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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 6(3)

MEMENTO: a proposal to develop a database of marine nitrous oxide and methane measurements

Hermann W. Bange A F , Tom G. Bell B , Marcela Cornejo C , Alina Freing A , Günther Uher D , Rob C. Upstill-Goddard D and Guiling Zhang E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Forschungsbereich Marine Biogeochemie, IFM-GEOMAR, Leibniz-Institut für Meereswissenschaften, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, D-24105 Kiel, Germany. Email: afreing@ifm-geomar.de

B School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TL, United Kingdom. Email: thomas.bell@uea.ac.uk

C Department of Oceanography and Center for Oceanographic Research (FONDAP-COPAS), Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile. Email: mcornejo@profc.udec.cl

D School of Marine Science and Technology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom. Email: guenther.uher@ncl.ac.uk; rob.goddard@ncl.ac.uk

E Department of Marine Chemistry, Ocean University of China, 238 Songling Road, Qingdao 266100, P.R. China. Email: guilingzhang@uoc.edu.cn

F Corresponding author. Email: hbange@ifm-geomar.de

Environmental Chemistry 6(3) 195-197 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN09033
Submitted: 14 March 2009  Accepted: 15 May 2009   Published: 18 June 2009

Environmental context. Nitrous oxide and methane are atmospheric trace gases and, because they are strong greenhouse gases, they contribute significantly to the ongoing global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite the well established fact that the world’s oceans release nitrous oxide and methane to the atmosphere, the oceanic emission estimates of both gases are only poorly quantified. The MEMENTO (MarinE MethanE and NiTrous Oxide) database initiative is proposed as an effective way by which existing nitrous oxide and methane measurements can be used to reduce the uncertainty of the oceanic emissions estimates by establishing a global database.

Additional keywords: database, methane, nitrous oxide, oceanic emissions.


Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers. MEMENTO is an outcome of discussions held at the COST Action 735 Working Group 3 Technical Workshop on coastal CO2/N2O/CH4 data held at IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany, 22/23 January 2009. The workshop was funded by COST Action 735 and IFM-GEOMAR. We especially thank Emily Brévière (COST Action 735 and SOLAS International Project Office) for the administrative handling of the workshop. T. Bell is supported by a UK SOLAS Knowledge Transfer grant (NE/E001696/1).


References


[1]   IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK).

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