Mark G. Lawrence

• Professor
• RIFS Research Institute for Sustainability - Helmholtz Centre Potsdam

Mobility and transport activities have increased significantly over the past few decades in the Kathmandu Valley, a metropolitan region in Nepal and one of the fastest-growing cities in South Asia. In order to identify the low carbon sustainable transport (LCST) policy measures that fit the local context, we investigated the perceptions of stakehol...

Das vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung geförderte FONA-Forum 2024 hat mit einem neuen Format experimentiert: Es lud die Teilnehmenden ein, aktiv mitzuwirken, und schuf einen ko-kreativen Raum für lösungsorientierte Diskussionen. In das Experiment sind Prinzipien und Erfahrungen aus der Gestaltung transformativer Räume und aus Dialogpro...

In this paper, we examine the role of trust in the international climate negotiations. We (1) identify forms of trust inferred from institutional designs, (2) analyse effects of institutional design on social and political trust and (3) describe the relationship between social and political trust in international climate change negotiations. We do...

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) seeks to involve non-academic perspectives from the start, ensuring that research draws on diverse knowledge to better address “wicked” problems. Since TDR researchers have to engage with non-academic perspectives throughout the research process, this chapter focuses on the kind of communication practices that are a...

Transdisciplinary academic work, which involves co-developing knowledge with practice to tackle pressing societal and ecological issues, is increasingly advocated by policymakers, academics, funders, and research organisations. This approach not only enhances the understanding of these problems but also aids in devising practical solutions. However...

This RIFS discussion paper presents preliminary insights from transdisciplinary research on the Co-Creative Reflection and Dialogue Space (CCRDS) implemented at the 25 th, 26 th and 27 th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP). The transformative research design and findings from over six year...

We closely examine ground-based high-quality observations of aerosol characteristics including radiative forcing from several locations in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), the Himalayan foothills and the Tibetan Plateau, relatively poorly studied regions with several sensitive ecosystems of global importance, as well as highly vulnerable large popula...

The international UN Climate Change conferences known as “Conferences of the Parties (COPs)” have an enormous convening power and are attended annually by tens of thousands of actors working on climate change topics from a wide range of perspectives. In the COP spaces outside of the formal negotiations, the communication culture is dominated by “si...

There is a growing number of national, subnational and even company targets for net-zero emissions of CO 2 in support of the Paris Climate Agreement goals of limiting the global average temperature increase within 1.5 • C by 2100. The challenges faced by developing countries in achieving net-zero emissions targets are, however, very prominent due t...

The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) is a coordinating framework, started in 2010, that includes a series of standardized climate model experiments aimed at understanding the physical processes and projected impacts of solar geoengineering. Numerous experiments have been conducted, and numerous more have been proposed as "testb...

Transdisciplinary research processes often involve the integration of knowledge and stakeholders from various backgrounds. Here, we introduce the story of the research project AMA (A Mindset for the Anthropocene) on the role of mindsets in the context of sustainability and present an interactive visualization tool that we developed for stakeholder...

The state of air pollution has historically been tightly linked to how we produce and use energy. Air pollutant emissions over Asia are now changing rapidly due to cleaner energy transitions; however, magnitudes of benefits for climate and air quality remain poorly quantified. The associated risks involve adverse health impacts, reduced agricultura...

Resolving the grand challenges and wicked problems of the Anthropocene will require skillfully combining a broad range of knowledge and understandings—both scientific and non-scientific—of Earth systems and human societies. One approach to this is transdisciplinary research, which has gained considerable interest over the last few decades, resultin...

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” This quote by Albert Einstein highlights our need for new formats of communication to address the knowledge-action gap regarding climate change and other sustainability challenges. This includes reflection, and communication spaces, as well as...

UN Climate Change conferences, known as “COPs,” are the primary international venue for negotiating how countries should act and cooperate to avoid dangerous climate change. Although the climate negotiations are a state government-led process, the need for engagement with non-governmental stakeholders in acknowledgement of the critical role in impl...

Urban air pollution is a substantial threat to human health. Traffic emissions remain a large contributor to air pollution in urban areas. The mobility restrictions put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic provided a large-scale real-world experiment that allows for the evaluation of changes in traffic emissions and the corresponding chang...

We aimed to foster the community of atmospheric scientists in the Monsoon Asia and Oceania (MANGO) region to enhance communication among scientists in different countries and strengthen collaborations with the international community, with emphasis on air quality in Asia as it impacts human health and climate change. For this purpose, we have estab...

The topic of increasing the reflectivity of the Earth as a measure to counteract global warming has been the subject of high-level discussions and preliminary research since several decades, though prior to the early 2000s there was only very limited research on the topic. This changed in the mid-2000s, particularly following the publication of a s...

