The majority of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions originates from cities, therefore monitoring emissions in cities is essential to fight climate change. Munich sets up an ambitious emission reduction goal to cut CO2 emissions by 10% every 5 years and be carbon neutral by 2050. It is the research objective of Prof. Chen's group (Environmental Sensing and Modeling) to identify the emission sources and quantify the city emissions using novel measurement concepts such as differential column measurements.
In September and October 2017, an international joint campaign led by Prof. Chen and her group has been carried out, to determine the greenhouse gas and NOx emissions in Munich. The partners include Harvard, DLR, KIT, and LMU. The team deployed 6 solar-tracking Fourier transform spectrometers in and around Munich for measuring CO2, CH4 and CO, and 2 MAX-DOAS for measuring NOx.
This campaign is a follow-up of a series of city investigations carried out in US, including Indianapolis and San Francisco Bay Area (PI: Prof. Wofsy, Harvard).
Title description of the photo: side-by-side measurements of the 6 solar-tracking spectrometers. From left to right: Florian Dietrich (TUM), Andreas Luther (DLR), Michael Wedrat (TUM), Jia Chen (TUM), Ralph Kleinschek (DLR), Francisco Toja-Silva (TUM).