The paper by Nicolini et al., shows the variability and reduction potential of CO2 emissions across Europe.
Data show first measured evidence of a consistent reduction of CO2 emissions, proportional to the stringency of restrictions.
Air pollution in Vienna during 2020 lockdown
Analysis of air quaility data in Vienna (Brancher et al., 2021) shows a reduction of NO2 by 20% during the hard Lockdown in 2020, but no significant changes in Ox.
FWF Project on Urban Methane Sources
Methane (CH4) is an important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The methane emission budget has a sizeable anthropogenic contribution, which makes methane the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas released from anthropogenic activities. Methane emissions play a key role in hydroxyl consumption, thus contributing to complex interactions central to atmospheric chemistry and climate. Reduction of CH4 emissions can provide quick and cost effective cuts in global warming, but requires a sound understanding of the different anthropogenic sources. Although the total global CH4 budget is relatively well understood, the contributions of individual sources to CH4 emissions are poorly constrained. Anthropogenic methane emissions in Austria are largely based on Tier 1 bottom-up scaling and urban emission sources are subject to significant uncertainty. In collaboration with the JRC Ispra, we propose a holistic top-down approach to constrain methane emissions on the local to urban scale based on eddy flux observations of methane along with a suite of additional chemical markers.
IAO Flux Tower in Innsbruck
NEW paper on Airquality and #CovidLockdown
During the lockdown we find larger emission reductions for classic air pollutants (NOx, NMVOC) than for CO2 – are traffic NOx emissions still underestimated? More:
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/3091/2021/
Hybrid mode teaching this semester
new YouTube stream on Atmospheric Chemsitry and Biogeochemistry:
COVID and Aerosol Sciences:
The urbanized Alps
new feature about our IAO paper in BAMS
IAO overview Paper is now published in BAMS
COVID – SARS – COV2 blog site
we have compiled an overview on AQ and COVID related aspects.
check it out – https://www.atm-phys-chem.at/air-quality-climate-and-sars-cov2-blog/
AMT InnFLUX paper is out
Our Eddy covariance paper is out https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-1447-2020.
Download the MATLAB code here: InnFLUX
COVID AQ Campaign
In addition to our long-term observations at the IAO, we have started extensive AQ measurements in response to the SARS-CoV2 outbreak and a complete lockdown of Western Austria. Austria was among the first European countries (after Italy) to impose an effective quarantine in March 2020. This will be a great dataset to compare with our 2019 campaign that was organized during the same season.
