New CDIAC Data Products, Publications, and Activities
January 2013
The gridded fossil-fuel CO2 emission products web pages, pointers, DOIs, and search XMLs have been updated. The 2012 version of these databases present time-series estimates on a 1° latitude × 1° longitude of CO2 emissions in units of million metric tons of carbon from fossil-fuel consumption and cement production per year and annual, global mean value of δ 13C of CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources for 1751-2009. Detailed geographic information on CO2 emissions can be critical in understanding the pattern of the atmospheric and biospheric response to these emissions. Carbon isotopic signatures reflect the changing mix of coal, petroleum, and natural gas being consumed and the changing mix of petroleum from various producing areas with characteristic isotopic signatures. A new interface has been developed for users to query, visualize, and download the latest CDIAC fossil-fuel CO2 emission estimates.
The NASA/GISS surface air temperature time series produced by Dr. James Hansen and colleagues, which provides a measure of the changing global surface temperature, has been updated through 2012. The global average surface temperature in 2012 was the ninth warmest since 1880 (see the 2013 NASA press release), continuing a trend in which nine of the ten warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.
The global and hemispheric temperature time series of Jones et al., produced jointly by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UK) and the Hadley Center of the UK Meteorological Office, have been updated through 2012. 2012 was the tenth warmest year in the global record. The northern and southern hemisphere annual trend series show some general similarities, but there are several notable differences. A steady period of warming is seen for the northern hemisphere from about 1910 through the mid-1940s. For the southern hemisphere, there is less warming observed from about 1910 through 1930, with sudden and rapid warming from about 1930 through the mid-1940s. The northern hemisphere record shows gradual cooling from the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, followed by rather steady temperature increases thereafter. The southern hemisphere shows an abrupt shift to cooler temperatures after 1945, quite variable temperatures until the mid-1960s, followed by a gradual increase over the remainder of the record.
December 2012
- AGAGE data on radiatively active ("greenhouse") and ozone-depleting gases have been updated through March 2012. Most previous trends continue; methane, nitrous oxide, HCFC-22, HCFCs 141b and 142b, HFC-134a, and sulfur hexafluoride continue to increase; CFCs-11, -12, and -113 and carbon tetrachloride continue to decline. Halon 1211 continues to decline slowly, and halon 1310 may be leveling off. Time series graphs of all reported species can be found here.
- HIPPO data are now available through the CDIAC HIPPO Data Archive. As a contribution by the U.S. Department of Energy to the HIPPO project, CDIAC Staff assembled and developed documentation for HIPPO integrated data products, and a website to make them available. The complementary EOL HIPPO Data Archive managed at NCAR/EOL provides component data and additional documentation and information. The archives have been online since November 30, 2012.
The HIPPO (HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations) study of the carbon cycle and greenhouse gases measured meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, and aerosol constituents along transects from approximately pole-to-pole over the Pacific Ocean. HIPPO flew hundreds of vertical profiles from the ocean/ice surface to as high as the tropopause, at five times during different seasons over a three year period from 2009-2011. HIPPO provides the first high-resolution vertically-resolved global survey of a comprehensive suite of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols pertinent to understanding the carbon cycle and challenging global climate models. HIPPO was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
- Bob Andres attended the American Geophysical Union's 45th annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA, from 3-7 December 2012. He showed the poster, "How a new uncertainty estimate of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption affects our understanding of the source/sink nature of the terrestrial biosphere" with co-author Tom Boden of CDIAC. Bob also was a co-author on four other presentations at the meeting.
November 2012
An Interface for Exploring United States Record-Maximum/Minimum Daily Temperatures — DayRec — was released by CDIAC. The interface uses daily Tmax and Tmin data from NOAA's GHCN-Daily database to examine record-setting U.S. temperatures over the period 1911-2010. Data for four types of daily temperature records can be explored, (1) record-high maximum ("hot Tmax"), (2) record-low maximum ("cool Tmax"), (3) record-high minimum ("warm Tmin") and (4) record-low minimum ("cold Tmin"). These extremes can be thought of as reflecting the hottest/coolest days and the warmest/coldest nights.
October 2012
September 2012
- CDIAC released a redesign of its website. The new design has:
- A more modern look and feel
- More intuitive navigation to enable quicker data discovery
- Support for additional viewing platforms (e.g., mobile devices and tablets)
- More apparent and distinct presentation/organization of CDIAC data holdings and CDIAC-supported programs
The content and functionality of many second-level pages (e.g., graphical user interfaces) are largely unchanged. The site redesign does not affect the observing program websites that are linked to CDIAC (i.e., AmeriFlux, Ocean CO2, FACE , HIPPO, NARSTO, NGEE-Arctic, and SPRUCE). Please contact us if you have any difficulty with the site, and, as always, we welcome your comments and questions.
- Bob Andres attended the 12th International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Open Science Conference in Beijing, China, from 17-21 September 2012. He showed the poster, "Uncertainty associated with global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption” with co-author T. Boden of CDIAC. While in Beijing, Bob also gave invited lectures at Tsinghua University and Peking University.
August 2012
- Bob Andres is a coauthor on the paper, "The European land and inland water CO2, CO, CH4 and N2O balance between 2001 and 2005," published in Biogeosciences 9: 3357-3380. doi:10.5194/bg-9-3357-2012.
CDIAC released a new climate data product - Daily Temperature and Precipitation Data for 518 Russian Meteorological Stations by O.N. Bulygina and V.N. Razuvaev of the All-Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information-World Data Centre (RIHMI-WDC), Obninsk, Russia. CDIAC has a long history of working with RIHMI-WDC to make historical former-USSR and Russian climate data available to the world. This latest installment contains data through 2010.
