Koven, Riley & Lawrence Receive NERSC 2016 HCP Award

Last week on March 22, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) announced the winners of the 2016 High Performance Computing (HPC) Achievement Awards during the annual NERSC Users Group meeting at Berkeley Lab.

Charles D. Koven

William Riley

Congratulations go to Charles Koven and William Riley of the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division as well as David Lawrence (not pictured) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They were honored for their role in using an Earth system model to demonstrate the atmospheric effect of emissions released from carbon sequestered in melting permafrost soil.

Highlights of the scientists work are featured in the NERSC Science News, with reported research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2015).

Zonal-mean C fluxes for transient, fully‐forced, coupled C-N run with decomposable deep C. Net high latitude fluxes associated with permafrost thaw persist long after the thaw has occurred and are on same order as tropical C uptake due to CO₂ fertilization and changing land‐use; this represents an important aspect of the global terrestrial carbon cycle response to CO₂ emissions.

Related Publication Citation:
Koven, C. D., Lawrence, D. M., & Riley, W. J. (2015). Permafrost carbon-climate feedback is sensitive to deep soil carbon decomposability but not deep soil nitrogen dynamics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(12), 3752-3757. doi:10.1073/pnas.1415123112

News & Events

Berkeley Lab Takes Part in a New Biology Integration Institute Funded by NSF

September 1, 2020

Berkeley Lab is one of 14 organizations from around the world that have collectively been awarded $12.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a new Biology Integration Institute (BII), called EMERGE and led by Ohio State University. The Institute aims to improve understanding of ecosystem-climate interactions, focusing on permafrost systems. Bill Riley…

Two EESA early-career scientists to compete in Research SLAM

August 25, 2020

Twelve early career scientists will go head-to-head in the third annual Berkeley Lab SLAM on Sept. 17, competing for a grand prize of $3,000. From EESA, James Dennedy-Frank and Sara Gushgari-Doyle are among the finalists. The event takes place virtually from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will be live-streamed. The virtual audience will get…

Berkeley Lab study finds warmer California temperatures by mid-century will be too hot for some crops, just right for others

Record drought and heat have some farmers worried about where and when crops can be grown in the future, even in California where unprecedented microclimate diversity creates ideal growing conditions for many of the most popular items in America’s grocery stores. A third of the vegetables and two-thirds of fruits and nuts consumed by Americans…

Global Methane Emissions Soaring, But How Much Was Due to Wetlands?

August 20, 2020

Last month, an international team of scientists, including Berkeley Lab’s William Riley and Qing Zhu, published an update on the global methane budget as part of the Global Carbon Project. They estimated annual global methane emissions at nearly 570 million tons for the 2008 to 2017 decade, which is 5% higher than emissions recorded for the early 2000s and the equivalent of 189 million more cars on the world’s roads.