How is political accountability and firm performance in an autocracy affected by media? This project will analyse how economic and political outcomes in China are affected by social and traditional media. It will also use media content to measure factors that are otherwise difficult to observe, such as political networks and the trade-off between political and economic goals in Chinese firms. An explosion of social media use in China has produced an information shock to society and its leaders, also supplying a data shock to researchers, which is magnified by the digitization of traditional media content, and coupled with new methods for analysing this type of data, originating from the in big data and machine-learning literatures. As a result, a large set of previously unanswerable questions are now open for research. In Qin, Strömberg and Wu (2016) we document this information shock, using a data set of over 13 billion social media posts from Sina Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter). We show that millions of posts concern sensitive topics such as organized protests and explicit accusations of top leaders of corruption. Traditional media is silent on these issues. We argue that the likely reason for the lighter censoring of social media is that the central government finds the information useful for monitoring officials, firms, and citizen unrest. In this project, I will analyze the effect of this information shock on protests and strikes, the sales of counterfeit and substandard medicines, the promotion of local leaders, and coverage of censored events in traditional media. Together with a set of collaborator, I will study the effects of social media using the staggered introduction of Sina Weibo across geographic regions. I will also study the content, entry and exit of general-interest newspapers that are all controlled by different politicians. This is to investigate the trade-off between political and economic goals and political connections.

Rapid warming is accelerating Arctic carbon cycling, including CO2 release by degradation of thawing soil organic matter and CO2 uptake by better-growing plants. Projections of future Arctic greenhouse gas fluxes retain large uncertainties and do not consider plant-soil interactions that can substantially affect CO2 release - the RHIZOSPHERE PRIMING EFFECT. Theoretical considerations, comparison of ecosystem carbon stocks and model extrapolation of temperate studies suggest a high potential for globally-relevant, priming-induced CO2 emissions from a warming Arctic following shifts in vegetation and rooting patterns. PRIMETIME aims to provide the first observation-based estimate of total plant effects on circum-Arctic soil and ecosystem carbon stocks in a changing climate. Central questions include: (1) How do different vegetation types affect soil and ecosystem carbon stocks and CO2 balance? (2) How do changes in rooting depth interact with depth gradients of soil properties to affect carbon stocks and CO2 fluxes? (3) What is the net effect of expected changes in plant productivity, vegetation distribution and rooting on ecosystem carbon storage across the circum-Arctic? The EXPERIMENTAL MODULE will quantify plant-soil carbon fluxes and plant impacts on soil CO2 release for different vegetation types and soil depths, combining a novel living-plant macrocosm experiment with field observations, cutting-edge 14C-dating (high risk) and 13C-labelling. The MODELLING MODULE will take our recent model to the next level and integrate experimental data to calculate the combined plant effect on ecosystem CO2 sink/source strength in a changing Arctic. The model will be validated against Eddy Covariance-observed CO2 fluxes (high risk). The integrated PRIMETIME approach will break new ground by shedding light on plant impacts on belowground carbon cycling, and provide a tool box to quantify and integrate these fine-scale processes in large-scale emission estimates.

One of the greatest recent advances in climate science is that it is now beyond reasonable doubt that human activity is warming the Earth. The next natural question is by how much the Earth will warm for a given emission – a quantity that will be essential to regulating global warming. Yet, the likely range of 1.5-4.5 K for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) for a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has not been reduced for decades. In particular the risk of ECS being high is concerning, but also represents a scientifically intriguing challenge. In this project I will conduct unconventional and innovative research designed to limit the upper bound of ECS: I will confront leading hypotheses of extreme cloud feedbacks – the primary potential source of a high ECS – with observations from the full instrumental- and satellite records, and proxies from warm- and cold past climates. I will investigate how ocean- and atmospheric circulations impact cloud feedbacks, and seek the limits for how much past greenhouse warming could have been masked by aerosol cooling. The highECS project builds on my developments of climate modeling, diagnostics and statistical methods, the strengths of the host institution and developments in national and international projects. The effort is timely in that the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has identified uncertainty in ECS as one of the grand challenges of climate science, while the capacity to observe ongoing climate change, key cloud processes, extracting new proxy evidence of past change and computing power is greater than ever before. If successful in my objective of reining in the upper bound on climate sensitivity this will be a major breakthrough upon a nearly 40-year scientific deadlock and reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change – if not, it will indicate that extreme policy measures may be needed to curb future global warming. Either way, the economic value of knowing is tremendous.

Lignin is a nature’s wonder material that allows trees to grow vertically and have strong and biochemically resistant structures. However, the majority of lignin is burned in the forest industry. The objective is to make a paradigm shift in the use of lignin by developing circular lignin materials with functionalities arising from well-defined nanostructures. This project faces two outstanding challenges. The first relates to overcoming the instability of lignin nanoparticles in organic solvents and under alkaline conditions, which currently restricts synthesis of advanced lignin materials. The second is to develop lignin nanoparticles and lignin fibres structurally incorporating inorganic and metal nanoparticles. By overcoming these obstacles, we will have functional lignin building blocks for circular vitrimer adhesives, electrochemical catalysts, magnetically responsive nanocomposite gels, and colloidal crystals. Synthesis and assembly of these materials requires considerable contributions to method development that will open wholly new frontiers for sustainable lignin materials. Far-reaching implications beyond materials science include excellent opportunities for interdisciplinary studies across environmental sciences, chemical and process engineering, and life sciences.