The National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) is teaming up with leading UK environmental science organizations to enhance the national monitoring network for greenhouse gases.
A £5m (US$6m) investment by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will enable NCAS, and a consortium of partners including the National Physical Laboratory, National Centre for Earth Observation and UK universities to improve and standardize greenhouse gas measurements across the country.
Through the UK government’s Building a Green Future fund, existing UK ground-based greenhouse gas measurement capability will be expanded and enhanced through the implementation of new measurement locations along with state-of-the-art instrumentation. These new measurements will be key to help better identify and quantify UK emissions.
The investment will enable new instrumentation to be installed at the Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory, one of the NCAS managed facilities that makes advanced measurements of the atmosphere, to help better understand sources and sinks of greenhouse gases.
Dr Grant Forster, research scientist and joint deputy head of the NCAS Atmospheric Measurement and Observation Facility, said, “It’s very exciting that measurements from NCAS’s Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory will be part of this national collaboration. Our observations will provide independent verification of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Bringing together the UK’s ground-based greenhouse gas measurement capability will also better support modeling activities, which will allow us to track the UK’s progress toward achieving net zero.”
