From NCAR/UCAR:
First global portrait of greenhouse gases emerges from pole-to-pole flights
BOULDER—A three-year series of research flights from the Arctic to the Antarctic has successfully produced an unprecedented portrait of greenhouse gases and particles in the atmosphere, scientists announced today. The far-reaching field project, known as HIPPO, is enabling researchers to generate the first detailed mapping of the global distribution of gases and particles that affect Earth’s climate.
The series of flights, which come to an end next week, mark an important milestone as scientists work toward targeting both the sources of greenhouse gases and the natural processes that draw the gases back out of the atmosphere.
“Tracking carbon dioxide and other gases with only surface measurements has been like snorkeling with a really foggy mask,” says Britton Stephens, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and one of the project’s principal investigators. “Finally, HIPPO is giving us a clear view of what’s really out there.”
“With HIPPO, we now have views of whole slices of the atmosphere,” says Steven Wofsy, HIPPO principal investigator and atmospheric and environmental professor at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “We’ve been quite surprised by the abundance of certain atmospheric components and the locations where they are most common.”
The three-year campaign has relied on the powerful capabilities of a specially equipped Gulfstream V aircraft, owned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NCAR. The research jet, known as the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research (HIAPER), has a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers). It is outfitted with a suite of specially designed instruments to sample a broad range of atmospheric constituents.
The flights have helped scientists compile extraordinary detail about the atmosphere. The research team has studied air samples at different latitudes during various seasons from altitudes of 500 feet (150 meters) above Earth’s surface up to as high as 45,000 feet (13,750 meters), into the lower stratosphere.
HIPPO, which stands for HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations, brings together scientists from organizations across the nation, including NCAR, Harvard University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Miami, and Princeton University. NSF, which is NCAR’s sponsor, and NOAA are funding the project.
Surprises on the way to a global picture
The first of the five HIPPO missions began in January 2009. Two subsequent missions were launched in 2010, and two in 2011. The final mission comes to an end on September 9, as the aircraft returns from the Arctic to Anchorage and then to its home base at NCAR’s Research Aviation Facility near Boulder.
Each of the missions took the research team from Colorado to Alaska and the Arctic Circle, then south over the Pacific to New Zealand and near Antarctica. The flights took place at different times of year, resulting in a range of seasonal snapshots of concentrations of greenhouse gases. The research was designed to help answer such questions as why atmospheric levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, have tripled since the Industrial Age and are on the rise again after leveling off in the 1990s. Scientists also studied how logging and regrowth in northern boreal forests and tropical rain forests are affecting levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Such research will provide a baseline against which to evaluate the success of efforts to curb CO2 emissions and to enhance natural CO2 uptake and storage.
The team measured a total of over 80 gases and particles in the atmosphere.
One of HIPPO’s most significant accomplishments has been quantifying the seasonal amounts of CO2 taken up and released by land plants and the oceans. Those measurements will help scientists produce more accurate estimates of the annual cycle of carbon dioxide in and out of the atmosphere and how the increasing amount of this gas is influenced by both the natural world and society.
The team also found that black carbon particles—emitted by diesel engines, industrial processes, and fires—are more widely distributed in the atmosphere than previously thought. Such particles can affect climate in various ways, such as directly absorbing solar radiation, influencing the formation of clouds or enhancing melt rates when they are deposited on ice or snow.
“What we didn’t anticipate were the very high levels of black carbon we observed in plumes of air sweeping over the central Pacific toward the U.S. West Coast,” says NOAA scientist Ryan Spackman, a member of the HIPPO research team. “Levels were comparable with those measured in megacities such as Houston or Los Angeles. This suggests that western Pacific sources of black carbon are significant and that atmospheric transport of the material is efficient.”
Researchers were also surprised to find larger-than-expected concentrations of nitrous oxide high in the tropical atmosphere. The finding has significant environmental implications because the gas both traps heat and contributes to the thinning of the ozone layer. Nitrous oxide levels have been increasing for decades in part because of the intensive use of nitrogen fertilizer for agriculture. The abundance of the gas high in the tropical atmosphere may be a sign that storms are carrying it aloft from sources in Southeast Asia.
Balancing the carbon budget
The task of understanding how carbon cycles through the Earth system, known as “balancing the carbon budget,” is gaining urgency as policy makers discuss strategies to limit greenhouse gases. Some countries or regions could be rewarded with carbon credits for taking steps such as preserving forests believed to absorb carbon dioxide.
“Carbon markets and emission offset projects are moving ahead, but we still have imperfect knowledge of where human-emitted carbon dioxide is ending up,” NCAR’s Stephens says.
Before HIPPO, scientists primarily used ground stations to determine the distribution of sources of atmospheric CO2 and “sinks” that reabsorb some of the gas back into the land and oceans. But ground stations can be separated by thousands of miles, which hinders the ability to measure CO2 in specific locations. To estimate how the gas is distributed vertically, scientists have had to rely on computer models, which will now be improved with HIPPO data.
