A Design for Unattended Monitoring of Carbon Dioxide on a Very Tall Tower
Open Access
- 1 October 1997
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology
- Vol. 14 (5) , 1139-1145
- https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0426(1997)014<1139:adfumo>2.0.co;2
Abstract
Unattended measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) mixing ratio at three altitudes up to 496 m above the surface on a television transmitter tower in the southeastern United States have been made for a period of 4 yr. This report describes the design of the automatic tower measuring system in detail. A nondispersive infrared (NDIR) analyzer is used to measure the CO2 concentration continuously. Real-time control and data collection uses a PC 486 running under the multitasking operating system QNX. The CO2 data show strong diurnal and seasonal variations, and large vertical gradients. A comparison of this study’s continental tower data with data from “background” sites should provide a strong constraint for regional and global models of terrestrial CO2 fluxes.Keywords
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