Aerosol emissions from human activities are extensive and changing rapidly over Asia. Model simulations and satellite observations indicate a dipole pattern in aerosol emissions and loading between South Asia and East Asia, two of the most heavily polluted regions of the world. We examine the previously unexplored diverging trends in the existing d...

Transitioning German road transport partially to hydrogen energy is among the possibilities being discussed to help meet national climate targets. This study investigates impacts of a hypothetical, complete transition from conventionally-fueled to hydrogen-powered German transport through representative scenarios. Our results show that German emiss...

Technological and policy solutions for transitioning to a fossil-free society exist, many countries could afford the transition, and rational arguments for rapid climate action abound. Yet effective action is still lacking. Dominant policy approaches have failed to generate action at anywhere near the rate, scale or depth needed to avoid potentiall...

This study, based on new and high quality in situ observations, quantifies for the first time, the individual contributions of light-absorbing aerosols (black carbon (BC), brown carbon (BrC) and dust) to aerosol absorption over the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and the Himalayan foothill region, a relatively poorly studied region with several sensitive...

The lack of a comprehensive, up-to-date emission inventory for the Himalayan region is a major challenge in understanding the extensive regional air pollution, including its causes, impacts and mitigation pathways. This study describes a high-resolution (1 km × 1 km) present-day emission inventory for Nepal, developed with a higher-tier approach. T...

A truly democratic global climate politics is needed

The lack of a comprehensive, up-to-date emission inventory for the Himalayan region is a major challenge in understanding the regional air pollution, including its impacts, mitigation, and the relevant atmospheric processes. This study develops a high resolution (1 km × 1 km) present-day emission inventory for Nepal with a higher-tier approach (det...

Organic atmospheric aerosols in the Hindu Kush–Himalayas–Tibetan Plateau region are still poorly characterized. To better understand the chemical characteristics and sources of organic aerosols in the foothill region of the central Himalaya, the atmospheric aerosol samples were collected in Bode, a suburban site of the Kathmandu Valley (KV) over a...

In Nepal, majority of households still burn solid fuels in inefficient cook stoves inside poorly ventilated kitchens, which results in very high levels of indoor pollutants, including black carbon (BC). Previous studies have not yet reported BC concentrations in typical kitchen configurations in rural Nepal. In this study, fine particulate matter (...

The paper provides an overview of an airborne measurement campaign with a microlight aircraft over the Pokhara Valley region, Nepal, a metropolitan region in the central Himalayan foothills. This is the first aerial measurement in the central Himalayan foothill region, one of the polluted but relatively poorly sampled regions of the world. Conducte...

Current mitigation efforts and existing future commitments are inadequate to accomplish the Paris Agreement temperature goals. In light of this, research and debate are intensifying on the possibilities of additionally employing proposed climate geoengineering technologies, either through atmospheric carbon dioxide removal or farther-reaching inter...

Residents of the Kathmandu Valley experience severe particulate and gaseous air pollution throughout most of the year, even during much of the rainy season. The knowledge base for understanding the air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley was previously very limited but is improving rapidly due to several field measurement studies conducted in the las...

Air pollution resulting from rapid urbanization and associated human activities in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal has been leading to serious public health concerns over the past 2 decades. These concerns led to a multinational field campaign SusKat-ABC (Sustainable atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley – Atmospheric Brown Clouds) that measured differ...

Organic atmospheric aerosols in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau region are still poorly characterized. To better understand the sources and formation processes of the primary organic aerosols (POA) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the foothills region of the central Himalaya, we studied atmospheric aerosol samples collected over a on...

The “Berlin Air quality and Ecosystem Research: Local and long-range Impact of anthropogenic and Natural hydrocarbons” (BAERLIN2014) campaign was conducted during the 3 summer months (June–August) of 2014. During this measurement campaign, both stationary and mobile measurements were undertaken to address complementary aims. This paper provides an...

An evaluation of the meteorology simulated using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model for the region of south Asia and Nepal with a focus on the Kathmandu Valley is presented. A particular focus of the model evaluation is placed on meteorological parameters that are highly relevant to air quality such as wind speed and direction, boundary...

The paper provides an overview of an airborne measurement campaign with a microlight aircraft, over the Pokhara Valley region, Nepal, a metropolitan region in the central Himalayan foothills. This is the first aerial measurements in the central Himalayan foothill region, one of the polluted but relatively poorly sampled regions of the world. Conduc...

This article expounds a Buddhist perspective on the rapidly emerging topic of climate engineering, i.e. the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the environment as a proposed means to counteract anthropogenic climate change or some of its specific aspects like global mean temperature increase. It sets the stage with two orthogonal aspects: an ov...

