Climate policy of little value without accurate environmental measurements

When it comes to environmental measurements, the Netherlands has a good reputation. Emissions of the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide (CO₂) have been charted pretty accurately for quite some years now. However, this good reputation is now coming under pressure, says ECN researcher Alex Vermeulen from the Biomass, Coal and Environmental Research unit. “If we cannot continue these measurements, we will lose step with European environmental research, which means the Netherlands could be out of the game very quickly.”

The bold venture that environmental researchers are looking for today, is called ICOS. This stands for Integrated Carbon Observing System. In ICOS European expertise is pooled and measuring stations are setup in order to perform accurate environmental measurements of emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases. At the moment sixteen countries including France (leader of the plan), Germany, Poland, Portugal and the Netherlands are trying to raise the monitoring and analysis of greenhouse gas emissions to a higher level.

“What we have is a unique series of greenhouse gas measurements in an industrialised area”

Funding
The French, Finnish, Swedish, Flemish and Italian ICOS participants have already got the green light from their governments to start putting the plan into practice. In the coming years, they will all receive funding from a few to many millions of euros from their own treasuries. The aim for ICOS is to become operational within two years from now. At the moment, the project is still in the preparatory stage. Seventy-five per cent of this start-up phase is being financed using European research funds (7th Framework Programme for Research).
ICOS-nl was positively assessed by the Van Velzen commission in 2008 and along with seven other projects it was selected from a very large number of proposals as a candidate for Dutch support within the ESFRI framework (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures). However, the corresponding government funds that NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) is going to distribute are by no means sufficient to fund all these projects; in fact, at the moment only one project is being (partly) funded by the money set aside for the 2008-2011 period.
Recently, a new task force, led by W.G. van Velzen, has been set up to look for additional possibilities. How, when and whether anything is going to happen with regard to the Netherlands’ support for ESFRI is entirely unclear. In the meantime, the funding situation for the measurements carried out by ECN and the other ICOS-nl partners has become acute, so much so that there is a danger of the plug being pulled on the measurements in the very near future.

Perfecting measurements
Vermeulen is very resolute about the need for the Netherlands to participate too. ECN acts as the ‘Focal Point’ for ICOS and regularly holds talks with the government, along with research partners including VU University Amsterdam, the University of Groningen, Wageningen University and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). The partners expect that they will need around twenty million euros of funding for the Netherlands’ participation in ICOS in the coming five years. Vermeulen: “About half of that is needed to perfect the measurements, the rest for modelling, analysis and dissemination.”
The current computer models are not sufficiently advanced to be able to analyse the ‘atmospheric mixing machine’ over relatively small surfaces and relatively short spaces of time. This means we have a very unclear picture of national emissions resulting from agriculture, the oxidisation of drained peat bogs, methane emitted by cows and the nitrous oxide from fertilised farmlands, to name a few examples.

A battle for continuity
Eliminating these ‘uncertainties’ requires a steady stream of reliable measurement data. “The chances of getting such a stream are greatest if we pool knowledge and if means are made available for the long term,” says Vermeulen. ICOS Europe, which will cost 250 million euros over a twenty-year period according to its participants, is an attempt at securing the future of these environmental measurements.
Vermeulen, who has over twenty years’ worth of experience in the field, knows how important it is to safeguard the continuity of measurements. “A measurement here and there won’t get you anywhere. And when you consider that those incidental measurements can cost as much as 700 euros a piece, I can see why policy makers are sometimes wont to ask whether they are really necessary?”
ECN was one of the first research institutes in the world to start taking measurements from the KNMI’s 200-metre-high Cabauw measuring mast near Lopik. Vermeulen: “The Netherlands’ reputation still rests on this and the insights derived from these measurements.” ECN now has a unique series of measurements at its disposal that shows a unique trend in greenhouse gases like the well-known Mauna Loa (Hawaii) series, the difference being that the Cabauw series relates to an industrialised area.
Currently, ECN measures the most important greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride) and other air pollutants (carbon monoxide, hydrogen, radon, etc.) from Cabauw. ECN also regularly operates the self-developed advanced MARGA system to determine the amounts and composition of the particulate matter present in the air. Measurements taken from high towers such as the one at Cabauw are representative for a relatively large surface area, by virtue of the altitude. This is because the measurements are not influenced by local emissions as much as those taken just above the earth’s surface.

ECN’s role within ICOS
ECN brings a lot of knowledge about ‘managing’ high measuring masts (also known as Tall Towers) to the Dutch ICOS Team. This knowledge has been gathered through the role ECN played in coordinating the European project for extending the network and linking in existing measurement masts. These days, a whole network of these masts exists throughout Europe. In addition, the research institute is specialised in measuring the atmosphere-biosphere exchange of gases and particles, which has a bearing on the sources and losses of these components. Vermeulen: “We have extremely sophisticated equipment at our disposal that can carry out calculations at high precision.” Finally, ECN can make a valuable contribution to the development of computer models.
“It is absolutely vital that the Netherlands participate in ICOS,” concludes Vermeulen. This is because the Netherlands is a hotspot for the powerful greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane. “It is very important to gather detailed information about the concentration and spread of these gases, to see whether the national climate policy is yielding results and whether concentrations of greenhouse gases are actually falling, for example.”
Something else to take into account is that, in a general sense, the ICOS measurements form the basis for a plethora of scientific articles and reports on climate and the environment, and are therefore often a determining factor in policy-making. Just consider the much-discussed IPCC report. Vermeulen: “This scientific basis will also be an urgent necessity in the future for setting out environmental measures and assessing our progress regarding climate issues.”

Contact
Alex Vermeulen
ECN Biomass, Coal and Environmental Research
Tel.: +31 22 456 4194
E-mail: Alex Vermeulen  

Text: Jorinde Schrijver

Information
Go to ICOS-eu, an ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) project in a ‘preparatory stage’. The Dutch participants have united in ICOS-nl.

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