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ENVIRONMENT: Climate Measurements Better from Siberia

Julio Godoy* - Tierramérica

PARIS, Nov 25 2006 (IPS) - A metal tower standing some 300 metres tall in Siberia, where temperatures can vary 80 degrees Celsius over the course of a year, may produce data that prove essential to understanding global climate change.

Since the end of September, Zotto (a name derived from the initials of its official title: Zotino Tall Tower Observation Facility) has been taking samples from the air over the small Siberian town of Zotino, some 3,000 km east of Moscow, and transmitting data about the chemical composition to several of Europe’s most advanced climate research centres.

The tower was installed during the recent boreal summer in this forested region, which is almost uninhabited and nearly untouched by human activities. Since then it has been continuously measuring the fluctuations in the concentration of so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, which contribute to global warming.

The research station, which is to operate for the next 30 years, is connected to the Institute of Chemical Biogeology at the University of Jena and to the Max Planck Institute, in Maguncia – both in Germany – among other centres in Western Europe.

“The forests of Siberia are an ideal place for measuring the fluctuations of greenhouse effect gases,” Martin Heimann, professor at the University of Jena and Zotto project director, told Tierramérica.

The reasons are various. One is that because of the photosynthesis of the abundant vegetation of the Russian taiga – the boreal biome where conifer forests predominate, with spruce, fir and pine trees – absorb up to 10 percent of the total of greenhouse gases produced worldwide.

Through photosynthesis, plants consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen, helping make Earth inhabitable by humans. Over millennia, this process also transforms solar energy – via plants – into fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas. In Siberia, the plants of the taiga ecosystem are responsible for five to 10 percent of the photosynthesis occurring worldwide.

Furthermore, because of its geographic isolation, the atmosphere around Zotto is free from direct contact with gas emissions from industry.

And, finally, the tower stands dozens of metres higher than the treetops, and is equipped to take air samples from a part of the atmosphere ideal for measuring variations in the levels of greenhouse gases.

“With its 300 metres, the tower reaches the planetary layer bordering the atmosphere, which has been little studied so far,” Claudia Hillinger, research coordinator for the Jena Institute of Chemical Biogeology, told Tierramérica.

She was referring to the planetary boundary layer, the lowest layer of the troposphere directly influenced by the Earth’s surface, which generates changes in air temperature, mass and turbulence in an hour or less.

The tower’s isolation in a forested area covering millions of square kilometres, and the temperature changes that occur there are additional important variables in the measurements, added project director Heimann.

In Siberia, he said, “temperature fluctuations of 80 degrees occur over the course of a year. The region warms up more quickly than other parts of the planet. Trapped in the Siberian soil – frozen most of the year – is up to 10 percent of the carbon produced by photosynthesis worldwide. If the warming of the soil continues, its thawing could release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences for the climate.”

However, the thawing of Siberian soil and the warming of the atmosphere could produce the opposite result: a greater number of plants may grow there, and, through photosynthesis, absorb more carbon than predicted. Measuring these changes is precisely the task of Zotto.

The construction of the tower cost about 2.1 million dollars, and is part of CarboEurope, a programme financed by the European Union for studying climate change.

With the data from Zotto, Hiemann and his team of biogeologists will calculate new estimates of climate change influenced by greenhouse gases. Information from the tower is transmitted by satellite first to the regional capital of Krasnoyarsk, 150 km southeast of the station, and then to the researchers in Jena and Maguncia, some 5,000 km southwest of Zotino.

There, the information is added to databases and compared with measurements of greenhouse gases at 30 similar research stations scattered across Europe.

Scientists say the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is greater than ever recorded previously, and continues to increase, due mainly to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Carbon dioxide is the main contributor to the greenhouse effect.

The warming of the atmosphere could release large quantities of carbon dioxide produced by photosynthesis and trapped in the biosphere. This would contribute to even greater imbalance in the climate and counteract the efforts to reduce industrial emissions stipulated in international treaties like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

(*Originally published Nov. 18 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)