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Carbon monoxide : a quantitative tracer for fossil fuel CO2?

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TLDR
In this paper, carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and radiocarbon (14CO2) measurements have been made in Heidelberg from 2001 to 2004 in order to determine the regional fossil fuel CO2 component and to investigate the application of CO as a quantitative tracer for CO2.
Abstract
Carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and radiocarbon (14CO2) measurements have been made in Heidelberg from 2001 to 2004 in order to determine the regional fossil fuel CO2 component and to investigate the application of CO as a quantitative tracer for fossil fuel CO2 (CO2(foss)). The observations were compared with model estimates simulated with the regional transport model REMO at 0.5° × 0.5° resolution in Europe for 2002. These estimates are based on two available emissions inventories for CO and CO2(foss) and simplified atmospheric chemistry of CO. Both emissions inventories appear to overestimate fossil fuel emissions in the Heidelberg catchment area, in particular in summer and autumn by up to a factor of 2. Nevertheless, during meteorological conditions with high local source influence the CO/CO2(foss) emission ratios compared well with the observed atmospheric CO/CO2(foss) ratios. For a larger catchment area of several 100 km the observed CO/CO2(foss) ratio compared within better than 25% with the ratios derived from model simulations that take the transport from the sites of emission to the measurement station into account. Non-fossil-fuel CO emissions, production by volatile organic compounds, and oxidation, as well as soil uptake, turned out to add significant uncertainty to the application of CO as a quantitative fossil fuel CO2 surrogate tracer, so that 14CO2 measurements seem to be indispensable for reliable estimates of fossil fuel CO2 over the European continent. (Less)

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Journal ArticleDOI

Radiocarbon observations in atmospheric CO2: determining fossil fuel CO2 over Europe using Jungfraujoch observations as background.

TL;DR: Strong seasonal variations of the fossil fuel CO2 offsets indicate a strong seasonality of emissions but also of atmospheric dilution of ground level emissions by vertical mixing.
Journal ArticleDOI

Diurnal tracking of anthropogenic CO 2 emissions in the Los Angeles basin megacity during spring 2010

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used in situ CO2, CO, and planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) measurements recorded during the CalNex-LA ground campaign of 15 May-15 June 2010, in Pasadena, CA, to deduce the diurnally varying anthropogenic component of observed CO2 in the megacity of Los Angeles (LA).
Journal ArticleDOI

Inferring high-resolution fossil fuel CO 2 records at continental sites from combined 14 CO 2 and CO observations

TL;DR: In this article, an uncertainty estimate of a purely observational approach to derive hourly regional fossil fuel CO 2 offsets (ΔCO 2 (foss)) at continental CO 2 monitoring sites is presented.
Journal ArticleDOI

Implication of weekly and diurnal 14C calibration on hourly estimates of CO‐based fossil fuel CO2 at a moderately polluted site in southwestern Germany

TL;DR: In this paper, a 7-year-long data set of integrated high-precision 14 CO 2 observations combined with occasional hourly CO 2 flask data from the Heidelberg sampling site is presented.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Characterizing aquatic dissolved organic matter.

TL;DR: In this article, standards for reporting C-14 age determinations are discussed, and the statistical uncertainty (plus or minus one standard deviation) expresses counting errors, inaccuracies in voltage, pressure, temperature, dilution, and should include errors in C-13 ratios.
Journal ArticleDOI

A global model of natural volatile organic compound emissions

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a global model to estimate emissions of volatile organic compounds from natural sources (NVOC), which has a highly resolved spatial grid and generates hourly average emission estimates.

The atmospheric general circulation model ECHAM-4: Model description and simulation of present-day climate

TL;DR: In this paper, a detailed description of the fourth generation ECHAM model is presented, which includes a semi-Lagrangian transport scheme for water vapour, cloud water and trace substances, a new radiation scheme (ECMWF) with modifications concerning the water vapor continuum, cloud optical properties and greenhouse gases.
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Three-dimensional climatological distribution of tropospheric OH: Update and evaluation

TL;DR: A global climatological distribution of tropospheric OH is computed using observed distributions of O3, H2O, NOt (NO2 +NO + 2N2O5 + NO3 + HNO2+HNO4), CO, hydrocarbons, temperature, and cloud optical depth as discussed by the authors.
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