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Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?

The lower troposphere is an excellent receptacle, which integrates anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions over large areas. Therefore, atmospheric concentration observations over populated regions would provide the ultimate proof if sustained emissions changes have occurred. The most important ant...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Levin, Ingeborg, Rödenbeck, Christian
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer-Verlag 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755783/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17938872
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-007-0313-4
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author Levin, Ingeborg
Rödenbeck, Christian
author_facet Levin, Ingeborg
Rödenbeck, Christian
author_sort Levin, Ingeborg
collection PubMed
description The lower troposphere is an excellent receptacle, which integrates anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions over large areas. Therefore, atmospheric concentration observations over populated regions would provide the ultimate proof if sustained emissions changes have occurred. The most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO(2)), also shows large natural concentration variations, which need to be disentangled from anthropogenic signals to assess changes in associated emissions. This is in principle possible for the fossil fuel CO(2) component (FFCO(2)) by high-precision radiocarbon ((14)C) analyses because FFCO(2) is free of radiocarbon. Long-term observations of (14)CO(2) conducted at two sites in south-western Germany do not yet reveal any significant trends in the regional fossil fuel CO(2) component. We rather observe strong inter-annual variations, which are largely imprinted by changes of atmospheric transport as supported by dedicated transport model simulations of fossil fuel CO(2). In this paper, we show that, depending on the remoteness of the site, changes of about 7–26% in fossil fuel emissions in respective catchment areas could be detected with confidence by high-precision atmospheric (14)CO(2) measurements when comparing 5-year averages if these inter-annual variations were taken into account. This perspective constitutes the urgently needed tool for validation of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions changes in the framework of the Kyoto protocol and successive climate initiatives.
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spelling pubmed-27557832009-10-07 Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations? Levin, Ingeborg Rödenbeck, Christian Naturwissenschaften Original Paper The lower troposphere is an excellent receptacle, which integrates anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions over large areas. Therefore, atmospheric concentration observations over populated regions would provide the ultimate proof if sustained emissions changes have occurred. The most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO(2)), also shows large natural concentration variations, which need to be disentangled from anthropogenic signals to assess changes in associated emissions. This is in principle possible for the fossil fuel CO(2) component (FFCO(2)) by high-precision radiocarbon ((14)C) analyses because FFCO(2) is free of radiocarbon. Long-term observations of (14)CO(2) conducted at two sites in south-western Germany do not yet reveal any significant trends in the regional fossil fuel CO(2) component. We rather observe strong inter-annual variations, which are largely imprinted by changes of atmospheric transport as supported by dedicated transport model simulations of fossil fuel CO(2). In this paper, we show that, depending on the remoteness of the site, changes of about 7–26% in fossil fuel emissions in respective catchment areas could be detected with confidence by high-precision atmospheric (14)CO(2) measurements when comparing 5-year averages if these inter-annual variations were taken into account. This perspective constitutes the urgently needed tool for validation of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions changes in the framework of the Kyoto protocol and successive climate initiatives. Springer-Verlag 2007-10-16 2008-03 /pmc/articles/PMC2755783/ /pubmed/17938872 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-007-0313-4 Text en © Springer-Verlag 2007
spellingShingle Original Paper
Levin, Ingeborg
Rödenbeck, Christian
Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
title Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
title_full Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
title_fullStr Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
title_full_unstemmed Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
title_short Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
title_sort can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel co(2) emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755783/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17938872
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-007-0313-4
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