26 Sep 2014: A one-year simulation of biospheric and anthropogenic CO2 over Europe.
A one-year simulation of CO2 taken up or released by the biosphere and emitted by human activity has been conducted by Yu Liu (ETH) using the COSMO weather forecast model and including CO2 as a passively transported tracer. Animations for one month of this simulation can be found at http://www.carbocount.ch/project:products:model. An example is shown below.
25 Nov 2013: New web based visualization tool for CarboCount CH measurements.
Tino Heuberger developed an interactive web tool for visualizing the CarboCount CH measurements. The tool allows plotting concentration time series for a selection of stations and parameters, zooming in and out, overlaying different time series, etc. Clicking on a data point opens a second window displaying the footprint of the measurement calculated with the atmospheric transport model FLEXPART-COSMO. The tool is easily extensible and has already been successfully implemented for other measurement networks. Two different versions of the tool have been developed, see
http://carbocount.empa.ch/StationsOverview.aspx?dataset=carbocount
http://www.carbocount.ch/project:products:visualization
22 Feb 2013: Gimmiz is online.
On 22 Feb 2013 measurements at the last of our 4 sites started. The Gimmiz tower is not tall but located nicely in the flat "Seeland". We are looking forward to receiving the data from this westernmost location of our network.
21 Nov 2012: Project meeting at Beromünster tower and building of former Landessender Beromünster
The 2nd CarboCount CH project meeting took place at Kunst und Kultur im Landessender and was combined with a visit of the tower and the demonstration of the installations.
Group picture:
20 Nov 2012: Frübüel is online!
The equipment of the site Früebüel was successfully completed and since today, Früebüel is the third site with continuous observations of CO2 and CH4 for CarboCount CH. The Picarro instrument was placed in an air conditioned box and the calibration gases in a ventilated and (in winter) heated box.
The joint Swiss Fluxnet and CarboCount site Fruebuel:
3 Nov 2012: Beromünster is online!
Since 3 November Beromünster, the core site of the CarboCount CH network, is measuring CO, CO2, CH4, H2O and meteorological parameters (p, T, wind, humidity) at 5 different sampling heights. The first few days of CO2 data are shown in the figure below.
All external installations on the tower including tubings, electrical wires, inlets, meteo sensors, lightning protection was executed by the company Cablex in a highly professional way. Sampling inlets and meteo sensors were placed at 5 elevations, the top at 210 m above ground. The setup of the instrumentation within the building was performed by the team of the University of Bern.
Impressions from the challenging installation:
23 August 2012: Lägern is online as the first site of the CarboCount CH network!
The Picarro instrument was mounted in the rack together with its auxiliary equipment including valve control unit, pump and USV, and connected to the pre-installed sampling lines and to the calibration gas cylinders.
After some leak checks and other tests, the measurements and automatic data transfer to Empa were started successfully.
25 July 2012: All sampling lines successfully installed at Lägern site
A team of 4 tower-climbers we installed today, with great support by skyguide, the two sampling lines connecting the building hosting the instruments with the top of the tower at 31 m and to 20 m height above ground, respectively.
20 April 2012: Visit of the Lägern mountain site.
Together with a person from skyguide we visited the Lägern mountain site with two towers, one for receiving and one for transmitting radio signals, both associated with a building where we could place our instrumentation. The decision on where to go will be made soon. The receiver tower is equipped with meteorological instruments.
16 January 2012: Visit of the Gimmiz water tower site.
On a beautiful sunny day we were able to visit the Gimmiz water tower and received an excellent tour of the site and its impressive infrastructure. The tower is not very tall but is ideally located in flat terrain remote from major emission sources.
1 December 2011: Kickoff meeting
The project was enthousiastically launched at the kickoff-meeting at ETH Zurich on 1 December 2011 and officially started on 1 January 2012. The first activities were a consolidation of the budget and the search for the three PhD students and the PostDoc.
26 September 2011: Visit of the Beromünster tower site.
We had the opportunity to visit the 230 m tall Beromuenster tower on a beautiful day and got a very informative tour and were able to discuss possibile solutions for instrumenting the tower with representatives from Swisscom Broadcast. Beromünster will be the only tall tower site and will therefore play a central role within the CarboCount CH network.
