China’s greenhouse gas monitoring goes global
System to provide accurate data for world’s carbon budget assessment
The China-developed advanced greenhouse gas monitoring system GONGGA has been added to the list of global greenhouse gas monitoring systems by Global Carbon Project (GCP) to help provide accurate data for world’s carbon budget assessment, scientists said.
GONGGA, sharing the name of the highest mountain in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, was developed by scientists participating in the second scientific research expedition on the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau, which began in 2017.
It can systematically assess the global sources and sinks of CO2 to help understand characteristics of changes in global greenhouse gas concentrations, where they come from, and how they are distributed in the atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems.
The GCP’s appraisal showed CO2 growth rate the GONGGA system provided was more accurate than that of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US, Piao Shilong, deputy director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau
Research of the CAS, said at a symposium on Wednesday.
China has been a data provider for the program for years, but it didn’t have an indigenously developed monitoring and evaluation system for greenhouse gas, Piao said.
He noted that GONGGA being included in the list indicated that Chinese scientists have switched their role from data contributors to global leaders in atmospheric inverse modeling.
The move reversed China’s reliance on foreign monitoring systems. Chinese scientists now can use their own data, methods and models to clearly figure out China’s own carbon budget, the CAS said in a statement on Thursday.
The application of GONAGA will also strengthen China’s international power of discourse in carbon budget assessment. For example, it will provide accurate data for the first in a series of global “stock takes” scheduled in 2023 to assess progress on Paris Agreement goals in 2023.
According to the Paris Agreement, a first Global Stocktakes will take place in 2023 and every five years thereafter, in a bid to assess collective progress toward achieving the purpose of the agreement in a comprehensive and facilitative manner.
Zhou Tianjun, a researcher from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics with the CAS, said that the warming and humidification characteristics of the main body of the QinghaiXizang Plateau will continue in the next decade, and the long-term change will be determined by the greenhouse gas emission scenario.
The increase under the extremely high emission scenario is estimated to be nearly three times that of the extremely low emission scenario, according to Zhou.