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Atmospheric Environment
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h i g h l i g h t s
A new method is developed to estimate CO2 background concentration.
The method is established on the observations of black carbon concentration and meteorological data.
The method is better than the statistical method using R software in estimating CO2 background concentration.
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 8 January 2014
Received in revised form
19 May 2014
Accepted 20 May 2014
Available online 21 May 2014
A new method of extracting regional background concentration of CO2 in Yangtze River Delta was
established based on the observations of both black carbon concentration and meteorological parameters. The concentrations of CO2 and black carbon were observed at Lin'an regional background station
from 2009 to 2011. The regional background concentration of CO2 in Yangtze River Delta was obtained by
means of this new method, and the impact of human activities on CO2 concentration in this area was also
assessed. The results showed that the regional background concentration of CO2 extracted by this
approach was comparable to the values obtained by R statistical lter method, and moreover this new
method was better at picking up episodes heavily polluted by anthropogenic emissions. The annual
regional average background concentration of CO2 in Yangtze River Delta from 2009 to 2011 was
approximately 404.7 8.2 ppm, 405.6 5.3 ppm and 407.0 5.3 ppm, respectively, much higher than
global average value, indicating the distinct characteristic of this region. The anthropogenic emissions
from Yangtze River Delta had signicant inuence on the concentration of CO2, increasing the value
roughly 9.1 ppm higher than the regional background concentration of this area.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
CO2
Regional background concentration
Black carbon
Yangtze River Delta
1. Introduction
CO2 is one of the important long-lived greenhouse gases, whose
concentration has increased by 39% since the industrial revolution.
Until 2011, the global average of CO2 concentration has reached
390.9 ppm (World Meteorological Organization, 2012). The main
sources of CO2 released to the atmosphere are combustion of fossil
fuels, cement production and land use change (Forster et al., 2007),
while the main carbon sink is the absorption of CO2 by plants and
ocean. Owing to the human activities playing an important role in
the level of atmospheric CO2 concentration, it is necessary to
* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: forsnow@126.com (H.-H. Xu), zhoulx@cams.cma.gov.cn
(L.-X. Zhou).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2014.05.060
1352-2310/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
establish an appropriate method to estimate the regional background concentration of CO2, in order to acquire the value of CO2
background concentration in this region and to assess the impact of
human activities on the CO2 concentration.
There are mainly three kinds of methods to estimate the background concentration of greenhouse gases: statistical method,
meteorological method and numerical model method. Statistical
method basically uses statistical analyses of the eld data for estimation. The background concentration can be determined based on
local linear regression of the data by using statistical software (e.g.
R software) or estimated according to the threshold values of
pollutant concentration variation (Reimann et al., 2004; Fang et al.,
2011; Tsutsumi et al., 2006; Giostra et al., 2011). Meteorological
method identies background concentration by meteorological
parameters, such as surface wind direction and air mass backward
o
v et al., 2008).
trajectories (Tsutsumi et al., 2006; Balzani Lo
403
404
Fig. 1. Hourly mean concentrations of CO2 and BC at Lin'an station from 2009 to 2011.
Fig. 2. Hourly mean concentration of BC at Lin'an station from 2009 to 2011 (The
upper and lower quartiles (25% and 75%) are represented by the box, the central red
line of each box is the median, and the black is the average. The dash lines extended
from both sides of the box show those extreme data points but not considered as
outliers. Red cross points are outliers which are larger than q3 1.5*(q3 q1) or
smaller than q1 1.5*(q3 q1), where q1 and q3 are the 25th and 75th percentiles).
(For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred
to the web version of this article.)
405
Fig. 3. (a) Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 surrounding the sampling site; (b) Air mass
backward trajectories affecting the sampling site.
Fig. 5b shows the monthly mean background and nonbackground concentration of CO2. The annual amplitude of CO2
background concentration was 7.7 ppm, with the lowest value
401.9 ppm in September, the second lowest value of 402.6 ppm in
August and the highest concentration 409.5 ppm in January and
February, the second highest value of approximately 408.8 ppm in
May. From 2009 to 2011, the global CO2 monthly mean concentration trend showed as a monomodal curve (CMDL/NOAA, 2012a;
CMDL/NOAA, 2012b). At Waliguan station in Qinghai Province,
China, the peak concentration of CO2 appears in April or May,
meanwhile the lowest value appears in July or August, with the
annual amplitude of 8.9 ppm; at Mauna Loa station in Hawaii, the
highest value of CO2 concentration appears in May, and the lowest
value appears in October, with the annual amplitude of 5.6 ppm.
Therefore, the monthly temporal trend of CO2 background
Fig. 5. (a) Diurnal trend of CO2 background concentration at Lin'an station; (b)
Monthly average of CO2 background and non-background concentration at Lin'an
station and CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa station and Waliguan station.
406
In Fig. 7, the diurnal distribution of CO2 non-background concentration was between 406.6 ppm and 426.0 ppm, with the
maximum appearing at 6:00 AM and the minimum showing up at
15:00 PM. The diurnal amplitude was 19.4 ppm. Therefore, the
diurnal variation trend of CO2 background concentrations was
similar to that of CO2 non-background concentrations. It might be
because both trends were mainly affected by diurnal variation of
meteorological conditions and plant photosynthesis/respiration
processes (Higuchi et al., 2003; Henninger et al., 2010; Miyaoka
et al., 2007; Aikawa et al., 1995). In the early morning, thermal
inversion was present and plant respiration was strong, hence the
CO2 concentrations of both background and non-background were
high. In the afternoon, the depth of atmospheric mixing layer was
higher and the dispersion condition was better, and plant
407
408