Air Pollution & Environmental Technology, Empa
Event: Global Atmosphere Watch Training and Education Centre (GAWTEC) & YESS-Community 1st Webinar on GHGs and Atmospheric Composition, 2020

The availability of reliable scientific data to characterize the atmosphere’s chemical composition is crucial for understanding air pollution and climate change, their drivers, and their impacts. Data within and across monitoring networks need to meet specific data quality objectives and compatibility goals to be useful for robust analyses. Thus, observations have to be of known quality, sufficient precision and need to be traceable to common scales. The lecture will present the existing challenges but also the required considerations and procedures in terms of implementation and operation. Particular attention will be given to quality assurance and quality control when operating the observations on a long-term basis.

Watch the webinar here

Speaker: Dr Martin Steinbacher, ICOS Switzerland, Air Pollution & Environmental Technology, Empa
Sub-authors: Zellweger Christoph, Emmenegger Lukas, Buchmann Brigitte
Event: Virtual ICOS Science Conference 2020, Session on Education tools and methods, ICOS Science conference 2020

The talk highlights experiences and lessons learnt from support and teaching activities at the GAW Training and Education Centre (GAWTEC), other training sessions, one-to-one trainings, and during maintenance visits and station audits. Our experience shows that – when starting with basic infrastructure and willingness to perform high-precision trace gas observations in a remote environment – it typically takes a decade to reach the status of a fully autonomous monitoring station with high-quality data, and good visibility within global scientific community. Our presentation critically assesses the available documentation, identifies shortcomings, and suggests the preparation of straightforward checklists, guidelines and video-tutorials dedicated to unexperienced users and novices.

> Watch the video here

Speaker: Ida Storm, ICOS Carbon Portal, Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University
Sub-authors: Lankreijer Harry, Pantazatou Karolina, D'Onofrio Claudio , Karstens Ute, team ICOS CP
Event: Virtual ICOS Science Conference 2020, Session on Education tools and methods

The aim of the ICOS Atmosphere station characterization tool is to provide users of ICOS data with basic information on what potentially influences the tracer concentrations at the station and to support them in the selection of stations. The station characterization tool is based on the stations’ influence regions, also called footprints. Footprints are calculated by atmospheric transport models – the STILT (Stochastic Time Inverted Lagrangian Transport model) model in this case – and indicate the contribution of the surface exchange fluxes to the atmospheric concentration of the tracer. As these footprints can be computed on demand in the ICOS footprint tool, and all parameters derived for the station characterization, as well as the visualizations used to display them, are generated in a Jupyter Notebook, the characterization can be produced also for hypothetical stations, e.g. to aid in the process of picking a station location. The idea is that these footprints can be used to characterize the average sensitivity of a station to different influences.

> Watch the video here

By ICOS Switzerland, ETH Zurich
Event: STEM workshop, Grassland Sciences group in the framework of the Kangaroo goes Science Day, 2021

In this video one of our female scientists is climbing up ICOS Davos tower, a measurement station that towers above the surrounding coniferous forest. Have a look at one of our wonderful free air nature labs, and discover, how we measure the greenhouse gas exchange between the forest and the atmosphere.

This video was produced in 2021 and was part of a STEM workshop organized by the Grassland Sciences group in the framework of the Kangaroo goes Science Day. Every year, one hundred girls, the best of their class (level seven) who take part in the Kangaroo Mathematics Competition in March, are invited to visit ETH Zurich. Usually, we are hosting one part of the girls in our labs, to show them around and let them experience some research. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the workshops were carried out completely virtually. We organized two Plants and Sensors workshops, in which, amongst other things, they joined us on this virtual site visit of the ICOS Davos tower.

> Watch the video here

By ICOS Carbon Portal, 2021

This series of webinars will guide you to find, preview and use ICOS data. The series starts with a gentle introduction to the web services and will gradually, over the course of series, shift the focus from finding data objects and simple plots towards data science. Each webinar is self-contained with a different focus, hence you can pick and choose.

> Go to the Webinar Series page

Speaker: Claudio D'Onofrio, ICOS Carbon Portal, Department of Physical Geography, Lund University
Sub author(s): Carbon Portal Team
Event: Virtual ICOS Science Conference 2020, Session on Education tools and methods

The video will present a short overview of the ICOS data life cycle management and the pros and cons of both approaches to the data. A python library has been developed to ease the access to the data. As a rule of thumb: everything you can ‘preview’ in the ICOS data portal, is accessible. The examples we provide are based on ICOS Level 2 data products. To access the data, the only information needed is the PID of the digital data object. The digital object identifier can be obtained through the online data portal or by running a SPARQL query. Calling the library with the PID returns a pandas data frame with the data; including information about the units, station (latitude, longitude), timestamps, sampling height etc. We have simplified the current complexity of access to a single line of code. We provide built-in “lists” of PID’s (results from SPARQL queries), for example, ‘all level 2 data of atmospheric CO2 concentrations’ to provide simple tools to compare different stations and regions in Europe. An advanced user can easily extend the suggested queries or add new ones.

