The Integrated Carbon Observation System in Europe

Abstract

Since 1750, land use change and fossil fuel combustion has led to a 46 % increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, causing global warming with substantial societal consequences. The Paris Agreement aims to limiting global temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Increasing levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), in the atmosphere are the primary cause of climate change. Approximately half of the carbon emissions to the atmosphere is sequestered by ocean and land sinks, leading to ocean acidification but also slowing the rate of global warming. However, there are significant uncertainties in the future global warming scenarios due to uncertainties in the size, nature and stability of these sinks. Quantifying and monitoring the size and timing of natural sinks and the impact of climate change on ecosystems are important information to guide policy-makers’ decisions and strategies on reductions in emissions. Continuous, long-term observations are required to quantify GHG emissions, sinks, and their impacts on Earth systems. The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) was designed as the European in situ observation and information system to support science and society in their efforts to mitigate climate change. It provides standardized and open data currently from over 140 measurement stations across 12 European countries. The stations observe GHG concentrations in the atmosphere and carbon and GHG fluxes between the atmosphere, land surface and the oceans. This article describes how ICOS fulfills its mission to harmonize these observations, ensure the related long-term financial commitments, provide easy access to well-documented and reproducible high-quality data and related protocols and tools for scientific studies, and deliver information and GHG-related products to stakeholders in society and policy.

High-resolution inverse modelling of European CH<sub>4</sub> emissions using novel FLEXPART-COSMO TM5 4DVAR inverse modelling system

“…The atmospheric observations used in this study (within the COSMO-7 domain) include ground-based CH4 data for 2018 from 24 stations with in situ measurements, complemented with data from 5 stations with discrete air sampling, as compiled in Table1. Most of the in situ measurements (15 stations) are from the atmosphere network of the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS)(Heiskanen et al, 2021), a pan-European infrastructure providing harmonized atmospheric measurements which are rigorously standardised in terms of instrumentation, calibration, air sampling and quality control,…”

Two types of installation of 3D‐printed zero tension lysimeter for soil leaching and water bucket model validation

“…The experimental site is located in the forest ‘De Inslag’ in Brasschaat near Antwerp, Belgium (51°18′27.1″ N 4°31′18.9″ E). The experiment is hosted in the vicinity of the ICOS ecosystem monitoring station of Brasschaat (Franz et al, 2018; Heiskanen et al, 2021; http://www.icos-ri.be), co‐located with an ICP forest intensive monitoring level II plot (Neirynck et al, 2008). The location of this research is mainly covered by an even‐aged Scots pine plantation (Pinus sylvestris L., planted in 1929), while the larger area can be characterised as a mixed coniferous/deciduous forest.…”

“…The experimental site is located in the forest 'De Inslag' in Brasschaat near Antwerp, Belgium (51 18 0 27.1 00 N 4 31 0 18.9 00 E). The experiment is hosted in the vicinity of the ICOS ecosystem monitoring station of Brasschaat (Franz et al, 2018;Heiskanen et al, 2021;www.icos-ri. be), co-located with an ICP forest intensive monitoring level II plot (Neirynck et al, 2008).…”

Ecosystem science: a new approach in the analysis of functional processes in natural and human transformed terrestrial ecosystems

“…Carbon dioxide and water measurements taken at the ecosystem scale with the eddy covariance technique have provided key metrics (Chapin III et al 2006), such as evapotranspiration (ET), gross primary production (GPP), net ecosystem exchange (NEE), net ecosystem production (NEP) and ecosystem-level water use efficiency (EWUE), with which to assess ecosystem functioning across continents (Baldocchi 2008, Tang et al 2014, Baldocchi et al 2018, Keenan & Williams 2018, Delgado-Balbuena et al 2019, Tarin et al 2020, Kang & Cho 2021, Heiskanen et al 2022. One example of these applications in the semiarid region of western North America comes from an integration of ecosystem water and CO 2 measurements in combination with remote sensing tools (Biederman et al 2016(Biederman et al , 2017, to use time by space substitutions to explore the relationships of rainfall and ET to the NEP and GPP, and to compare the carbon sink potential and controls of arid and forested ecosystems.…”