Something to look at!

Hi, This is the graph showing the assembled 12-CO2 Picarro measurements from the 9th to the 26th of October.

Enjoy!

- Jan-Erik

Transportation Study in Montreal

This is from a report (following a transportation conference) by Chapleau and Morency (from the Civil Engineering Department (Transportation) at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal): "Generic in nature but specific to the methodological procedures undertaken in the Greater Montreal Area (GMA), the CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview) household survey is conducted about every five years over a 5% sample. Typically, it represents about 160,000 people belonging to 65,000 households declaring some 400,000 individual trip records for an average weekday. Individual trips are geo-referenced for the residence, trip origin and destination, modal junction points (kiss-and-ride and park-and-ride locations), and are described for their household and personal characteristics (age, gender, car license, car ownership, income) in addition to the trip attributes (purpose, mode, departure time, train-subway-bus routes taken if traveling by transit, bridges and highway taken if traveling by car)."

They have a lot of GIS analysis done on transportation ranging from buses, cars to subway trains. A nice map they made was the percentage of motorized trips in Montreal am rush hour:

We could contact them for the data if we find it is useful!

-Angela.

Mount-Royal Flasks

This morning at 7am (it was still dark outside), Pogo and myself took our first flask measurment! I placed a stick with a Yellow Flag in the ground and I tied an Orange tape across a branch in the air at the spot where i took the measurments. It is directly facing you when you reach the top of the stairs.

-Atleast it is warm today, Angela.

Principles of Urban Meteorology (re atmospheric CO2)

(by Andrew)

The generalization of fundamental meteorological principles over urban environments is more problematic than to other land surfaces. This is for three reasons. First, the heterogeneity of roughness elements within the complex 3-D geometry of the urban “canopy” creates spatial variability in turbulence patterns. Second, the multiple sources and sinks of momentum, heat, moisture, and emissions creates spatial variability in fluxes and concentrations. Third, the impact of human activities to continually re-shape and alter, in new and distinct ways, the urban environment itself limits the long-term validity of any findings. In short, there is considerable uncertainty concerning the dynamics of the unique microclimates found within previously understudied and increasingly complex urban areas.

Both across cities and between cities, significant spatial and temporal variability in CO2 concentrations and fluxes can be expected as a consequence of the distribution of anthropogenic sources (mobile and fixed), processes of urban vegetation (including irrigation, and patterns of atmospheric convection and advection. Previous studies have shown that there is a marked and distinct diurnal cycle in the concentration of CO₂ with a morning peak attributable to anthropogenic (largely traffic), biogenic (nocturnal respiration), and meteorological (atmospheric stability) factors. In contrast, a mid-afternoon minimum can be attributed to vegetative photosynthesis and strong convective turbulence; concentrations then begin to rise again during the evening “rush-hour” traffic-flow.

....

The main roughness elements in urban environments are trees and buildings. Other than being large, trees and buildings share few characteristics of meteorological significance. Aerodynamically, buildings are true “bluff” bodies because of their impermeability, inflexibility, and sharp edges. When exposed to airflow they create strong positive and negative pressure differences over their surface, leading to flow separation and vortex shedding. Trees are also good generators of mechanical turbulence but buildings have to be judged as more effective roughness elements. The effects of smaller roughness elements, such as cars or paved surfaces, are minimum in comparison.

Three spatial scales are commonly utilized for studying urban environments:

-       the micro-scale (10¹–10²m) involves spatial differences in response to individual roughness elements (variability in building/canyon dimensions, trees) and proximity to localized emissions sources (e.g. roads, vegetation);

-       the local-scale (10²–10⁴ m) represents the integrated response of an array of roughness elements with spatial variability reflecting the unique characteristics of different neighborhoods/land-uses;

-       and the meso-scale (10⁴–10⁵ m) considers the city in its entirely, and differentiated from its surroundings, areas of forest, agriculture, etc.

The urban canopy layer (UCL) is defined as being from the ground to the mean height of the roughness elements, usually just below roof –level, where micro-scale effects of the site characteristics are dominated. The UCL is most clearly delineated in areas of high building density; it may be discontinuous or absent in less densely developed suburban areas.

The layer extending from the top of the UCL, to a height where urban surface influences are no longer perceptible, is defined the urban boundary layer (UBL). It includes the roughness sub-layer immediately affected by the individual roughness elements, the turbulent surface layer (local-scale), and the outer mixed layer (meso-scale).

