Designing an Optimal Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Network for Australia — ASN Events
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  3. Designing an Optimal Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Network for Australia

Designing an Optimal Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Network for Australia (6661)

Tilo Ziehn 1 , Rachel Law 1 , Peter Rayner 2 , Greg Roff 3 , Paul Fraser 1
  1. Centre for Australian Climate and Weather Reasearch, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, VIC, Australia
  2. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  3. Centre for Australian Climate and Weather Reasearch, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Monitoring major greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2) is important, not only for the continuous observation of atmospheric concentrations in order to detect global trends, but also for deriving GHG fluxes and their uncertainties on a regional scale. The flux uncertainties are dependent on the network of atmospheric GHG measurements. Here, we aim to assess how the current network of GHG ground based measurement stations in Australia can be extended to reduce the uncertainties on Australian GHG flux estimates, extending an earlier study by Law et al. (2004). This is done by optimising the location of proposed stations for CO2 while also considering logistic constraints such as availability of supporting infrastructure and accessibility and maintenance of the site.

The Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model (LPDM) is used for the inversion of atmospheric transport and a genetic algorithm is applied for the optimisation of the network. Driving fields are provided using the high resolution (12km) operational version of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator for the Australian region (ACCESS-R). Prior estimates of CO2 fluxes for the Australian biosphere are obtained from high resolution model simulations (Haverd et al., 2013).

We present results from various optimisation scenarios using the location of existing stations as a base network. Potential new CO2 measurement locations that are considered in the optimisation framework comprise the stations in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology weather watch radar network. Although the results differ for each season reflecting the change in the dominant wind direction, the optimal new measurement locations are mostly placed in the north-western part of the continent.


  1. Law, R.M., Rayner, P.J. and Wang. Y.P. (2004). Inversion of diurnally varying synthetic CO2: Network optimization for an Australian test case. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 18, GB1004, doi:10.1029/2003/GB002136.
  2. Haverd, V. , Raupach, M.R., Briggs, P.R., Canadell., J.G., Isaac, P., Pickett-Heaps, C., Roxburgh, S.H., van Gorsel, E., Viscarra Rossel, R.A. and Wang, Z., (2013) Multiple observation types reduce uncertainty in Australia’s terrestrial carbon and water cycles, Biogeosciences , 10, 2011-2040.
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