Atmospheric carbon dioxide observations have a three-dimensional network
Recently, the reporter learned from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that based on low-cost medium-precision greenhouse gas sensors, the research team of the Institute successfully built a ground-based UAV collaborative carbon observation network (LUCCN), and used the observation network to conduct qualitative and quantitative research on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The research results were published online in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
Anthropogenic emissions of large amounts of carbon dioxide remain in the atmosphere, causing significant changes in the global climate. In order to implement the Paris Agreement as soon as possible, reduce the impact of climate change on human beings, and control anthropogenic carbon emissions has become the basic understanding of all sectors of society.
"However, due to a lack of understanding of CO2 emissions from urban areas and key industries, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the global carbon budget that we currently have. Yang Dongxu, the first author of the paper and an associate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that considering the high emission intensity and complex variability of anthropogenic emission sources, it is necessary to carry out intensive, high-quality continuous detection of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
To this end, several scientific research teams from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Aerospace Information Innovation Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have worked closely together to carry out ground-based remote sensing and UAV comprehensive observation experiments on greenhouse gases in urban areas and key industries in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province and Nanning City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
In the experiment, Yang Dongxu's team built a set of carbon observation network coordinated by ground-based portable equipment and UAV flight arrays to make up for the lack of spatiotemporal continuity of greenhouse gas detection satellites, and formed a three-dimensional observation network for emission sources.
The observation network consists of 5 ground-based observation devices and 4 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipment, which can realize the in-situ detection of greenhouse gases in air-to-ground coordination. "These detection devices use low-cost, high-precision non-dispersive infrared sensors to detect atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and each ground-based observation device is equipped with high-precision micro-weather stations to assist in subsequent data calibration and quantitative analysis," Yang said. ”
Yang Dongxu said that the new observation network has both ground-based and UAV detection capabilities, and has obvious advantages in terms of time continuity, spatial coverage, and mobility of detection, which greatly improves the effective information content of detection data.