....

Of those studies employing atmospheric-based measurement methods to study CO2 concentrations in urban environments to date, virtually all, with a few exceptions, have focused on the micro-scale, considering processes and patterns within the UCL. Inadequate attention has as yet focused on how micro-scale results can be extrapolated to larger scales and on how to accurately study the local-scale using atmospheric-based measurement methods. 

In regards to the latter, current debates focus on determining the height (or “depth”) of the roughness sub-layer, in which the perturbations caused by individual roughness elements are “blended” together due to atmospheric turbulence. It is as this height that instruments are to be placed in order to study at the local-scale that is spatially representative of a distinct urban neighbourhood/land-use. To be sure, placing instruments are greater heights than this leads to increased risk of incurring errors due to advection from dissimilar upwind surfaces and storage changes below the measurement level due to vertical flux divergence.

It is known that the height of the roughness sub-layer is a function of both the length/height of roughness elements (z_H) and their horizontal spacing. More recent research suggests that the latter factor may in fact be the primary determinant. It has been estimated that, as a general “rule-of-thumb”, instruments must be mounted at a height at least twice the mean height of the roughness elements (approximately 20-90m) to ensure that they are above the influence of individual roughness elements and, therefore, that the measurements represent an integrated response at the local-scale.

....

References

Grimmond, C.S.B., et al. (2006) Progress in measuring and observing the urban atmosphere.

Theoretical and Applied Climatology 84, 3-22.

Grimmond, C.S.B., et al. (2002) Local-scale fluxes of carbon dioxide in urban environments:

methodological challenges and results from Chicago. Environmental Pollution 116,

243-254.

Kanada, Manabu. (2007) Progress in Urban Meteorology: A Review. Journal of the

Meteorological Society of Japan 85B, 363-383.

Koerner, B. and J. Klopatek. (2002) Anthropogenic and natural CO2 emission sources in an

arid urban environment. Environmental Pollution 116, 45-51.

Nemitz, E., K. J. Hargreaves, A. G. McDonald, J. R. Dorsey, and D. Fowler (2002) Micrometerological Measurements of the Urban Heat Budget and CO₂ Emissions on a City Scale. Environ. Sci. Technology 36, 3139-3146.

Oke, T.R., et al. (1988) The urban energy balance. Progress in Physical Geography 12, 471-

483.

Oke, T.R., et al. (1989) The Micrometeorology of the Urban Forest. Philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society of London 324, 335-349.

Wentz, Elizabeth A., et al. (2002) Spatial Patterns and Determinants of Winter Atmospheric

Carbon Dioxide Concentrations in an Urban Environment. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99(1), 15-28.

Random Picture and Maps

I posted some pictures and maps I have that may be usefull for our website!
- Angela.

Montreal Land Use Map: map showing land use in montreal from the City of Montreal website.

Drivers to Work: Here is a map showing the percentage of drivers for each bourough from The City of Montreal website (Source is Stats Canada though).

Studay Area: This is a Satelite image from Google maps.

Site Area: Map from google maps.

3D Site Area: From Google Earth.

Mc Tavish and Burnside Wind Speed and Direction (Oct 21-22)

I looked at wind speeds and directions from thursday 21st to friday 22nd. The attached graphs show you what I have found out. First of all, I realised that the Burnside data (for whatever reason) is shifted by 4 hours. So the wind data are recorded with a time tb = tt + 4. To correct for this difference I simply subtracted 4 hours in the time columns for burnside. That is why the burnside data actually starts at t = -4. Note that the datasets end at 8pm local time on the 22nd October (that means at t = 44h, 4 hours before midnight).
If we correct for this shift the two data records correlate quite well. However, this is only based on qualitative estimation. As you can see from the Windrose plots, during relatively large time intervals Burnside and McTavish have more or less the same wind direction.
However, I tried some regression analysis and the correlation coefficients for the wind direction is always very low. That mean we don't have a quantitative proof yet to confirm our hypothesis. Maybe we can ask one of the profs to find out how we can use statistics to proof our finding quantitatively.

- Jan-erik

Weekend CO2 Events

Over the weekend I witnessed a few potential sources of CO2. A building was on fire Friday afternoon and Saturday day and night University street was closed for construction on the sewers.

