Results of a Long-Term International Comparison of Greenhouse Gas and Isotope Measurements at the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Observatory in Alert, Nunavut, Canada

• Main Authors: Worthy, Douglas E. J., Rauh, Michele K., Huang, Lin, Vogel, Felix R., Chivulescu, Alina, Masarie, Kenneth A., Langenfelds, Ray L., Krummel, Paul B., Allison, Colin E., Crotwell, Andrew M., Madronich, Monica, Pétron, Gabrielle, Levin, Ingeborg, Hammer, Samuel, Michel, Sylvia, Ramonet, Michel, Schmidt, Martina, Jordan, Armin, Moossen, Heiko, Rothe, Michael, Keeling, Ralph, Morgan, Eric J.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Nunavut; Climate change
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2023-99; https://amt.copernicus.org/preprints/amt-2023-99/

Since 1999, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has been coordinating a multi-laboratory comparison of measurements of long-lived greenhouse gases in whole air samples collected at the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Alert Observatory located in the Canadian high Arctic (82°28' N, 62°30' W). In this paper, we evaluate the measurement agreement of atmospheric CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, SF 6 , and stable isotopes of CO 2 ( δ 13 C, δ 18 O) between leading laboratories from 7 independent international institutions. The measure of success is linked to target goals for network compatibility outlined by the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) GAW greenhouse gas measurement community. Overall, based on ~8000 discrete flask samples, we find that the co-located atmospheric CO 2 and CH 4 measurement records from Alert by CSIRO, MPI-BGC, SIO, UHEI-IUP, ECCC, and NOAA are generally consistent with the WMO compatibility goals of ±0.1 ppm CO 2 and ±2 ppb CH 4 over the 17-year period (1999 – 2016), although there are periods where differences exceed target levels and persist as systematic bias for months or years. Consistency with the WMO goals for N 2 O, SF 6 , and stable isotopes of CO 2 ( δ 13 C, δ 18 O) has not been demonstrated. Additional analysis of co-located comparison measurements between CSIRO, SIO, and NOAA at other geographical sites suggests that the findings at Alert for CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O and δ 13 C-CO 2 could be extended across the CSIRO, SIO, and NOAA observing networks. Two approaches are carried out to determine the level of agreement as a collective for the 7 individual laboratories (1) pooling the differences of individual laboratories over the entire sampling records from a designated reference laboratory and determining the 95th percentile range of these data points and (2) averaging the 2 standard deviations (2-sigma) of the means for all flask samples taken in each individual sampling episode over the entire sampling record. For CO 2 , from 5691 samples, we derive a measurement agreement level ...