Residents of the Kathmandu Valley experience severe particulate and gaseous air pollution throughout most of the year, even during much of the rainy season. The knowledge base for understanding the air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley was previously very limited, but is improving rapidly due to several field measurement studies conducted in the la...

The Berlin Air quality and Ecosystem Research: Local and long-range Impact of anthropogenic and Natural hydrocarbons (BAERLIN2014) campaign was conducted during the three summer months (June–August) of 2014. During this measurement campaign, both stationary and mobile measurements were undertaken to address complementary aims. This paper provides a...

Indo-gangetic plain (IGP) and Himalayan foothills have large spatial and temporal heterogeneity in aerosols characteristics. Regional meteorology around ~850-500 mb plays an important role in the transformation and transportation of aerosols from west Asia to IGP, into Himalayan foothill, as well to high-altitude region of the Himalayas. In order t...

Indo-gangetic plain (IGP) and Himalayan foothills have large spatial and temporal heterogeneity in aerosols characteristics. Regional meteorology around ~850-500 mb plays an important role in the transformation and transportation of aerosols from west Asia to IGP, into Himalayan foothill, as well to high-altitude region of the Himalayas. In order t...

Tropospheric ozone and particulate matter affect human health and cause vegetation stress, dysfunction and damages. In this study we investigate the effect of increasing urban vegetation i.e. tree species on atmospheric chemistry, a potential urban management strategy to counteract high levels of local pollutants such as ozone, OH and PM10 caused b...

The SusKat-ABC (Sustainable Atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley–Atmospheric Brown Clouds) international air pollution measurement campaign was carried out from December 2012 to June 2013 in the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions in Nepal. The Kathmandu Valley is a bowl-shaped basin with a severe air pollution problem. This paper reports measu...

Particulate air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley has reached severe levels that are mainly due to uncontrolled emissions and the location of the urban area in a bowl-shaped basin with associated local wind circulations. The AERONET measurements from December 2012 to August 2014 revealed a mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) of approximately 0.30 at 6...

Despite extensive efforts, greenhouse gases continue to be emitted in vast amounts, with potentially devastating consequences around the world. This is why targeted interventions in the climate system, known collectively as ‘climate engineering’, are receiving increased attention. Proposed approaches are often divided into two groups: those intende...

Despite extensive efforts, greenhouse gases continue to be emitted in vast amounts, with potentially devastating consequences around the world. This is why targeted interventions in the climate system, known collectively as ‘climate engineering’, are receiving increased attention. Proposed approaches are often divided into two groups: those intende...

An evaluation of the meteorology simulated using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model for the region South Asia and Nepal with a focus on the Kathmandu Valley is presented. A particular focus of the model evaluation is placed on meteorological parameters that are highly relevant to air quality such as wind speed and direction, boundary lay...

Lumbini, in southern Nepal, is a UNESCO world heritage site of universal value as the birthplace of Buddha. Poor air quality in Lumbini and surrounding regions is a great concern for public health as well as for preservation, protection and promotion of Buddhist heritage and culture. We present here results from measurements of ambient concentratio...

Ozone (O3) is an important atmospheric oxidant, a greenhouse gas, and a hazard to human health and agriculture. Here we describe airborne in situ measurements and model simulations of O3 and its precursors during tropical and extratropical field campaigns over South America and Europe, respectively. Using the measurements, net ozone formation/destr...

The lack of a comprehensive, up-to-date emission inventory is a major challenge in understanding atmospheric processes, impacts, and mitigation of air pollutants in the central Himalayan region. This study develops a high resolution (1km × 1km) present-day emission inventory for Nepal with a higher-tier approach to understanding the current combust...

Air pollutants emitted from rapid urbanization and associated human activities in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal over the past two decades are causing serious air quality and health concerns. These concerns led to a multinational field campaign SusKat-ABC (Sustainable atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley-Atmospheric Brown Clouds) that measured differ...

In this study 1 year of ceilometer measurements taken in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, in the framework of the SusKat project (A Sustainable Atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley) were analysed to investigate the diurnal variation of the mixing layer height (MLH) and its dependency on the meteorological conditions. In addition, the impact of the MLH o...

A positive matrix factorization model (US EPA PMF version 5.0) was applied for the source apportionment of the dataset of 37 non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) measured from 19 December 2012 to 30 January 2013 during the SusKat-ABC international air pollution measurement campaign using a proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spe...

