The Xianghe ground-based Fourier transfer infrared spectrometer (FTIR) run by IAP became an operational site of the Total Column Carbon Observing Network (
TCCON) on 3 September 2021, and Dr. ZHOU Minqiang, who is currently working in the team of Prof. WANG Pucai with IAP, became a member of the Steering Committee of TCCON on the same day.
TCCON is an international network of ground-based FTIR targeting the provision of highly accurate and precise column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of atmospheric components including CO2, CH4, N2O, HF, CO, H2O, and HDO. Since TCCON can provide long-term, quasi-continuous greenhouse gas column measurements, it is widely used for the validation of the corresponding satellite products and atmospheric model simulations. TCCON measurements are critical for carbon cycle study.
TCCON is established in 2004, and it has been expanded to 26 operational sites globally now. However, most TCCON sites are located in North America and Europe. To fill the TCCON gap in North China, Prof. Pucai Wang from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP, CAS), leads his team to start the FTIR measurements at Xianghe, Hebei, in 2018. Collaborated with the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), more than 3-years greenhouse gas columns have been successfully retrieved at Xianghe, and a series of results have been published in peer-reviewed journals (Yang et al., 2020; Ji et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020).
Map of the TCCON global sites (as of September, 2021)
The ongoing FTIR measurements at the Xianghe TCCON site will provide fundamental datasets to support the validation of Chinese carbon monitoring satellites, the verification of the greenhouse model simulation, the evaluation of the carbon flux, and the progress of the Chinese carbon neutral.
The ground-based FTIR instrument at Xianghe TCCON site (left) together with the solar tracker (right)
