Study on long-term CO2 observation at summit of Mt. Fuji


Hitoshi MUKAI
Center for Global Environmental Research (CGER), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).


Introduction
Atmospheric CO2 concentration has been increasing in global scale since the industrial revolution. The seasonal and annual variation in the concentration has a regional characteristics, because the anthropogenic emission and the forest absorption differ by region. Mt. Fuji is positioned the central in main island of Japan. The summit of Mt. Fuji is located in the free troposphere. Therefore, to perform a long-term observation of atmospheric CO2 concentration in the summit is considered to contribute to the elucidation of the variation in the background CO2 concentration in middle latitudes in Asian region. On the other hand, the weather station where is used the observation at the summit is not supplied the power except for summer.
To build a long-term observation system at this site can be applied in other areas where are underdeveloped the power in the future.
In this study, we establish the observation system in the power saving in weather station and to perform a long-term observation of CO2 concentration of latitude in Asia.
 
Results
CO2 concentration at the summit of Mt. Fuji was measured from Aug. 2014 to Aug. 2015 automatically. The highest concentration and the lowest concentration in observation period were 413 ppm and 391 ppm. These were higher 2 ppm than the values of the highest and lowest of last year, and also were higher 12 ppm than the values of those of 2010 that is started the observation at the summit.

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