Urban areas are recognised as a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ). The total amount of urban GHG emissions, especially for CH 4 , however, is not well quantified. Here we report on airborne in situ measurements using a Picarro G1301-m analyser aboard the DLR Cessna Grand Caravan to study GHG emissions downwind of the German capital Berlin. In total, five aircraft-based mass balance experiments were conducted in July 2018 within the Urban Climate Under Change [UC] 2 project. The detection and isolation of the Berlin plume was often challenging because of comparatively small GHG signals above variable atmospheric background concentrations. However, on July 20 th enhancements of up to 4 ppm CO 2 and 21 ppb CH 4 were observed over a horizontal extent of roughly 45 to 65 km downwind of Berlin. These enhanced mixing ratios are clearly distinguishable from the background and can partly be assigned to city emissions. The estimated CO 2 emission flux of 1.39 ± 0.76 t s –1 is in agreement with current inventories, while the CH 4 emission flux of 5.20 ± 1.70 kg s –1 is almost two times larger than the highest reported value in the inventories. We localized the source area with HYSPLIT trajectory calculations and the global/regional nested chemistry climate model MECO(n) (down to ~1 km), and investigated the contribution from sewage-treatment plants and waste deposition to CH 4 , which are treated differently by the emission inventories. Our work highlights the importance of strong CH 4 sources in the vicinity of Berlin and shows, that there is limited understanding of CH 4 emissions from urban regions, even for major cities in highly developed countries like Germany. Furthermore, we show that a detailed knowledge of GHG inflow mixing ratios is necessary to suitably estimate emission rates for Berlin.

Quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cities is a key challenge towards effective emissions management. An inversion analysis from the INdianapolis FLUX experiment (INFLUX) project, as the first of its kind, has achieved a top-down emission estimate for a single city using CO 2 data collected by the dense tower network deployed across the city. However, city-level emission data, used as a priori emissions, are also a key component in the atmospheric inversion framework. Currently, fine-grained emission inventories (EIs) able to resolve GHG city emissions at high spatial resolution, are only available for few major cities across the globe. Following the INFLUX inversion case with a global 1 × 1 km ODIAC fossil fuel CO 2 emission dataset, we further improved the ODIAC emission field and examined its utility as a prior for the city scale inversion. We disaggregated the 1 × 1 km ODIAC non-point source emissions using geospatial datasets such as the global road network data and satellite-data driven surface imperviousness data to a 30 × 30 m resolution. We assessed the impact of the improved emission field on the inversion result, relative to priors in previous studies (Hestia and ODIAC). The posterior total emission estimate (5.1 MtC/yr) remains statistically similar to the previous estimate with ODIAC (5.3 MtC/yr). However, the distribution of the flux corrections was very close to those of Hestia inversion and the model-observation mismatches were significantly reduced both in forward and inverse runs, even without hourly temporal changes in emissions. EIs reported by cities often do not have estimates of spatial extents. Thus, emission disaggregation is a required step when verifying those reported emissions using atmospheric models. Our approach offers gridded emission estimates for global cities that could serves as a prior for inversion, even without locally reported EIs in a systematic way to support city-level Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) practice implementation.

