1 January 2013: UK has launched GAUGE project on top-down greenhouse gas estimation
The Greenhouse gAs Uk and Global Emissions (GAUGE) project has been launched as one of three consortia that constitute the NERC Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedbacks Programme.
The GAUGE project shares many of the aims of the CarboCount CH project. The main goals of GAUGE are
- The best available top-down estimates of UK GHG emissions for 2013-2015
- Improved, re-analyzed top-down estimates of UK and global GHG emissions, 1990 onwards
- Finest available spatial and temporal resolved top-down UK GHG emission estimates
- Improved knowledge of UK GHG emissions from different source sectors
- A quantitative understanding of UK emissions in the European and global context
- Robust uncertainty analysis of reported top-down GHG emission estimates
- Strengthened UK capability to verify national GHG emissions beyond 2016
The project will make extensive use of UK's tall tower network DECC
21 June 2012: European emissions of the strong greenhouse gas HFC-23
The mechanism of self-declaration of greenhouse gas emissions by individual countries in the Kyoto Protocol can be problematic as demonstrated by the discrepancy of reported emissions and those estimated from atmospheric measurements of HFC-23 at Jungfraujoch. HFC-23 is a very strong greenhouse gas which can affect global warming about 15'000 times more strongly than CO2 per kilogram emitted to the atmosphere. HFC-23 is an undesired by-product during the production of HCFC-22 used for example for the manufacture of Teflon.
- Empa contribution to Swiss Television program "Einstein"
- Animation of air mass transport to Jungfraujoch for a period in 2010 when many peaks of HFC-23 were observed (measurements shown in top panel) simulated with FLEXPART demonstrating the connection between these peaks and transport from a Teflon production plant in Italy.
- Empa Medienmitteilung (in German)
- Publication by Keller et al. in Geophysical Research Letters (2011).
8 June 2012: Abschlusstagung des Forschungsprojektes Klimaänderung und Hydrologie in der Schweiz (CCHydro)
Das vom Bundesamt für Umwelt finanzierte und geleitete Projekt CCHydro befasste sich mit der Frage, wie sich der Klimawandel auf den Wasserhaushalt und die Abflüsse in der Schweiz auswirken wird.
4 April 2012: 13th Swiss Global Change Day
14 February 2012: ALANIS methane project meeting in Potsdam
ALANIS Methane is a research project to produce and use a suite of relevant earth observation (EO) derived information to validate and improve one of the next generation land-surface models and thus reduce current uncertainties in wetland-related CH4 emissions. The final project workshop took place at Alfred Wegner institute in Potsdam.
For more details see
February 2012: Picarro's CityCarbon project
The project CityCarbon Picarro attempted to estimate CO2 emissions from the city of Davos before, during and after the World Economic Forum 2012. For more details see
19 January 2012: US EPA launches searchable public log of major greenhouse-gas emitters
According to a recent news article in the journal (Nature), the U.S. EPA has launched an online searchable database on greenhouse gas emissions of the 6200 largest point sources in the country each emitting more than 25,000 tons of CO2 equivalents per year. The database lists emissions of CO2 , CH4 and halocarbons and covers about half of the total emissions of the U.S. of 6,865.5 Megatons CO2 Eq. in 2010. The data helps researchers in the U.S. to keep track of where anthropogenic emissions are coming from and to separate out natural carbon fluxes.
August 2011: Publication on high-resolution CO2 modeling for the Ochsenkopf tower site
A publication by Dhanya Pillai and colleagues from MPI Jena describes the challenge of accurately simulating the spatial and temporal variability of tracer mixing ratios over a complex terrain such as the tall tower site Ochsenkopf in the German Fichtelgebirge. CO2 measurements were taken at different altitudes on the tower as well as from a small research aircraft of the company Metair, and simulations were performed with two tracer transport models – WRF (Eulerian based) and STILT (Lagrangian based), both with a 2 km horizontal resolution, together with the satellite-based biospheric model VPRM.
For more details see
22-23 February 2010: Workshop on Greenhouse gases in the Earth system: setting the agenda to 2030
The British Royal Society has organized a high-ranked scientific workshop discussing greenhouse gases in the Earth system. Nicolas Gruber presented a talk on "Warming up, getting sour, losing breath: ocean biogeochemistry under change"
For more details see
EU FP-7 project CARBONES
CARBONES is a EU FP7-funded project aiming to provide a 30-year long re-analysis of carbon fluxes and pools over Europe and the globe, in form of a user-friendly on-line interface.
For details see