Antarctic Research Centre Te Puna Pātiotio

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Hayden Young

Contact

Email: h.young@gns.cri.nz
Mobile: 0204 079 5665
Office: GNS Science, Gracefield

Qualifications

BSc Hons Victoria University of Wellington (2021)
MSc Candidate

MSc thesis

Title

Investigating the effectiveness of CO as a tracer for fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions for high resolution measurements in Auckland, New Zealand.

Supervisors

    Project objectives and description

    Climate change has become one of the biggest environmental problems the world faces today. With temperatures and carbon emissions rising globally, it is becoming more and more important to accurately quantify and understand these emissions. One way to characterise these emissions is to track the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere sourced from fossil fuels, CO2ff. This can be achieved by making radiocarbon measurements of 14C, an isotope of carbon that is a tracer for CO2ff. While this method has shown to be quite accurate, it is expensive and unrealistic to perform at high resolution. As a result, alternate methods need to be explored.

    CO is another tracer for fossil fuel use. It is produced by incomplete combustion reactions which occur in processes such as burning fossil fuels, biomass, or biofuels. Since CO has non-fossil fuel-based sources and also reacts in the atmosphere, it is not as accurate a tracer as 14CO2 but is much cheaper and easier to measure. By taking weekly 14CO2 measurements and combining them with hourly CO measurements, it becomes possible to obtain high resolution CO2ff estimates by using the emission ratio of CO to CO2ff. This emission ratio is influenced by the types of combustion processes that are occurring and can vary substantially with location and time of day. This poses the question, is CO a viable tracer for fossil fuel-based CO2 in New Zealand?

    Over the course of this project, I will:

    • Take flask samples of air from different locations in the Auckland region at different times of day.
    • Extract CO2 from the flask and perform radiocarbon measurements.
    • Calculate and compare the variance in the emission ratio CO:CO2ff at different locations/times of day.
    • Compare hourly CO2ff calculations made using CO to hourly CO2ff calculations from 14CO2.
    • Determine the effectiveness of CO as a tracer for CO2ff and the influence of the increased amount of wood burning as a source of heating in New Zealand compared to other countries.