NACP breakout group:Atmospheric

Measurements and Analyses: Summary for

the plenaryRoom: Cheyenne I

Time: Monday, 3-5pm

3 main areas of discussion

• Optimization and design of the atmospheric measurement network

• Data centers, data sharing, model documentation and sharing

• Community development, communications, fostering cooperation

Optimization of NACP atmospheric observational network

• Optimal network depends somewhat on research question - focus first on characterizing N American carbon flux.

• Optimal network design research and discussions, including but not limited to MCI, need to be pursued. Funding needed.

• Some increased emphasis on non-CO2 tracers - details to be discussed. Increase ability to characterize fossil fuel emissions top-down. Recommend a white paper on this topic.

• Must have build-out of tall tower network, and continuity of existing observations.

• More continuous ABL CO2 sampling recommended, maybe more free tropospheric CO2 sampling.

Data Center/Data sharing• Atmospheric measurements

– There is no thematic data center for atmospheric measurements.

– Standardize formats as much as possible, and have a site to point to sources. Include flagging methods/standards in this.

– Carbon tracker provides some more potential for synthesizing stationary data sources

– Need a working group to pursue data format standardization and access, perhaps via carbon tracker (NOAA).

• Atmospheric transport modeling– Do we need a thematic data center for the above? This is

MAST-DC. We must talk with them about this. Identify sources that we need, and go to MAST-DC.

– Outcome-based evaluation – have a data center that allows a single PI to do ensemble transport analysis.

– NACP and NACP/MCI should foster intercomparison of elements of atmospheric transport modeling/inversion methods.

Community meeting/workshop activities to make this proceed.

• Trace gas measurement recommendation/white paper.• Back trajectory/influence function comparison activity. Similar comparison

activities for other atmospheric transport/analysis tools.• Meeting/discussion to decide who will host a co2/trace gas data center -

virtual data center.• MAST-DC discussion towards creating a common site to link to all

tools/data needed for a typical top-down atmospheric analysis. ‘one stop shopping’

• Optimal design studies – working group of investigators to decide how best to proceed. There should be funding for this.

• Future meetings– do we need annual NACP meetings? Yes.– We should define purpose for the next meeting – gather results. Include

stakeholders who should evaluate the utility of our results.

• Interaction with stakeholder community - avoid having the political decisions be decoupled from science – initiate interaction.