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Stations measuring the selected gas. Selected stations are the larger, pink markers; open a marker for details, the station page, and to add it to the figure.
CO2 from the ICOS network
Below you will find a short explanatory text. If you want to know more on the background of this tool and its use, we have a special page for this on the ICOS website.
This app uses live CO2, CH4 and N2O observation data from the ICOS Atmosphere network, focusing on Europe. You can select up to six stations and visualize the change in the median of filtered concentration of the greenhouse gases as measured by these stations over time, together with the change in the monthly aggregated data over the whole network of Northern Hemisphere stations.
The aggregated network value is initially shown as the 50% and 90% bands of all station values within that month. You can see where each station is located using the “Station map” tab, with selected stations displayed as filled markers. For the first station you select, you can also show the hourly values up to yesterday, which shows you the variability measured at that station within the month. The hourly data from a single station initially looks like noise, but this data actually encloses information on all sources and sinks between background CO2 and the measurement location. Scientists are using this to uncover valuable information on how human and natural sources and sinks contribute to increasing global warming.
Data is updated daily using ICOS's Near Real Time data, together with the calculation of monthly medians of the filtered data. This way ICOS can provide updated growth rates on a daily basis where this before was only possible once per year with a latency of 9 months. The figure also shows the global average background as updated monthly, with a latency of currently 3 months, by NOAA from its collaborative global network. Global data shows the same underlying global trend in the greenhouse gases, as these all are long-lived gases. However, the variability in the global data is lower, especially with regards to seasonal variation, as this global network is located at remote background sites, reducing the influence of sources and sinks due to distance. For scientists to discover the influences of sources and sinks on a finer scale in space and time, a denser and more local network, like ICOS's network, is necessary.
Despite the higher variability, an unprecedented accuracy and precision of the observations is needed, as small biases (smaller than 0.1 ppm on CO2 levels of >420 ppm) will lead to erroneous estimates of sources and sinks. ICOS is the first large operational greenhouse gas observational network that achieves these demanding measurements at scale at the recommended WMO GAW compatibility goals.
The monthly station values are the mean of a smooth curve fitted through the daily means of the accepted hourly observations, following Thoning et al. (1989) as NOAA applies it. The observations are read from the ICOS zarr service (ICOS ObsPack collection, doi:10.18160/JZ2X-GZGU, CC BY 4.0). You can browse more ICOS greenhouse gas measurement data at the ICOS Carbon Portal.
Our FLUXES Magazine volume 3 can help you understand how this data can be used to inform scientists, policy makers and the general public, paving the way for research, education, action and awareness.
Big thanks to all the ICOS atmosphere community (Station PI's, Thematic Centres and Calibration Lab) for all their meticulous work and operational production of all this valuable data. The latest final quality release of ICOS atmosphere data is of course available through the ICOS Carbon Portal.
Tool authors: Alex Vermeulen, Andrew Debevec, Zhendong Wu. This version is written in Modula-9.