Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions Monitoring in Davos, Switzerland, Before, During and After the 2012 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
G. Jacobson1, C. Rella1, K. Davis2, S. Richardson2, N. Miles2, T. Lauvaux2, A. Deng2, G. Calonder3, M. Ruesch4, M. Lehning4 and P. DeCola5
1Picarro Inc, 3105 Patrick Henry Drive, Santa Clara, CA 94054; 408-962-3925, E-mail: gjacobson@picarro.com
2The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Meteorology, University Park, PA 16802
3Gemeinde Davos, Berglistutz 1, Postfach, CH-7270 Davos Platz, Switzerland
4WSL-Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung SLF, Flüelastr. 11, CH-7260 Davos Dorf, Schweiz, Switzerland
5Sigma Space Corporation, Lanham, MD 20706
Efforts to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions require validation. Atmospheric measurements capture all emissions, and provide a unique and powerful means of continuous validation and feedback. To demonstrate the utility of real time GHG measurements, in situ GHG mixing ratio instruments were deployed in Davos, Switzerland to measure emissions from the city before, during and after the World Economic Forum (WEF). Three Instruments were deployed at two separate locations over 3 months (late December 2011 to February 2012). One site was located in the middle of the Davos urban area and a second site was located out of the valley in the surrounding mountains. Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Carbon Monoxide (CO) and water vapor (H2O) were measured continuously by Picarro G2401 instruments at both sites. Additionally, a Picarro flux analyzer was deployed in the city to evaluate the inverse fluxes. The mesoscale atmospheric model, WRF nudged to meteorological observations (WRF-FDDA), was used to simulate the transport of GHG over the valley of Davos at 1.3km resolution. A Mini Micro Pulse LiDAR (MiniMPL) from Sigma Space was deployed to evaluate the simulated planetary boundary layer depth from the WRF-FDDA model. The initial flux estimates for CO2 were constructed based on inventories reported for 2005. CO2 mixing ratio measurements prior to WEF suggest the difference between modeled (real-time) and inventory (annual) emissions to be on the order of +40%. The mismatch could be due to the increased use of heating fuel in the winter. We present here the temporal variability in the inverse fluxes, which are correlated with a cold wave severely affecting Western Europe during the past winter, as well as changes in anthropogenic activities during the week of the WEF meeting. Acknowledgments: Calibration tanks were provided by C. Sweeney, NOAA ESRL.
Figure 1. Emissions above inventory (3-day moving average), based on inversion modeling results, for Davos, Switzerland.