There is a pressing need to quantify the exchange of mass between the world's oceans and polar ice caps, and this can only be achieved by measuring how their volumes are changing. Currently circa 50% of the observed sea level rise of 1.8 mm yr-1 cannot be explained. The required measurements can only be made effectively from space using satellites, and several missions are either in space now, or are about to be deployed to attack this problem. In simple terms the sea and ice topography, and how it changes, can be inferred by measuring ranges from the satellites to the surface, and then subtracting the ranges from the position of the satellites in a geocentric reference frame. The satellite position is calculated by the process of orbit determination, which requires mathematical modelling of the forces acting on the satellites. Errors in the satellite orbit map directly into errors in the inferred topography. Both the orbit determination process and the modelling of the time evolution of the sea and ice changes rely upon a 'reference frame' - put simply this is a list of coordinates and velocities of the tracking stations used to observe how the satellites move in space. Velocities are needed because the tracking stations are sited on tectonic plates, all of which are in continuous motion. As these kind of analyses model geophysical effects that last decades this motion of the tracking stations must be known accurately. In turn, the methods used to calculate the station positions (coordinates) and velocities are linked to the orbit determination process - so once again, errors in the orbit estimates create problems. Orbital accuracy in the satellite radial direction of around 1 cm is required to reduce the uncertainty in the target geophysical parameters. We believe this can be achieved by accurate modelling of the satellite forces. The principal problems here are satellite surface forces caused by solar radiation pressure, thermal effects and forces caused by radiation reflected and emitted by the Earth (termed albedo effects), as well as atmospheric drag effects. These forces, particularly the earth radiation effects, have very strong seasonal and latitudinal characteristics which, if not modelled appropriately, appear as seasonal and latitudinal variations in the inferred sea and ice topography. The PI and his group have developed a suite of software utilities to attack these force modelling problems that are recognised as the leading techniques in the world for dealing with complex, realistic models of the spacecraft response to its environment. The group has been invited to participate in several international experiments that involve modelling complexity that has never been attempted before, and this proposal seeks to extend the group's techniques and apply them to current missions to achieve the 1 cm goal. Failure to address this problem of systematic biases in the satellite orbits would seriously undermine any attempt to constrain climate change models on the basis of the estimated mass exchanges.

Billions of years ago the young planet Earth was much different from the one we inhabit today, with wildly fluctuating temperatures and an atmosphere filled with toxic gases. Understanding how we got from that inhospitable place to the world of today, dominated by mild climates and large oxygen-based life forms, is a fundamental question in Earth sciences. One important transition occurred approximately 2.5 billion years ago (Ga), called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), when the oxygen concentrations in Earth's atmosphere first increased from near zero to a fraction of modern levels. A major focus of research in natural science is determining how the Earth system (including life) has acted to produce such monumental changes in the environment; however, exactly how and why the GOE occurred remains a mystery. Integral to understanding the transition to an oxygenated environment on the early Earth are quantitative estimates of the composition of the ancient atmosphere. These estimates are difficult to make using most geochemical tools, which tend to reflect processes that occurred in the marine environment instead. This study proposes to link the four stable isotopes of sulfur, which directly reflect chemical reactions that occurred in the atmosphere, with numerical models tying these geochemical signatures to atmospheric compositions. An additional set of geochemical analyses will allow us to determine the chemistry of the oceans and how the biosphere was acting at the same time. This study is unique in its combination of these multiple techniques, which we will apply to well-preserved sediments deposited directly before the GOE, to determine how the Earth's atmosphere developed during this time, and how the oceans and biosphere both contributed and responded. Understanding the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, and life is particularly crucial during this time period, as it represents an Earth system poised at the edge of a major transition in global surface chemistry. We have performed a preliminary set of similar analyses on ~2.65-2.5 Ga sediments that paint a tantalizing picture of an unusual Earth environment directly before the GOE. These analyses point to an atmosphere that was not only very low in oxygen, but was also periodically dominated by a layer of organic particles (termed "haze") produced at high methane levels, similar to that seen on Saturn's moon Titan. We will expand upon the hypotheses developed from these preliminary analyses and explore their significance for the development of Earth surface chemistry and the evolution of life during this critical period in Earth history.

