1st Webinar Series
YESS and the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are pleased to announce the first edition of the GAWTEC webinar series on greenhouse gases and atmospheric composition measurements.
GAW focuses on building a single coordinated global understanding of atmospheric composition, its change, and helps to improve the understanding of interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. It coordinates high-quality atmospheric composition observations across global to local scales to drive high-quality and impact science while co-producing a new generation of research enabled products and services.
The GAW Training and Education Centre (GAWTEC) is the only regular training facility for the atmospheric composition observations within WMO. Since the first GAWTEC training course in 2001, more than 419 participants from 80 different countries have visited and were trained at the Environmental Research Station Schneefernerhaus. Courses are offered twice per year. GAWTEC provides scientific guidance and instructions to GAW station personnel from worldwide global and regional stations.
The GAWTEC webinar series aims to provide scientific keynote presentations on atmospheric composition given by experts in their field and to provide a platform for exchange and questions for people interested in atmospheric composition, especially early career researchers. Its first edition focuses on greenhouse gases and atmospheric composition measurements.
Recording of the 1st Webinar with Martin Steinbacher
The importance of quality assurance and quality control for long-term in-situ atmospheric composition observations
The availability of reliable scientific data to characterize the atmosphere’s chemical composition is crucial for understanding air pollution and climate change, their drivers, and their impacts. Data within and across monitoring networks need to meet specific data quality objectives and compatibility goals to be useful for robust analyses. Thus, observations have to be of known quality, sufficient precision and need to be traceable to common scales. The lecture will present the existing challenges but also the required considerations and procedures in terms of implementation and operation. Particular attention will be given to quality assurance and quality control when operating the observations on a long-term basis.
Recording of the 2nd Webinar with Andrea Kaiser-Weiss
Modelling of Air Masses - Impacts of Corona Lockdown
Modelling of air masses and impacts of Corona lockdown Trace gas concentrations of, e.g., CO2, as observed at towers or mountain stations, are determined by their air mass history. Modelling the air mass history can answer the question about the representativity of the observations. Using the numerical weather prediction model ICON together with the ART module, we can model the plumes of selected emission areas and relate these to the observations. This way, we model when and where the CO2 emission reductions caused by the Corona lockdown reach a measurable magnitude. Clearly, on short time scales, this is mainly determined by meteorological transport and mixing. On longer time scales, the carbon cycle (especially the exchange with the biosphere) has to be taken into account.
The ultimate aim is to relate measured greenhouse gas concentrations to their emissions, for the purpose of emission reduction verification. Several scientific projects are working on this, international exchange is provided by, e.g., the WMO subsidiary Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS).
Recording of the 3rd Webinar with Dagmar Kubistin & Jennifer Müller-Williams
Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS): tall tower greenhouse gas monitoring in Germany
Greenhouse gases are key drivers for climate change. The greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are defined by their sources and sinks, which vary substantially in space and time. To estimate and control the growth of their emissions, an extensive measuring network is required. The European research infrastructure and network "Integrated Carbon Observation System" (ICOS) https://www.icos-cp.eu/ makes high quality standardised measurements of greenhouse gases. ICOS is a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) contributing network.
As part of the German contribution (ICOS-D) to the ICOS Atmosphere network, nine long-term tall tower monitoring stations have been established in Germany to estimate the greenhouse gas fluxes with high spatial and temporal resolution. At each station concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrous oxide (N2O) as well as meteorological parameters are continuously observed at 3 to 5 measurement heights (up to 341 m a.g.l.). The data are used for inverse modelling to provide a spatially resolved picture of emissions (spatial resolution of 0.1 ° x 0.1 °). ICOS-D follows the strong guidelines and quality requirements of ICOS-EU and GAW to assure high quality measurements. The Webinar will cover the German tall tower network, the station set up and the application of ICOS QA/QC procedures. Selected results from the measurements will also be shown.
Recording of the 4th Webinar with Rebecca Chewitt-Lucas
EURECA Project – Carribean field campaign
EUREC4A, initially a Caribbean-French-German, partnership field study was supported by the World Climate Research Programme Grand Science Challenge on Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity. This international enterprise’s base of operations was in Barbados from 20 January- 20 February 2020.
This study concentrated on quantifying how cloudiness in shallow cumulus layers responds to changes in the large-scale environment and how shallow clouds affect radiant energy transfer for different forms of convective organization. Cloud and atmospheric properties, and numerical simulations of shallow cumulus cloud regimes by large-eddy simulation, weather prediction and climate models were retrieved.
To ensure the objectives were met, surface based measurements from the Barbados Cloud Observatory; airborne measurements from the German HALO (High Altitude Long Range) and French ATR research aircraft, and ship based measurements from the German R/V Meteor were supplemented by a large number of additional platforms. EUREC4A-UK (a UK project),the British Antarctic Survey’s Twin Otter (TO for short) and ground based facilities for aerosol measurements to advance cloud physics studies; EUREC4A-OA (the Ocean-Atmosphere component of EUREC4A) secured the service of two additional research vessels (the French R/V L’Atalante and the German R/V Maria Sybilla Merian) and various autonomous observing platforms to study ocean processes. The ATOMIC1 (a parallel running US research project) brought an additional research vessel, the NOAA R/V Ronald H. Brown, assorted autonomous systems, and the NOAAWP-3D Orion coined as Ms Piggy, to help augment studies of air-sea and aerosol-cloud interactions. Further national initiatives funded a large-scale sounding array, the installation of a scanning precipitation radar, the deployment of ship-borne CloudKites, a network of water stable iso-topologue measurements, as well as a rich assortment of asynchronous aerial and seagoing systems, among them fixed-wing aircraft, quad copters, drifters, buoys, gliders, and sail-drones.
There was operational support from the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) personnel and the region’s operational forecasters. CIMH was instrumental in ensuring that all educational outreach projects envisioned by the planning team occurred. Some of the activities such as DLR PoldiRad (A scanning C-band research radar) collection of convective data continued to be staffed by local personnel, even after the field study ended. Regional scientists who took part in the event as project forecasters and observing scientists on the various platforms, initiated collaborations with international scientists on various concepts/topics. The current and potential findings from EUREC4A are being explored and promise to substantially advance understanding of the clouds in the trade-winds.
