Objective
Carbon dioxide and methane amount to 93 % of the total effective contribution of the six greenhouse gases listed in the Kyoto Protocol. Despite the long history of research and important knowledge gained from numerous studies, there still exists an essential discrepancy in closing the carbon budget at the level of approximately 1 billion tons of carbon per year, which amounts to 15 - 20 % of carbon emission caused by human activities (5 - 6 Tt). The analysis of CO2 fluxes at different sites performed by Baldocchi et al. (2001) revealed that this amount of carbon can be taken up by boreal forests widely distributed in Russia, Northern Europe and Canada. Methane natural emission, mainly from wetlands, is of the same amount as anthropogenic emissions. There are also large uncertainties on natural fluxes of CH4, particularly in the Northern regions where warmer conditions could also melt tundra and permafrost and release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere. The major objective of this study is to reduce the uncertainty in the flux of these two greenhouse gases over the boreal zone, by developing and testing novel techniques and methods suitable for assessing their emissions and sinks using the data from available satellite spectrometers such as IASI/METOP, AIRS/AQUA, and SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT. The benefits and relevance of the study to the 'INTAS Thematic Call on Earth Sciences and Environment 2006 in co-operation with the ESA' include the following: 1) The project addresses directly the second scientific objective of the Call - Global Climate Change Focusing on Carbon Stock; it develops novel advanced methods for retrieval of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 using satellite data combined with available ground based observations. 2) The research will utilize state-of-the-art modelling tools developed by the project teams, and satellite measurements currently available from the instruments developed and launched by ESA (such as, e.g. SCHIAMACHY) or expected to be available soon on METOP. 3) The project will also use the satellite information available over Siberia from other satellite sensors, such as AIRS. The developed approaches are expected to be useful for the future satellite missions in the GMES programme. 4) In order to validate the CO2 and CH4 retrieval schemes to be developed, the project will use real balloon flight measurements by LPMAA-IASI over Kiruna, Sweden, (January and September 2007) and available SCIAMACHY data over Siberia for 2003 using spatially & temporally coincident ground based and aircraft measurements. The research will be conducted by six teams (one from France, one from Sweden, one from Canada, and three from Russia) and co-ordinated by Dr Camy-Peyret (LPMAA, University Pierre et Marie Curie/CNRS, France). All teams have good experience in this research area recognized both at the national and international levels.
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PARIS
France