> View the video here

Teachers: Claudio D'Onofrio and Karolina Pantazatou, ICOS Carbon Portal
Event: Towards ENVRI Community International Winter School, 2020

This webinar will present a case study on how to use a Jupyter Hub with Python Notebooks as to disseminate research data to the public, policy makers, and scientists. The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, measuring greenhouse gas concentrations and fluxes. The data portal (ICOS Carbon Portal) provides access to ICOS data, as well as services for online collaboration and education.

In a nutshell, we will show you how we use ansible playbooks to create virtual machines, where we assemble docker images to run a Jupyter Hub and the final user interface as a docker container.

> See the recording and slides here

Teachers: Ute Karstens, Claudio D'Onofrio, Karolina Pantazatou, Ida Storm, ICOS Carbon Portal
Event: ENVRI community International Winter School, 2021

A short presentation is given on a fully integrated web application at ICOS Carbon Portal, on the example of the atmospheric transport model STILT. We will run through a full life cycle for an 'on demand' model run and results visualisation. Further on we will show case how to use the results to create a new data product. A hands-on workshop follows to create a simple timeseries plot comparing STILT results with observational data and creating an interactive map for the station location.

> Watch the recording here

By ICOS Cities project, 2021–2022

ICOS Cities Talks is a series of 30 minutes online presentations and discussions around topics related to greenhouse gas measurement and climate change in urban landscapes.

Talks:

• Urban eddy-covariance - how, why and where?
• City emission inventories – state of the art and challenges
• Oslo's climate budget - a tool to achieve ambitious climate goals
• Seeing the tree for the forest - new ways to use eddy covariance to map landscape fluxes
• Surveying attitudes towards climate change and energy preferences in the European Social Survey
• How to organise productive online and hybrid meetings
   

> Go to the ICOS Cities Talks page

Speaker: Dr Werner Kutsch, ICOS Director General
By Climate.now, 2021

This video is part of the Climate.now teaching and study module on climate change. It has primarily been created to provide a 5 ECTS course in higher education, or for self-study. Thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, the material can be used in different fields, as well as for training purposes in organisations or companies. The material is available for everyone to use.

> Watch the video here

Speaker: Laura Riuttanen, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Researc, University of Helsinki
Sub-authors: Taina Ruuskanen, Mikko Äijälä, Katja Anniina Lauri
Event: Virtual ICOS Science Conference 2020, Session on Education tools and methods

Climate University is a national collaboration of 11 universities, coordinated by the University of Helsinki Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research INAR. It offers six open online courses, where students focus on real research questions, work in small groups with access to comprehensive long-term datasets, and the horizontal learning principle enables everyone – students, supervisors, and lecturers – to adopt both the role of learner and teacher. The video discusses e.g. the competencies we need in order to tackle the challenges of the current climate change and the urgent societal need for climate action requires us to rethink climate education in all levels of education. It also discusses about teacher experiences and wishes related to teaching collaboration.

The results have been published in Riuttanen, L., Ruuskanen, T., Äijälä, M., & Lauri, A. (2021). Society needs experts with climate change competencies–what is the role of higher education in atmospheric and Earth system sciences?. Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 73(1), 1-14. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16000889.2021.1917862

> Watch the video here

Speaker & sub-author: Aino Runegård, Swedish National Knowdledge Centre for Climate Change
Author: Pontus Wallin
Event: Virtual ICOS Science Conference 2020, Session on Education tools and methods

Climate change adaptation, sustainable development goals and climate scenarios – complex to teach and learn. This “serious game” helps students to understand the complexity of adaptation and is fun to play. The Climate Adaptation Game creates tough decisions for the player, whose main objective is to adapt the town of Weatherton to the effects of climate change. Will the SDGs be reached? And what about the citizens - can they all survive when the extreme weather hits Weatherton at the end of the century? The game can be played as a workshop in classrooms, comes with full instructions and is free to play online. Find out more during this session where the game creators from SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute) will present the game.

> Watch the video here

Speakers: ICOS scientists and activities from Friday for Future

Can we already see a signal of reduced atmospheric greenhouse gases due to the COVID-19 crisis? In what way do consumer choices relate to climate change? Can cities become carbon neutral? Why is the Arctic, the world’s refrigerator, getting hotter and hotter?

#CO2FFEE with ICOS took place every Friday afternoon on ICOS YouTube channel in spring 2020. Watch the videos where ICOS scientists and activists from Fridays for Future have embarked on a discussion to give in-depth information about climate change and the importance of measuring greenhouse gas data.

Talks:

• Coronavirus and Climate: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Have Fallen - But For How Long?
• Consumer Choices – Can They Ward off the Impact of Climate Change?
• Arctic – The World’s Refrigerator Turns Hot