With the Race to Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 of the worldwide community, there is an urgent need to define effective and timely protocols to objectively monitor and report the net emissions at the national and subnational level. In this framework, urban areas are going to play a key role, since they host about 50% of the human population and drive the global production and consumption, with an increasing outlook over the next decades. The CarbonCity proposal is aimed at developing and demonstrating the application of an accurate, reliable, affordable prototype observing system, which is able to continuously monitor the net CO2 emissions at city-scale with near-real-time update and long-term stability.
In CarbonCity we will first define the requirements in terms of observing system accuracy and precision to detect trends of city-scale CO2 net emission of the order of those expected with Race to Zero in 2050.

Global warming severely affects Alpine hydrology, especially impacting winter storage and slow release of water from snow/ice melt during spring/summer. Changes in water availability and seasonality affect hydropower production, which in Italy has a fundamental role in the energy sector. In fact, not only water provides a large share of the energy production, but back pumping of water and repeated exploitation provide large energy storage, hardly feasible with other means.
Within this context, the project CCHP-ALPS - Climate Change and HydroPower in the Alps aims at assessing the impact of past and projected climate change upon hydropower potential of the Po river catchment, which gathers a large share of water from the Southern Alps.
We will investigate a "long-term" period, from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 21st one, i.e. more than 120 years of observations and in the future several decades of projections. First, we will setup 30-arc-second-resolution daily minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation fields for the entire investigated region.

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) occurs when an urban area is significantly warmer than its rural surroundings due to human activities.UHIs are more frequent and intense in inland metropolitan cities, worsening as the size of the urbanised area increases and where there is less greenery. In recent years, an increase in the UHI intensity is experienced, related to the increasing urbanisation, together with a growth in the intensity, frequency, and duration of heat-waves that is expected to worsen with global warming.Similarly to the UHI, the Urban Pollution island (UPI) identifies the onset of spatial/temporal variations in pollutant concentrations attributable to typical urban features and activities. The UHI-UPI interaction is an important issue not yet fully elucidated, and represents an ongoing challenge to make cities more resilient.RESTART aims at investigating the connection between UHI and UPI, offering a series of urban mitigation strategies including tailored Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), such as green areas and roofs, trees, green walls, and ready-to-use guidelines for the improvement of well-being in urban environments.

Accurate and reliable precipitation measurements play a key role in a wide range of applications like flash-flood forecasting, water resources management, and climate change projections and mitigation policies. However, in-situ measurements of liquid precipitation have experienced little conceptual innovation for many decades now. Rain gauges were the first devices adopted to measure the rainfall accumulated at given location in each time interval. Although prone to instrumental and environmental biases, rain gauge measurements are the most trusted forcing variables of hydrological models. Precipitation measurement biases of traditional catching type gauges were investigated in a past PRIN 2015 project through both numerical simulation and wind tunnel tests, which showed that their assessment and correction require detailed knowledge of the rainfall microphysical characteristics, typically expressed through the size distribution of raindrops (DSD) and the corresponding actual fall velocities.

Scopo di questa linea di ricerca è identificare, caratterizzare, quantificare gli input e gli output che definiscono il ciclo del carbonio a carattere globale e locale, a livello superficiale e profondo, nel tempo e nello spazio. Queste conoscenze sono di importanza primaria per definire i cambiamenti geologici, geochimici, geodinamici, ambientali, climatici - passati e futuri - del pianeta. L'Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse presenta alcune attività di ricerca inerenti a questa tematica come: (1) Lo studio del degassamento naturale di CO2 e CH4, legato al ciclo del carbonio a breve e lungo termine (carbonio di origina vulcanica, metamorfica e mantellica); (2) Lo studio del degassamento antropico di CO2 e CH4; (3) La caratterizzazione dei sink di carbonio rappresentati dai carbonati inorganici e bio-indotti; (4) Lo studio del carbonio reintrodotto nel mantello attraverso i processi di subduzione; (5) La caratterizzazione dei flussi di materia organica in ecosistemi marini e continentali. L'IGG coordina il Progetto Europeo H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL, dedicato alla determinazione dei servizi ecosistemici e della loro evoluzione futura, attraverso lo studio delle interazioni geosfera-biosfera a scala multipla, degli scambi di carbonio e acqua fra suolo-vegetazione-atmosfera e fra idrosfera-atmosfera, e con la modellistica delle interazioni fra componenti abiotiche (soprattutto geologico-ambientali) e biotiche negli ecosistemi terrestri, lacustri e marini. L'Istituto è inoltre partner nel progetto di esplorazione oceanica IODP 357 ATLANTIS MASSIF SERPENTINIZATION AND LIFE EXPEDITION dedicato alla comprensione dei meccanismi geologici e geochimici di formazione di nuova crosta oceanica e della formazione di carbonati durante processi di alterazione di bassa temperatura. Sono inoltre oggetto di questo progetto, lo studio di come l'attività biologica possa influenzare, in questi particolari contesti, i processi di alterazione e viceversa.

The study proposed concerns a novel method, called NDSA (Normalized Differential Spectral Attenuation), for the measurement of
the tropospheric Water Vapour (WV). The NDSA derives the Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) along a given microwave link from
differential normalized attenuation measurements made in the 17-21 GHz frequency range.
Theoretical studies sponsored by ESA (European Space Agency) demonstrated that the NDSA method is effective in providing
estimates of the IWV along the path between two Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites-one carrying a transmitter and the other a
receiver-in a limb geometry.
Two recent scientific projects, one funded by Regione Toscana in 2018-1019 (SWAMM), and one funded by the Italian Space Agency
(ASI) in 2020-2021 (SATCROSS) have been fundamental for the development of the NDSA technique: SWAMM allowed the realization
of the first low-cost instrument at 19 GHz, able to provide NDSA measurements along terrestrial links, while SATCROSS contributed
to demonstrate the feasibility of a future space mission. Laboratory tests with the upgraded instrument and two measurement
campaigns demonstrated the technical feasibility of the NDSA measurement approach.
A fundamental step to consolidate the progresses made and proceed further towards the realization of a space measurement project
based on the NDSA approach is the performance analysis of the IWV estimates provided by the prototype instruments, which must
necessarily include the validation of such estimates through comparison with those provided by other sensors and techniques. For
this reason, this proposal aims at the realization of new measurement campaigns in ground-to-ground configurations and designed
for an inter-comparison with the MAX-DOAS (Multi Axis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy). The MAX-DOAS technique
allows the retrieval of the IWV in the visible spectral range at about 445 nm. This is an independent optical device, already available
at the CNR, which will be set up to observe the same air volume as the NDSA prototype instrument. In addition to the MAX-DOAS,
also measurements from radiosondes, hygrometers and satellite-derived humidity products (e.g., ERA-5, MODIS, etc.) will be
acquired and processed for an overall validation of the NDSA instrument prototype. The main campaign will involve the San Pietro
Capofiume station of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Monte Cimone CNR station. Another campaign is planned
with a link between at constant high altitude (e.g., connecting two mountain peaks), in order to reproduce as close as possible the
NDSA satellite measurement in troposphere.