Challenges in scaling up greenhouse gas fluxes: experience from the UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedbacks Programme

TY - JOUR

T1 - Challenges in scaling up greenhouse gas fluxes: experience from the UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedbacks Programme

AU - Toet, Sylvia

AU - Levy, Peter E.

AU - Clement, Robert

AU - Cowan, Nick

AU - Ben, Keane

AU - Myrgiotis, Vasilis

AU - Van Oijen, Marcel

AU - Smallman, Luke

AU - Williams, Mathew

N1 - © 2022. The Authors.

PY - 2022/5/9

Y1 - 2022/5/9

N2 - The role of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in global climate change is now well recognized and there is a clear need to measure emissions and verify the efficacy of mitigation measures. To this end, reliable estimates are needed of the GHG balance at the national scale and over long time periods, but these estimates are difficult to make accurately. Because measurement techniques are generally restricted to relatively small spatial and temporal scales, there is a fundamental problem in translating these into long-term estimates on a regional scale. The key challenge lies in spatial and temporal upscaling of short-term, point observations to estimate large-scale annual totals, and quantify the uncertainty associated with this upscaling. Here, we review some approaches to this problem and synthesize the work in the recent UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedbacks Program, which was designed to identify and address these challenges. Approaches to the scaling problem included: instrumentation developments which mean that near-continuous data sets can be produced with larger spatial coverage; geostatistical methods which address the problem of extrapolating to larger domains, using spatial information in the data; more rigorous statistical methods which characterize the uncertainty in extrapolating to longer time scales; analytical approaches to estimating model aggregation error; enhanced estimates of C flux measurement error; and novel uses of remote sensing data to calibrate process models for generating probabilistic regional C flux estimates.

AB - The role of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in global climate change is now well recognized and there is a clear need to measure emissions and verify the efficacy of mitigation measures. To this end, reliable estimates are needed of the GHG balance at the national scale and over long time periods, but these estimates are difficult to make accurately. Because measurement techniques are generally restricted to relatively small spatial and temporal scales, there is a fundamental problem in translating these into long-term estimates on a regional scale. The key challenge lies in spatial and temporal upscaling of short-term, point observations to estimate large-scale annual totals, and quantify the uncertainty associated with this upscaling. Here, we review some approaches to this problem and synthesize the work in the recent UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedbacks Program, which was designed to identify and address these challenges. Approaches to the scaling problem included: instrumentation developments which mean that near-continuous data sets can be produced with larger spatial coverage; geostatistical methods which address the problem of extrapolating to larger domains, using spatial information in the data; more rigorous statistical methods which characterize the uncertainty in extrapolating to longer time scales; analytical approaches to estimating model aggregation error; enhanced estimates of C flux measurement error; and novel uses of remote sensing data to calibrate process models for generating probabilistic regional C flux estimates.

U2 - 10.1029/2021JG006743

DO - 10.1029/2021JG006743

M3 - Article

SN - 2169-8953

VL - 127

JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

IS - 5

M1 - e2021JG006743

ER -