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Jalkanen, GAW mountain observatories indetection of atmospheric change
Submitted by share-everest on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 15:32.
The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), the long-term global atmospheric chemistry programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), focuses on greenhouse gases, ozone, UV, aerosols, selected reactive gases, and precipitation chemistry and their role in climate, weather, air quality and long range transport/deposition of air pollution.
GAW is a partnership involving contributors from about 80 countries, currently GAW coordinates activities and data from 24 Global stations, 200 Regional stations, and 20 Contributing stations. High altitude surface-based observatories on mountains, ice sheets or plateaus are a critical part of the GAW global atmospheric chemistry observation system.
These include South Pole, Mauna Loa (Hawaii), Izana (Tenerife), Mt. Cimone (Italy), Jungfraujoch (Switzerland), Zugspitze-Hohenpeissenberg (Germany), Sonnblick (Austria), Mt Waliguan (China), Assekrem (Algeria) and Mt. Kenya. These stations are located in background areas where global climate change can be detected, on the other hand they are located in separate air sheds and thus offer different perspectives on regional air chemistry and transport.
Long term observations are necessary to determine trends in atmospheric constituents. In addition, due to the need to detect small changes, the measurements require excellent accuracy which is obtained through the WMO calibration and standardization facilities. The global networks are still incomplete and should be augmented with continuous measurements on the continents, the Arctic, the tropics, and the oceans. GAW products include the WMO Greenhouse Gas and Antarctic Ozone Bulletins.