- Extended Edited Synoptic Cloud Reports from Ships and Land Stations Over the Globe (NDP-026C), compiled by C.J. Hahn, S.G. Warren, and R. Eastman, has been updated with land-based cloud reports through 2009.
- Cloud Climatology for Land Stations Worldwide, 1971-2009 (NDP-026D), compiled by C.J. Hahn, S.G. Warren, and R. Eastman, has been updated through 2009.
- Bob Andres attended the AOGS-AGU (WPGM) Joint Assembly 2012 in Singapore, from 12-17 August 2012. He gave an invited talk, "The magnitude and uncertainty of Asian fossil-fuel-carbon-dioxide emissions in a global context". Co-authors included T. Boden of CDIAC) and chaired a session.
CDIAC has created "gateway" pages for carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and radiatively active halogenated species in order to provide better access to data on these atmospheric gases and aerosols. Additional pages covering isotopes (modern and ice-core) are in preparation.
The "modern" data pages provide links to data bases from agencies or universities that provide data from atmospheric samples at currently active stations. There are also some links to records for individual locations that have discontinued their records for one reason or another. For paleoenvironmental records, there are separate pages providing links to the 800,000-year ice-core records of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from Dome C, and from the 400,000 year ice-core record from the Vostok site, both in Antarctica. These data are maintained by the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When using any of these data, be certain to give credit to the original investigators who made the effort to obtain the data and to assure their quality. Citation instructions are given at the end of each gateway page. If any data are to be used in a published work, be sure to contact the principal investigator(s) at an early stage of the research to assure that the data are being interpreted and used correctly.
July 2012
June 2012
AGAGE data have been updated through September 2011. CFC-12 continues its downward trend. HFC-152a, another halocarbon used in vehicle air conditioners, is showing signs of leveling off, possibly due to its short atmospheric lifetime of 1.4 years. Halons 1211 and 1301 are fire extinguishing agents that have been replaced with HFC-125 and HFC-227, a change primarily to protect stratospheric ozone. Halon 1211 concentrations are decreasing and Halon 1301 concentrations are leveling off, as concentrations of their replacements continue to increase.
- Bob Andres attended the 2012 ACCENT-IGAC-GEIA Conference in Toulouse, France, from 11-13 June 2012. He presented the poster, "A new estimate of uncertainty associated with global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption" and was a coauthor on the poster "A monthly high-resolution fossil fuel CO2 emission inventory for recent years, 2000-2010".
May 2012
Bob Andres and Tom Boden were first and second authors on the paper, "A synthesis of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion" which was published in Biogeosciences. The paper discusses the emissions of CO2 from fossil-fuel combustion and cement production. These CO2 emissions continue to increase with time primarily due to electricity generation and road transportation. While much is known about fossil-fuel CO2 emissions, much is yet to be understood, especially at the temporal and spatial scales of countries and smaller political units where combustion (and mitigation) actions are taken.
April 2012
CDIAC has updated their daily data included in NOAA's United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) Database through 2011. The files include daily maximum and minimum temperature, daily precipitation amount, daily snowfall amount, and daily snow depth from 1218 stations across the contiguous U.S.
- Bob Andres attended The Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Principal Investigator's Meeting in Washington, D.C., from 23-24 April 2012. He presented the poster, "Temporal, spatial, and uncertainty aspects of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion: Highlights of recent TES funding".
March 2012
February 2012
AGAGE data have now been updated through March 2011 and the results have been incorporated in the Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations page. Concentrations of CFC-12 continue a slow downward trend, along with CFC-11 and CFC-113 which have been decreasing for a longer time. Halon 1211 concentration is also decreasing, and Halon 1301 seems to be leveling off. However, concentrations of several other monitored compounds continue to increase, notably methane CH4 and nitrous oxide N2O. Concentrations of N2O have been increasing at a steady pace of 0.75 parts per billion by volume per year.
Globally averaged atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations for 2011 exceeded 390 parts per million by volume (ppmv). The preliminary figure presented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is 390.5. ppmv (Conway and Tans, 2012).
The NASA Goddard Institute Space Studies global surface air temperature time series produced by Dr. James Hansen and colleagues, has been updated through 2011. The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880 (see the January 2012 NASA press release), continuing a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000.
- Robert Andres is a co-author on the recent paper, "A global coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian model and 1×1km CO2 surface flux dataset for high-resolution atmospheric CO2 transport simulations". The paper describres a method to simulate atmospheric CO2 concentrations at several continuous observation sites around the globe using surface fluxes at a very high spatial resolution. The model performs well in representing observations of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at high spatial and temporal resolutions, especially for coastal sites and sites located close to sources of large anthropogenic emissions, suggesting that the model could be used for other atmospheric compounds with known estimated emissions.
The NDP-088(V2011): "Global Ocean Surface Water Partial Pressure of CO2 Database: Measurements Performed During 1957-2011 (Version 2011)" is now available. Approximately 6.4 million measurements of surface water pCO2 made over the global oceans during 1957-2011 have been processed to make a uniform data file. Measurements made in open oceans as well as in coastal waters are included. The data assembled include only those measured using equilibrator-CO2 analyzer systems, and have been quality-controlled based upon the stability of the system performance, the reliability of calibrations for CO2 analysis and the internal consistency of data.
CDIAC has updated through 2011 the monthly data records contained in their release of NOAA's United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) Database, which may be obtained through the CDIAC graphical user interface or via anonymous FTP.