Semicontinuous PM2.5 and black carbon (BC) concentrations, and 24 h integrated PM2.5 filter samples were collected near roadways in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Instruments were carried by a group of volunteer traffic police officers in the vicinity of six major roadway intersections in the Kathmandu Valley across two sampling periods in 2014. Dail...

Particulate air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley has reached severe levels that are mainly due to uncontrolled emissions and the location of the urban area in a bowl-shaped basin with associated local circulations. The AERONET measurements from December 2012 to August 2014 revealed a mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) of approximately 0.3 at 675 nm...

The SusKat-ABC (Sustainable Amosphere for the Kathmandu Valley- Atmospheric Brown Clouds) international air pollution measurement campaign was carried out during December 2012–June 2013 in the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions in Nepal. The Kathmandu Valley is a bowl-shaped basin with a severe air pollution problem. This paper reports measur...

Ozone (O3) is an important atmospheric oxidant, a greenhouse gas, and a hazard to human health and agriculture. Here we describe airborne in-situ measurements and model simulations of O3 and its precursors during tropical and extratropical field campaigns over South America and Europe, respectively. Using the measurements, net ozone formation/destr...

A positive matrix factorization model (US EPA PMF version 5.0) was applied for the source apportionment of the dataset of 37 NMVOCs measured over a period of 19 December 2012–30 January 2013 during the SusKat-ABC international air pollution measurement campaign using a Proton Transfer Reaction Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer in the Kathmandu Valle...

In this study one year of ceilometer measurements taken in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, in the framework of the SusKat project (A Sustainable Atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley) were analyzed to investigate the diurnal variation of the mixing layer height and its dependency on the meteorological conditions. In addition, the impact of the mixing la...

Das neue Forschungsprogramm des Potsdamer Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies widmet sich der Integration von Transformationsforschung und transformativer Forschung .

emi continuous PM2.5 and BC concentrations, and 24-hour integrated PM2.5 filter samples were collected near roadways in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Instruments were carried by a group of volunteer traffic police officers in the vicinity of six major roadway intersections in the Kathmandu Valley across two sampling periods in 2014. Daily PM2.5 filt...

Semi continuous PM2.5 and BC concentrations, and 24-hour integrated PM2.5 filter samples were collected near roadways in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Instruments were carried by a group of volunteer traffic police officers in the vicinity of six major roadway intersections in the Kathmandu Valley across two sampling periods in 2014. Daily PM2.5 fil...

Despite a growing literature on the climate response to solar geoengineering – proposals to cool the planet by increasing the planetary albedo – there has been little published on the impacts of solar geoengineering on natural and human systems such as agriculture, health, water resources, and ecosystems. An understanding of the impacts of differen...

The topic of increasing the reflectivity of the Earth as a measure to counteract global warming has been the subject of high-level discussions and preliminary research since several decades, though prior to the early 2000s there was only very limited research on the topic. This changed in the mid-2000s, particularly following the publication of a s...

Motivated by the current leadership for a Clean India, we, a self-organized task force, have developed a set of ten scalable solutions to clean the air. We synthesized available data on sources of air pollution, its transport over long distances, its impact on public health, food production, regional climate, to arrive at the solutions that can sig...

Aerosol growth dynamics may have implications for the steerability of stratospheric solar radiation management via sulfur particles. This paper derives a set of critical initial growth conditions that are analyzed as a function of two key parameters: the initial concentration of the injected sulfuric acid and its dilution rate with the surrounding...

Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a means to cool the Earth by increasing the reflection of sunlight back to space, for example, by injecting reflective aerosol particles (or their precursors) into the lower stratosphere. Such proposed techniques would not be able to substitute for mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a response...

Lumbini, in southern Nepal, is a UNESCO world heritage site of universal value as the birthplace of Buddha. Poor air quality in Lumbini and surrounding regions is a great concern for public health as well as for preservation, protection and promotion of Buddhist heritage and culture. We present here results from measurements of ambient concentratio...

Four regional chemistry transport models were applied to simulate the concentration and composition of particulate matter (PM) in Europe for 2005 with horizontal resolution ∼ 20 km. The modelled concentrations were compared with the measurements of PM chemical composition by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) monitoring network...

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and methane - key greenhouse gases (GHGs) - are primary causes of global warming and resultant impacts. The atmospheric warming is more pronounced and likely to cause more serious damage in vulnerable areas such as the Hindukush-Karakorum-Himalayan region (HKH). The HKH region is a data gap region according...

in Kathmandu and surrounding regions to assess the influences of local and regional scale emissions in the Kathmandu Valley. Continuous surface based observations of O 3 , CO and air sampling for light hydrocarbons were conducted at the supersite Bode (27.59N, 85.39E, 1326 amsl), near the center of the valley. The diurnal variations at Bode were ty...