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Rob Potter says:
September 8, 2011 at 10:50 am
It takes a surprisingly large amount of energy to remove CO2 from power station emissions…..
In that case, let’s build lots more breweries. 🙂
“Some countries or regions could be rewarded with carbon credits for taking steps such as preserving forests believed to absorb carbon dioxide.”
Eh?
Forests BELIEVED to absorb carbon dioxide? All that money, all that effort, all those words and science has at long last reached the stage where forests are only BELIEVED to absorb carbon dioxide?
I think I had better go and see a shrink, for all along, I had thought that it was KNOWN that forests absorbed carbon dioxide. It’s just as well I read up on progress in articles like this, as I can walk around with all kinds of misapprehensions.
Trapping Carbon Black particles is simple. Simply pass the exhaust through a water bath.
And, if I remember my Underground Coal Permissible specs right, the NO will be transformed into NO2.
That’s it. No CO2 markets or caps needed, which has to cheese off the EPA and IPCC.
There might even be a market for the particles in manufacturing.
Ozone anyone? Sounds like same story 1 We have no previous data.2 We have not completed processing the data.3 Its worse than we thought and we must…….
If we do not know the baseline how can we tell if there is anything unusual happening?
Lets not forget that the Japanese GOSAT is also measuring CO2.
Am I a suspicious sceptic to think that it is no coincidence that neither AIRS nor Jaxa are releasing newer CO2 maps? They are probably beating the data like an octapus* to make it stand up and salute the GCMs.
*when you catch an octopus you beat it for maybe half an hour on a hard rock so that it gets tender enough to eat.
I would *really* like to see the C14 concentration in stratospheric black carbon- this would give a strong indication of the source of that BC; if the carbon date is young, biomass must dominate the supply of BC.
Gary Hladik o 9/8-12:45pm says. …”old mature forests in CO2 equilibrium…”…
Gary…go to “CO2 Science” and find several articles that show renewed growth
since carbon dioxide is up 75-100 ppm.
I actually know someone who was on these flights for the past year – no name mentioned or gender mentioned but I will say what I heard from this horses mouth is the same meme I’ve heard from the pro CAGW crowd. When you start a study with pre-decisional elements or prejudices, the outcome will be just as affected.
Hello Gray Monk & Richard Verney!
In 1974 the CIA produced a report that there was scientific consensus on imminent, catastrophic global cooling, caused by soot particles and aerosols. The scientists also told them they had an accurate prediction model and that, failing remedial human action, the whole of European Russia, Northern China and Canada would be covered permanently with hundreds of feet of ice and snow. There had been a panic about the failure of the Soviet Union’s wheat crop, sown in the Autumn of 1972, because of extreme frosts. I was in the grain trade at the time and remember the market going crazy in 1973 when the Soviets conducted a very effective clandestine buying raid on Chicago . The amusing thing is that some of the coolest dudes for freezing us all then are the hottest for frying us now. There is a microfiche of the CIA report in the British Library, I believe.
It is quite right that “carbon” became the preferred term for the alarmists so that people would confuse CO2 with soot and pollution. In the appalling propaganda adverts of the British Labour government, the cartoon showed an ominous blackness in the sky, along with a drawing of the little girl’s puppy getting drowned by rising sea levels. “Climate Change” seems to have replaced “Global Warming” (whilst meaning the same thing) at about the time that a UEA scientist complained it was “a travesty” that the recorded observations were not fitting their models. After all, nobody can deny that “climate change” happens, can they?
anna v says:
September 9, 2011 at 5:14 am
Lets not forget that the Japanese GOSAT is also measuring CO2.
Am I a suspicious sceptic to think that it is no coincidence that neither AIRS nor Jaxa are releasing newer CO2 maps? They are probably beating the data like an octapus* to make it stand up and salute the GCMs.
As far as I know they still haven’t released any of the data from the AIRS study on what they found about Carbon Dioxide in the upper and lower troposphere.
..and of course, there’s the satellites in recent years to measure CO2 which, er, exploded or something before they could do any data gathering.. 🙂
The AIRS data concluded that CO2 was not ‘thoroughly mixed’ in the mid troposphere atmosphere, that it was lumpy and subject to wind spread, which surprised them and they said they’d have to go and look at the part winds played in all this..
Sigh. Eventually they should make it back to real physics where CO2 being heavier than air and readily merges with water to form carbonic acid (all ‘pure’ rain is carbonic acid), is going to be local lumpy in our real fluid gaseous atmosphere which has weight and volume, rather than as in the AGW science fictional ‘ideal gas diffused in empty space’ scenario they keep finding themselves surprised doesn’t show up..