Key Goals
Create a global Carbon Dew paradigm for the most robust, scalable, and credible near-real-time carbon and GHG measurements in and out of the atmosphere.
Empower stakeholders to develop climate solutions, and to manage, trade, and offset emitted and sequestered carbon through uniform impartial carbon and GHG measurements.
Develop long-term partnerships to empower all stages of the paradigm and run a medium-scale pilot of the entire process to test and demonstrate how the paradigm works.
Our Approach
Our approach is similar to the existing weather measurements paradigm, where a mix of public and private near-real-time weather data is used for various non-profit and for-profit endeavors.
Directly measure carbon and GHG emission and sequestration rates into and out of the air at multiple hundreds of existing locations around the globe, using a technology transfer of high-precision, high-speed atmospheric measurement methods used in academic research for the past 35 years (e.g., eddy covariance and soil chambers) into mainstream climate solution applications.
Initiate the technology transfer through project-scale direct Flux Mapping of existing and future local, regional, continental and global datasets of direct measurements such as AmeriFlux, ICOS, NEON, and FLUXNET. Flux Mapper unlocks impartial quantification, development, and validation of nature-based and technological climate solutions through 10-100 fold improved statistical power, definition of carbon and GHG sources and sinks, process attribution, quantification of co-emissions and co-benefits, and ease-of-use.
Achieve a reliable stream of near-real-time, directly-measured carbon and GHG exchange ground truth for anchoring remote sensing products and resulting carbon models.
Work with partners to strategically add direct measurements to the areas where carbon emission and sequestration are especially high, variable, or uncertain. Examples include production agriculture, timber production, smaller-scale land management in urban and industrial areas, CCUS sites, parks and recreation, etc.
For all of the above, create a simple value of carbon emitted into the air or sequestered from the air and its uncertainty at the specific geographic pixel and time interval.
Lock this fundamental value in a blockchain to prevent tampering, deleting, or modifying the value itself.
Enable stakeholders to access such value in ways similar to how weather data are accessed, including mobile applications and computer program interfaces. This will facilitate public awareness and confidence, climate solution research, carbon and GHG certificate intercomparisons, development of regulatory and financial products and tools, climate-smart technologies, practices and commercial services, and national as well as local policies.
Stakeholders could trade such value directly, reprocess or repackage it into more sophisticated financial or trading products, tools, and commercial services. Paths to monetization also include licensing to credit originators, offset buyers and marketplaces, various means of connecting pixel-scale carbon and GHG exchange to regulatory and management practices, and certification protocols.
Recommended Reading
Burba G., J. Berry, J. Gamon, K. Guan, C. Neale, G.Pastorello, and K. Sakowska, 2021. Directly Measuring Carbon In-situ at a Field Scale: Accurate, Verifiable, Defensible. UIC Annual Spring Meeting, Loveland, Colorado, June 22-26, 2021.
Burba, G., 2022. Eddy Covariance Method for Scientific, Regulatory, and Commercial Applications. LI-COR Biosciences, Lincoln, USA, Hard- and Softbound, 702 pp. ISBN: 978-0-578-97714-0. See at LI-COR, Google Books.
Burba G., 2022. 2100+ CO2 and H2O Flux Measurements Across the Globe: Sitting on a Golden Egg? The 5th ICOS Science Conference on Greenhouse Gases and Biogeochemical Cycles, Utrecht, The Netherlands, September 13-15.
Gurney, K. and Shepson, P., 2021. The power and promise of improved climate data infrastructure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(35), p.e2114115118.
Hemes, K.S., Runkle, B.R., Novick, K.A., Baldocchi, D.D. and Field, C.B., 2021. An ecosystem-scale flux measurement strategy to assess natural climate solutions. Environmental science & technology, 55(6), pp.3494-3504.
Jungmann, M., Vardag, S.N., Kutzner, F., Keppler, F., Schmidt, M., Aeschbach, N., Gerhard, U., Zipf, A., Lautenbach, S., Siegmund, A. and Goeschl, T., 2022. Zooming-in for climate action—hyperlocal greenhouse gas data for mitigation action?. Climate Action, 1(1), pp.1-8.
Metzger, S., Junkermann, W., Mauder, M., Butterbach-Bahl, K., Trancon y Widemann, B., Neidl, F., Schäfer, K., Wieneke, S., Zheng, X. H., Schmid, H. P., and Foken, T.: Spatially explicit regionalization of airborne flux measurements using environmental response functions, Biogeosciences, 10, 2193-2217, doi:10.5194/bg-10-2193-2013, 2013.
Metzger, S., 2018. Surface-atmosphere exchange in a box: Making the control volume a suitable representation for in-situ observations. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 255, pp.68-80
Metzger, S., N. Romano, S. Weintraub-Leff, G. Burba, P. Oikawa et al, 2023. Carbon Dew: Direct Greenhouse Gas Exchange Measurements for Equitable Worldwide Emissions Trading. Battelle 2023 Conference "Innovations in Climate Resilience", Columbus Ohio, March 28-30 (submitted)
Novick, K. A., Metzger, S., Anderegg, W. R. L., Barnes, M., Cala, D. S., Guan, K., Hemes, K. S., Hollinger, D. Y., Kumar, J., Litvak, M., Lombardozzi, D., Normile, C. P., Oikawa, P., Runkle, B. R. K., Torn, M., and Wiesner, S.: Informing nature-based climate solutions for the U.S. with the best-available science, Global Change Biol., 1-17, doi:10.1111/gcb.16156, 2022.
Novick, K., Williams, C., Runkle, B., Anderegg, W. R. L., Hollinger, D., Litvak, M., Normile, C., Shrestha, G., Almaraz, M., Anderson, C., Barnes, M., Baldocchi, D., Colburn, L., Cullenward, D., Evans, M., Guan, K., Keenan, T., Lamb, R., Larson, L., Oldfield, E., Poulter, B., Reyes, J., Sanderman, J., Selmants, P., Sepulveda Carlo, E., Torn, M. S., Trugman, A., and Woodall, C.: White Paper: The science needed for robust, scalable, and credible nature-based climate solutions in the United States: Summary Report., Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, U.S.A., 16 pp., doi:10.5967/5968rgp-tc5911, 2022.
Williams, C., et al, 2022. North American Carbon Program Science Implementation Plan. NACP, 161 pp. See at NACARBON.
Xu, K., Metzger, S. and Desai, A.R., 2017. Upscaling tower-observed turbulent exchange at fine spatio-temporal resolution using environmental response functions. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 232, pp.10-22.
Zhuravlev, R., Dara A., Santos A.L.D.D., Demidov O., and G. Burba, 2022. Globally Scalable Approach to Estimate Net Ecosystem Exchange Based on Remote Sensing, Meteorological Data, and Direct Measurements of Eddy Covariance Sites. Preprints 2022090273 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202209.0273.v1)
More coming soon... or not so soon :)