Friday, on René-Lévesque Blvd. near the intersection with de Lorimier Ave. at 2 p.m. fire crews were on the scene of a two-alarm blaze.

Saturday, morning till night, university street right next to our machine was emmitting this huge cloud of white smoke. I asked the workers what they were doing and they said repairing the sewers. (See pictures posted below, taken at 10pm Saturday night).

Next week I think it would be cool to see if we can detect these events with the use of piccaro and wind speed and directions!

- Angela

Old Weekly Data

Here the data from last week. -g

Point Sites on Mt. Royal

I've picked these sites based on accessibility, their elevation and how close they are to a road. All three of them are in a forested area, roughy the same elevation (Location C is higher, but also the most remote).

They can be accessed at any day and usually have people around them so they would be safe at night as well. Check out the Google Map for their exact location.

Location C

Location B

Location A

Gregor

Panorama

Here is the first Panorama. Monday 18-10-2010 at 11.30am. (click for high res)

-Gregor

http://www.quebec511.gouv.qc.ca/en/cameras/montreal/

http://www.radar.mcgill.ca/data-archive.html

sounding data

-rachelle

some few things

Teaaammm!!

Some few things...

(1) We've decided that we should all to try to meet twice a week. Once on Tuesday (during class), and then once on Friday. I propose that we meet in the ESYS 500 lounge (which now has a coffee maker + kettle and many chairs) or the GIC.. I've created a doddle poll for everyone to fill in their availabilities. Please fill it out ASAP.. http://doodle.com/participation.html?pollId=qzirrw45scsvxemu

(2) Once the work plan is finished (today by 5) and emailed around, it might be good idea for everyone to quickly read through it -- esp. the hypotheses section and the workplan section with the weekly timetable.... The next two weeks should be pretty hectic as we set-up data-collection procedures (which Gregor is coordinating) and begin data-analysis, and so we weren't planning to begin developing website content until these two weeks are done.

(3) Adam and I are going to be doing some more final, 'background' research this week on urban micro-meteorology and biogenic respiration.. Please let us know ASAP if there are any other specific areas that you think require more research so that we're prepared to interpret our data.

Thanks all,



Andrew

Thanksgiving Data

[Gregor]

Hey Team,

here is the outdoor data from this weekend. Ignore the bottom graph (only for reference).

- 12C
- Delta (5 min avg.)
- H2O
- Day

Burnside winds vs. McTavish winds

(Angela and Jan-Erik)

We have compared the wind directions and speeds at the McTavish weather station and the Burnside weather station to see if they are similar (if they were we could also assume FDA will have similar wind patterns).

Unfortunatly the 2 weather stations do not agree in their wind speeds (in the past hour McT is 6km/h while Burn is 16km/h) or their wind directions (in the past 24 hours the winds at Burnside were mainly SW and N while McT were mainly S and SW (see attached photos)).

So the questions I have in mind are:
1. Should we use wind data?
2. If yes, then from where? McT or Burn?
3. Should/Can we get our own anamomter?
4. Can it be installed on the roof and left unatended?

Traffic Data

(Gregor) Hey Team, a quick update on the traffic data. I carried out a quick experiment on my way home and it looks like the google traffic data is not full-proof. These photos all show the same location. Sherbrooke road, the blue dot is me and the photo is of that area looking SW !!! not NE.

Here is a link as to how they measure traffic in an urban area (crowdsourcing): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html

workplan!!!!

Teammmmmm!!!!!!

Here is a preliminary outline for the 10-page workplan that we have to have done by next Tuesday.

Recall from syllabus what the workplan is supposed to include…

-       Statement of, and brief introduction to, the research question

-       Review of literature outlining critical findings and current gaps in knowledge

-       Proposed work including a description of how the research questions will be answered

-       Presentation of research methods and work plan outlining individuals responsibilities

-       Proposed timeline of research progress

Please have your final sections to the two of us by the end of Sunday at the latest so that we have time to make edits re coherence. (For some of you, this just means editing sections you already sent us to make them more concise.)

Please use the following format: 12 pt. font, Times New Roman, single-spaced, 2.5 margins, MLA citation style.  

INTRODUCTION – Urban Metabolism?