We assess the detectability of city emissions via a tower-based greenhouse gas (GHG) network, as part of the Indianapolis Flux (INFLUX) experiment. By examining afternoon-averaged results from a network of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), and carbon monoxide (CO) mole fraction measurements in Indianapolis, Indiana for 2011–2013, we quantify spatial and temporal patterns in urban atmospheric GHG dry mole fractions. The platform for these measurements is twelve communications towers spread across the metropolitan region, ranging in height from 39 to 136 m above ground level, and instrumented with cavity ring-down spectrometers. Nine of the sites were deployed as of January 2013 and data from these sites are the focus of this paper. A background site, chosen such that it is on the predominantly upwind side of the city, is utilized to quantify enhancements caused by urban emissions. Afternoon averaged mole fractions are studied because this is the time of day during which the height of the boundary layer is most steady in time and the area that influences the tower measurements is likely to be largest. Additionally, atmospheric transport models have better performance in simulating the daytime convective boundary layer compared to the nighttime boundary layer. Averaged from January through April of 2013, the mean urban dormant-season enhancements range from 0.3 ppm CO 2 at the site 24 km typically downwind of the edge of the city (Site 09) to 1.4 ppm at the site at the downwind edge of the city (Site 02) to 2.9 ppm at the downtown site (Site 03). When the wind is aligned such that the sites are downwind of the urban area, the enhancements are increased, to 1.6 ppm at Site 09, and 3.3 ppm at Site 02. Differences in sampling height affect the reported urban enhancement by up to 50%, but the overall spatial pattern remains similar. The time interval over which the afternoon data are averaged alters the calculated urban enhancement by an average of 0.4 ppm. The CO 2 observations are compared to CO 2 mole fractions simulated using a mesoscale atmospheric model and an emissions inventory for Indianapolis. The observed and modeled CO 2 enhancements are highly correlated (r 2 = 0.94), but the modeled enhancements prior to inversion average 53% of those measured at the towers. Following the inversion, the enhancements follow the observations closely, as expected. The CH 4 urban enhancement ranges from 5 ppb at the site 10 km predominantly downwind of the city (Site 13) to 21 ppb at the site near the landfill (Site 10), and for CO ranges from 6 ppb at the site 24 km downwind of the edge of the city (Site 09) to 29 ppb at the downtown site (Site 03). Overall, these observations show that a dense network of urban GHG measurements yield a detectable urban signal, well-suited as input to an urban inversion system given appropriate attention to sampling time, sampling altitude and quantification of background conditions.

The objective of the Indianapolis Flux Experiment (INFLUX) is to develop, evaluate and improve methods for measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cities. INFLUX’s scientific objectives are to quantify CO 2 and CH 4 emission rates at 1 km 2 resolution with a 10% or better accuracy and precision, to determine whole-city emissions with similar skill, and to achieve high (weekly or finer) temporal resolution at both spatial resolutions. The experiment employs atmospheric GHG measurements from both towers and aircraft, atmospheric transport observations and models, and activity-based inventory products to quantify urban GHG emissions. Multiple, independent methods for estimating urban emissions are a central facet of our experimental design. INFLUX was initiated in 2010 and measurements and analyses are ongoing. To date we have quantified urban atmospheric GHG enhancements using aircraft and towers with measurements collected over multiple years, and have estimated whole-city CO 2 and CH 4 emissions using aircraft and tower GHG measurements, and inventory methods. Significant differences exist across methods; these differences have not yet been resolved; research to reduce uncertainties and reconcile these differences is underway. Sectorally- and spatially-resolved flux estimates, and detection of changes of fluxes over time, are also active research topics. Major challenges include developing methods for distinguishing anthropogenic from biogenic CO 2 fluxes, improving our ability to interpret atmospheric GHG measurements close to urban GHG sources and across a broader range of atmospheric stability conditions, and quantifying uncertainties in inventory data products. INFLUX data and tools are intended to serve as an open resource and test bed for future investigations. Well-documented, public archival of data and methods is under development in support of this objective.

In connection with the Anthropocene, one might ask how climate is likely to evolve in the absence of man’s intervention and whether humans will be able to purposefully alter this course. In this commentary, I deal with the situation for very long time scales. I make a case that fifty million years ago, the collision between the northward drifting Indian land mass and Asia set the Earth’s climate on a new course. Ever since then, it has cooled. In the absence of some other dramatic disruption in the movement of the plates which make up our planet’s crust, on the time scale of tens of millions of years, this drift would cause the Earth to freeze over as it did during the late Precambrian. Evidence for this change in course comes from records of oxygen and lithium isotopic composition of foraminifer shells. It is reinforced by records of Mg to Ca in halite-hosted fluid inclusions and in marine CaCO 3 . In addition, the collision appears to have created abrupt changes in the sulfur isotope composition of marine barite and the carbon isotope composition of amber. Not only did this collision create the Himalaya, but more important, it led to a reorganization of the crustal plate motions. Through some combination of the building of mountains and lowering of sea level, these changes generated a mismatch between the supply of CO 2 by planetary outgassing and that of calcium by the weathering of silicate rock. The tendency toward an oversupply of calcium has been compensated by a drawdown of the atmosphere’s CO 2 content. This drawdown cooled the Earth, slowing down the supply of calcium. Although we are currently inadvertently compensating for this cooling by burning fossil fuels, the impacts of this CO 2 on Earth climate will last no more than a tenth of a million years. So, if humans succeed in avoiding extinction, there will likely be a long-term effort to warm the planet.