(525a) Monitoring and Measuring Iowa's Carbon Balance

Atmospheric measurements of CO2 concentration and other greenhouse gases have a key role in climate science, climate change detection, and climate policy. It is likely that greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration and flux measurements will grow in importance as GHG management policies are implemented at state, national and international levels. As the chemical engineering community is actively engaged in many aspects of technology development (e.g., energy efficiency, low carbon energy, and carbon sequestration) the GHG monitoring network and its use may be of interest to chemical engineers in the energy and climate fields.

In locations with inaccurate emission inventories, top-down flux estimates are a key source of emissions data. Efforts to narrow the gap between top-down and bottom-up inventories are advancing under the guidance of the interagency North American Carbon Plan. In particular the Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council (ICCAC) has developed an emission inventory for 2005 as a basis to predict emission increases through 2025.

ICCAC's base case of 2005 will be contrasted to top down predictions from Earth System Research Laboratory's CarbonTracker. The ICCAC estimated that 27 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents were sequestered in 2005 whereas CarbonTracker estimated approximately 100 million metric tons of CO2 were sequestered. Reasons for the large discrepancy between the two inventories will be presented. Additionally, how the movement of CO2 across state lines may affect the future carbon accounting will be analyzed.