Stockholm university

Two ERC Consolidator Grants to Stockholm University

321 European researchers have won 2022 European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants. Two of the researchers awarded the prestigious grants are at Stockholm University.

European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme and are among the most prestigious grants in Europe. The grants will help excellent scientists, who have 7 to 12 years’ experience after their PhDs, to pursue their most promising ideas. In total, 321 European researchers are awarded the 2022 grants, worth in total €657 million. Twelve of the consolidator grants go to researchers in Sweden. Two of the researchers awarded the grants are at Stockholm University. They will receive approximately €2 million each. The researchers are:

 

Wei-Li Hong
Wei-Li Hong

Wei-Li Hong, Assistant professor of Geochemistry at the Department of Geological Sciences, receives a grant for the project: “Silicate alteration in marine sediments: kinetics, pathway, and dependency”

Abstract:
Over its long geological history, the overall habitability of Earth has been governed by the chemical alteration of silicate minerals, a reaction that buffers pCO2 and climate. While terrestrial silicate weathering is widely appreciated, marine silicate weathering and reverse weathering (or marine silicate alteration, MSiA, altogether), has long been considered insignificant in the big picture. This paradigm is challenged by recent work that suggests reverse weathering, as an oceanic Si sink, could be three times higher than previously thought. The latest estimates of marine silicate weathering showing its CO2-fixing capacity could be 82% of that of its terrestrial counterpart. Though potentially significant, these estimates are associated with large uncertainties and untested assumptions. In particular, information about the exact chemical pathway of MSiA, kinetics, and the environmental dependency is missing. To fill these gaps, I will provide the first comprehensive assessment of MSiA by quantifying its rates through both laboratory experiments and field observations. While the former constrains how MSiA initiates, the latter represents the million-year quasisteady state condition in nature. Reproducing the conditions for MSiA in the laboratory is undeniably challenging due to the required multi-year incubation under up to 340 times atmospheric pressure and near-frozen conditions, which I can reproduce with a novel apparatus. Circulation of modified seawater with realistically slow flow will be maintained to derive MSiA rates through continuous fluid composition monitoring. Together with the rates estimated from field observations, I will evaluate the dependency of MSiA on environmental factors, such as the type/quality of silicates and organic matter. The project will be transformative in our understanding of the coupling between Si and C cycles, and thus provide fundamental knowledge for predicting Earth responses to a likely hotter and wetter future.

 

Jaime de la Cruz Rodriguez
Jaime de la Cruz Rodriguez

Jaime de la Cruz Rodriguez, senior researcher at the Department of Astronomy receives a grant for the project “MAGHEAT: understanding energy deposition in the solar chromosphere”.

Abstract:
The mechanisms that heat the solar chromosphere and corona, and that drive the solar dynamo, arguably remain some of the foremost questions in solar and stellar physics. Here, we focus on the question of how energy is transported and released in the solar chromosphere. During the past 20 years, numerical simulations of the chromosphere have been used, with increasing degree of sophistication, to validate various proposed heating mechanisms. These studies have gradually come to recognise that the mechanisms that are likely dominant may be different in different parts of chromospheric fine structures. To make progress, we therefore need constraints from highly resolved observational data.

Recently, I implemented an inversion code that allows estimates of the overall chromospheric heating from spatially and spectrally resolved observational maps. Our results have unveiled very finely structured heating distributions with much larger amplitudes than the hitherto assumed canonical values. But a limitation is that this implementation cannot directly discriminate between the different heating mechanisms that have been proposed.

The goal of MAGHEAT is to identify what mechanisms are heating the chromosphere, characterize the energy flux that is being released into the chromosphere and separate the contribution from each mechanism in active regions and flares. This goal is achievable with the combination of the proposed development of novel non-LTE inversion methods, new hybrid rMHD/particle simulations, and the availability of datasets with unprecedented high spatial resolution, large field-of-view, and high S/N ratio from DKIST, the Sunrise III mission, NASA’s IRIS satellite and updated instrumentation at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. We will use observational data from these facilities to reconstruct new 3D empirical models of the photosphere and chromosphere, which will allow us to identify the mechanisms that are responsible for the energy deposition.

Read more on the ERC site.