A bird’s-eye view of our carbon balance By Stacy Mohan
project will give us a clearer “This idea of what we can do to meet our long-term goal of being carbon neutral
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Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher
Baring Head Clean Air Station overlooking Cook Strait. (Dave Allen)
r Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher is looking to turn the internationally accepted science of monitoring greenhouse gas emissions upside down – and the rest of the world is watching closely.
Our current best estimate is that 30 percent of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are offset by forests and land use.
Last year the NIWA atmosphere-ocean scientist was awarded $11.4 million from MBIE’s prestigious Endeavour Fund to develop CarbonWatchNZ.
20 Water & Atmosphere
This ambitious programme aims to build the world’s first complete national-scale picture of a country’s carbon balance based on measurements of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is precisely the sort of detailed information policy makers urgently require if New Zealand is to meet its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. The programme has already prompted the United Nations World Meteorological Organization to highlight New Zealand as an “exemplar” country, providing a template for other nations to follow for their own carbon reporting. June 2019
Looking down from above “Traditionally, greenhouse gas emissions and uptake have been estimated using methods we think of as bottom-up,” Mikaloff-Fletcher explains. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from transport, for example, are currently calculated from estimates based on the amount of fuel burnt by New Zealand vehicles. Forest carbon uptake is estimated by measuring changes in the circumference of trees in a number of set locations. This is combined with forest height and land cover information and scaled up across the country. “In comparison, CarbonWatchNZ will give us a bird’seye view of our carbon emissions and uptake,” says Mikaloff-Fletcher. The project involves measuring CO2 and methane (CH4) in the air above New Zealand at a network of sites around the country. www.niwa.co.nz
