Print

Greenhouse Gases

A research group in the Department "Atmospheric Trace Species"

Head: Dr. Anke Roiger

There is no doubt that the increasing atmospheric concentration of anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) greenhouse gases plays a dominant role in global warming. Consequently, one of the main goals of the “Paris Agreement” is to decelerate global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, most importantly carbon dioxide (CO₂). After CO₂, the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas is methane (CH₄), which is released by a number of different natural and anthropogenic sources. Its comparatively short lifetime of ~10 years makes it an attractive target for greenhouse gas reductions to slow-down global warming on short timescales. However, although total global methane emissions are relatively well known from data of global air sampling networks, contributions from individual sources are not sufficiently quantified.

This DLR-funded Young Investigators Group aims at a better quantification of anthropogenic greenhouse gas sources and a better understanding of the underlying processes.

Our current research questions include:

• How large are CH₄ emissions from fossil fuel production (e.g. coal mining/offshore oil/gas extraction) in large production areas in Europe?
• How large are CH₄ and CO₂ emissions from different urban centers in Germany/Europe?
• Which processes dominate the greenhouse gas emissions?
• Are the observed emission strengths comparable with those measured in other source regions world-wide?
• How do our “top-down” estimates deduced from independent observations compare with “bottom-up” estimates reported in national and international emission inventories?

For our investigations we deploy several state-of-the-art in-situ instruments onboard different research aircraft and conduct measurements of greenhouse gases and related trace gases in selected source regions of interest. For the accurate planning and interpretation of our measurements we make use of different models. Our measurements provide valuable data sets for comparison with Climate-Chemistry-Models and remote sensing observations. Furthermore, we work on the conception of a Low Spectral Resolution Satellite Sensor for the observation of strong, localized CO₂ emission sources.