A substantial reduction in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, due to the presence of urban aerosol, has been reported for a variety of global locations. In the long-wave, the aerosol impact is more uncertain, however, a number of modeling and measurement studies suggest that the presence of urban aerosol can act to enhance downwelling fluxes to the surface significantly. Even more intriguingly, recent work has indicated that information contained in the spectrum of downwelling long-wave radiation at the surface can be employed to diagnose an aerosol effect on cloud microphysics: an indirect impact which would be expected to substantially modify both short-wave and long-wave cloudy-sky surface fluxes. Here, through ALERT, we propose to simultaneously measure, for the first time, the short-wave and long-wave urban aerosol radiative effect on the urban environment. Through a unique combination of observational and modeling tools, focused on central London, we will examine two principal hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: There is a measurable urban clear-sky long-wave and short-wave direct radiative effect at the surface due to aerosols. Hypothesis 2: There is an indirect aerosol radiative effect on urban short-wave and long-wave surface fluxes due to measurable shifts in cloud effective radius

Billions of years ago the young planet Earth was much different from the one we inhabit today, with wildly fluctuating temperatures and an atmosphere filled with toxic gases. Understanding how we got from that inhospitable place to the world of today, dominated by mild climates and large oxygen-based life forms, is a fundamental question in Earth sciences. One important transition occurred approximately 2.5 billion years ago (Ga), called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), when the oxygen concentrations in Earth's atmosphere first increased from near zero to a fraction of modern levels. A major focus of research in natural science is determining how the Earth system (including life) has acted to produce such monumental changes in the environment; however, exactly how and why the GOE occurred remains a mystery. Integral to understanding the transition to an oxygenated environment on the early Earth are quantitative estimates of the composition of the ancient atmosphere. These estimates are difficult to make using most geochemical tools, which tend to reflect processes that occurred in the marine environment instead. This study proposes to link the four stable isotopes of sulfur, which directly reflect chemical reactions that occurred in the atmosphere, with numerical models tying these geochemical signatures to atmospheric compositions. An additional set of geochemical analyses will allow us to determine the chemistry of the oceans and how the biosphere was acting at the same time. This study is unique in its combination of these multiple techniques, which we will apply to well-preserved sediments deposited directly before the GOE, to determine how the Earth's atmosphere developed during this time, and how the oceans and biosphere both contributed and responded. Understanding the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, and life is particularly crucial during this time period, as it represents an Earth system poised at the edge of a major transition in global surface chemistry. We have performed a preliminary set of similar analyses on ~2.65-2.5 Ga sediments that paint a tantalizing picture of an unusual Earth environment directly before the GOE. These analyses point to an atmosphere that was not only very low in oxygen, but was also periodically dominated by a layer of organic particles (termed "haze") produced at high methane levels, similar to that seen on Saturn's moon Titan. We will expand upon the hypotheses developed from these preliminary analyses and explore their significance for the development of Earth surface chemistry and the evolution of life during this critical period in Earth history.

Meteorological centres produce global analyses of atmospheric winds and temperatures, typically on a 6-hour basis. These fields, which now extend above the stratopause, are produced by the assimilating of observations (from satellites, sondes, surface observations etc) into a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. The primary use of these analyses is to initialise short-term weather forecasts. These global wind and temperature fields are also a huge potential resource for researchers who study atmospheric pollution and need to model the distribution of trace gases in the atmosphere (chemical transport modellers). Indeed, these winds are widely used for many studies of atmospheric chemistry where results depend critically on the quality of these analyses. However, it has become apparent in recent years that global analysed windfields available from many centres do not represent this tracer transport well. The winds tend to cause too much transport of tracers between regions. In this project the University of Leeds, which has extensive experience in chemical transport modelling, will collaborate with 3 leading meteorological centres to test how well a range of currently available analyses perform for a range of important tracer transport questions. Following on from this systematic comparison, Leeds will collaborate directly with ECMWF in order to test the causes of different tracer transport behaviour in the different analyses. New test analyses will be produced and information on the best assmilation system for tracer transport will provided to the meteorological centres. Finally, the most realistic analyses will be used to study in detail tracer transport into, through and out of the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). This region controls the rate at which pollutants enter the stratosphere and the transit time through this region is currently poorly quantified. There are large variations in estimates of this quantity depending on the analyses used and the method of employing them in a particular model. Detailed investigations with these new analyses, forcing a 3D model which can be run in in a variety of configurations, will provide a better estimate of this.