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A European Infrastructure for Monitoring GHG Fluxes
21 November 2011
icos2The pilot phase of the new European Infrastructure ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) was launched last October at the FAO headquarters in Rome.

The project, financed by the European Commission, involves various institutions of around 20 European countries, and aims to quantify and understand the greenhouse gas balance of the European continent.
The ICOS project will set up a European long term monitoring network to assess the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the continent in an integrated way. When complete, the network will be made up of more than 100 monitoring sites coordinated by three thematic centres, a central analytical laboratory and a central coordination office. The system will provide standardized, long-term, high precision monitoring of the three main green house gases CO2, CH4 and N2O, and of ecosystem fluxes of CO2, water and heat.

Italy will coordinate the pilot phase (ICOS Demonstration Experiment), through the University of Tuscia and the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change (CMCC), and with the support of the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea. This first phase will involve just a limited number of sites for atmospheric and land monitoring, and will be useful in assessing the interactions between the monitoring stations and the central coordination office, thus enabling to better the development of the entire network for the following phase.

For more information please visit the official website.

 

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