Commercial Jetliners to Strengthen GHG Monitoring

The JAL Foundation, Japan Airlines (JAL), and the Meteorological Research Institute (MRI) of the Japan Meteorological Agency announced in January that they will start a new joint environmental observation and monitoring plan in fiscal 2006. This plan will reinforce and upgrade an existing environment observation and monitoring project for measuring greenhouse gases in the upper troposphere by scheduled JAL flights.

The current project started in April 1993 and monitors concentrations of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane using measuring equipment on jetliners flying between Australia and Japan. Sampling is done twice a month by collecting air for analysis at every five degrees of latitude. The Foundation releases the data to the public, providing researchers around the world with valuable information for predicting climate change, including global warming.

The new plan aims to develop and install on planes a continuously operating automatic CO2 monitoring device in addition to the current flask sampler (air sampler). Nitrogen monoxide, hydrogen, and sulfur hexafluoride will be added to the list of monitored substances, and the number of aircrafts used for monitoring will be increased from two to six. The development work will proceed through collaboration among industries, educational institutions and the government. The team consists of seven original organizations joined by four new organizations, including Tohoku University and the National Institute for Environmental Studies.

Since the JAL group can't carry out monitoring in areas over which it does not fly, such as in the upper troposphere over Africa, the Foundation will consider encouraging European and US airlines to carry the monitoring devices in future.


- Global Warming Observations from Commercial Jets (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/db/144-e

Posted: 2005/04/14 09:06:01 AM
Japanese version