Atmosphere
The growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) reflects the net effect of emissions and uptake resulting from anthropogenic and natural carbon sources and sinks. The anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are primarily generated by human activities, including fossil fuel combustion, energy used in transport sectors, etc. In the urban, energy used in domestic and transport sectors takes more than 80% of the total energy consumption in the UK. In the past decade, renewable energy (RE) technologies, such as solar and wind power, geothermal and hydro power, have gradually been deployed in domestic buildings for heating and electricity. However global fossil CO2 emissions are still more than 4% higher in 2019 compared with those in 2015. In the UK, the recent campaign of CO2 reductions has proposed a policy of the phase-out of coal, and by 2050, the gas boiler could be as obsolete as the coal fire in UK homes. Although many policies for decarbonisation, like the Paris Agreement and integrating REs into urban buildings have been introduced, it is not clear what is the contribution of REs to CO2 reduction. Therefore it is imperative to study the impact of REs integration with existing power generations on the CO2 reduction by using satellite monitoring, analysing the REs supply with on-site response and artificial intelligent technology. Since 1983, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established various Global Atmosphere Watch stations worldwide in different latitudes and longitudes to continuously monitor changes of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations at near-surface level. To understand the transport mechanisms of global greenhouse gases (GHG), JAXA launched Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and GOSAT-2 in 2009 and 2018 for clarifying the sources and sinks of CO2. NASA put the OCO-2 and OCO-3 satellites to operation in 2014 and 2019 for quantifying variations in the column averaged atmospheric CO2 dry air mole fraction, namely XCO2. Chinese carbon dioxide observation satellite (TanSat) was launched on 22 Dec 2016. These satellites provide the ability to retrieve XCO2, and their XCO2 data products have been used to improve our knowledge of natural and anthropogenic CO2 sources and sinks. The synergistic use of complementary measurements is not only addressing the carbon cycles, but also opens a unique opportunity to address some of the main knowledge gaps in atmospheric CO2 for the urban with the prevision of integration of REs into buildings for electricity and heating. The project aims at exploiting the synergic measurements together with REs technology and advanced AI to quantify the effect of REs in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Specifically the key objectives include: • Develop fusion algorithms for combining measurements from different satellites on required spatial and temporal scales for the urbans. • Develop retrieve algorithms of CO2 from satellite and combined measurements • Validate and apply GHG products of satellites to estimate CO2 concentration and distribution • Investigate the energy demand and the energy contribution of RE integration in the urban regions for heating and transportation. • Develop the methods of studying the effect of integrating the REs into urbans to reduce CO2 emission. • Provide policy makers with the evidence of CO2 reduction over regions that have integrated REs as energy suppliers. The proposed project involves a collaboration between the Sustainable Technology Centre at Ulster University, UK and the National Satellite Meteorological Centre (NSMC) at China Meteorological Administration (CMA). Work conducted by both teams are part of their respective research commitments, hence limited funding will be used to support this cooperation research. It is also expected the Dragon 5 program would provide certain amount of funding to support EU partners for attending symposia and for young scientists to carry out the project research.
