Reference Materials: gas mixtures to support measurements for climate change studies

Abstract

Abstract This work aims at presenting some activities carried out at INRiM for the development of new reference materials (RMs) of greenhouse gases to support measurements for climate change studies. Since the preindustrial era, greenhouse gases emissions due to human activities have dramatically increased, mostly due to economic and demographic growth and their concentrations in the atmosphere have grown continuously since 2011, reaching highest levels in 2019. The increase of greenhouse gases concentration in atmosphere due to anthropogenic emissions is the main cause of global warming and carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the main culprits for this phenomenon. In this context, the capability of discriminating between anthropogenic and natural emissions is of utmost importance. The determination of the isotopic composition of CO2 can support the assessment of the uptake of CO2 in the environmental compartments, i.e. atmosphere and hydrosphere, and can help to distinguish natural from anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere. The possibility to establish metrological traceability of the measurements of CO2 isotopic composition is a key aspect, and greatly relies on the availability of gaseous reference materials having compositions and uncertainties that are fit for purpose. In the past years, INRiM participated in the EMPIR project 16ENV06 SIRS “Metrology for stable isotope reference standards”, and is now taking part in the EMPIR project 19ENV05 STELLAR “Stable isotope metrology to enable climate action and regulation”. INRiM has experience in the preparation of gas standards by primary methods, namely gravimetry and dynamic dilution, which can be applied to the realisation of reference materials of CO2 at known isotopic composition. The present work describes the preliminary results obtained by INRiM in the preparation of pure CO2 RMs and at atmospheric amount fraction. Examples of uncertainty budgets and identification of the uncertainty sources are also given.