The Cape Town Carbon Observatory

Abstract

Calculating the greenhouse gas emissions from an area is usually done by adding up all the known sources. Some can be missed, and others under-reported. But there is now a way to conduct an independent check. By measuring the concentration of gases in the air very precisely and continuously, and by knowing how the air moves over the Earth’s surface, it is possible to estimate where the gases came from, and in what quantity. This is called inverse modelling. The method has been developed and tested at the scale of the whole planet, but this does not give any national or local detail – the scales at which greenhouse gas management occurs. The Carbon Observatory project is testing whether the inverse modelling method can be applied at the scale of a large metropolitan area.