-       1 page

-       by Andrew and Rachelle

STUDY – What and Why?

-       2 pages

-       by Andrew and Rachelle

METHODS

-       Instrument / set-up

o   1 page

o    by Nadine and Gregor

-       Determining background CO2 / differentiating between sources

o   1 page

o   by Ariella and Adam

o   (summary of lit. review concerning methods for determining background, specific challenges with doing so for this project, and future research that will be done (e.g. Keeling Curve) -- perhaps include Appendix with more technical details)

-       Weather data and traffic data (including wind-rose and eddy mixing with height)

o   ¾ of a page

o   by Angela and Jan-Erik

o   (I am guessing you’ll have to do some research about what traffic data we can obtain.)

-       Data-Analysis (using matlab)

o   ¼ page

o   by Nadine/Gregor + Jan-Erik

o   (really brief few sentences about how we are going to convert data into MATLAB format so as to apply statistics)

HYPOTHESES –

-       2 pages

-       As with data interpretation, it would likely make sense if we all contributed to developing our research hypotheses… We’ve created a shared word document with the paragraphs that Adam and Arielle already wrote concerning temporal variation… Everyone should try put in their ideas by the end and Sunday, and then the two of us will finalize the section…

-       https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1p8ds2hxc_Q9zLJC0xeAMi_9vSAz1wQiIaPdbi1ZfKEk&hl=en&authkey=CI_Mk9sB

WORKPLAN

-       2 pages

-       by Andrew and Rachelle

-       outline of workload with timetable of progress

+ Appendices (!)

-       calendar with time-table

-       spreadsheet that divides up responsibilities among all of us

-       ….

We have also created a spreadsheet with all the tasks and responsibilities that we have to divide up. Please fill your name into things you’d be interested in doing, and also add things that you think we missed.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkXrxolOozuddEMtVU5tbUI2S2Z5YVNWbW1TVmhBNVE&hl=en&authkey=CImI7dwE

Thanks all…

Andrew and Rachelle

First Data Plot

Hey guys, if anyone wants to look at the data from the weekend. Here is a JPEG of it.

High Res - just click on it

- Gregor

Articles about Diurnal CO2 Cycles and Isotopic compositions

This site shows a study done in Kuwait, where they measured CO2 concentrations in Kuwait City.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6VB5-464XYB5-3-F&_cdi=5917&_user=458507&_pii=S026974910200221X&_origin=search&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2003&_sk=998789997&view=c&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkzk&md5=020f818021c600d36db45e7e087a4b3e&ie=/sdarticle.pdf

It shows a graph of the monthly CO2 concentrations during the year and a daily graph as well. They also gave graphs of the wind component as well.

This is another article, which contrasts city CO2 concentrations with residential and have useful graphs to show the contrast. Shows the Urban site and residential site following the same concentration pattern, just with the Urban concentrations bing slightly higher.

ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/172339.pdf

And another article from pataki et al., which is from 2003. Still studying Salt Lake City, and shows the different isotopic compositions and how they were used. Pretty similar to the ones we read in class, though might be helpful as another reference.

http://www.biology.utah.edu/bowling/publications/pdfs/Pataki%202003%20JGR.pdf

We are definitely going to see an increase in CO2 emissions by vegetation during our measurements due to loss of leaf cover and photosynthesis and also from the decay of vegetation and that during the day, the vegetation is a CO2 sink while at night, it's a source, though I don't think the vegetation will be a big factor considering where we are taking our measurements from. Hopefully I didn't bore you too much on things you already knew.

Adam

Defining Background CO2

Hey guys,

Nadine and I were discussing possible ways of defining background CO2 that would be measurable and relevant to what we are looking to investigate.

Since traffic patterns are one of the more interesting aspects that we are looking to capture, we thought that we could define background CO2 by excluding traffic sources. That would likely mean taking flask measurements at times of low traffic flow i.e 3am on a Sunday...which is technically 3 am on a monday. I think that this is feasible, and doable. We could measure background CO2 at the start of the experiment, and then again near the end, just to see if there are any non-traffic related changes. This would lump biogenic, industrial etc.. together, which isn't ideal, but it's something.

One potential problem that we could encounter is a time lag between when CO2 is emitted via gasoline combustion and when it gets dispersed in the atmosphere, which is something that I'm looking into.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for defining background CO2?

Ariella