GIS-Based Approach to Spatio-Temporal Interpolation of Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations in Limited Monitoring Dataset

Abstract

Understanding the magnitude and distribution of the mixes of the near-ground carbon dioxide (CO2) components spatially (related to the surface characteristics) and temporally (over seasonal timescales) is critical to evaluating present and future climate impacts. Thus, the application of in situ measurement approaches, combined with the spatial interpolation methods, will help to explore variations in source contribution to the total CO2 mixing ratios in the urban atmosphere. This study presents the spatial characteristic and temporal trend of atmospheric CO2 levels observed within the city of Wroclaw, Poland for the July 2017–August 2018 period. The seasonal variability of atmospheric CO2 around the city was directly measured at the selected sites using flask sampling with a Picarro G2201-I Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CRDS) technique. The current work aimed at determining the accuracy of the interpolation techniques and adjusting the interpolation parameters for estimating the magnitude of CO2 time series/seasonal variability in terms of limited observations during the vegetation and non-vegetation periods. The objective was to evaluate how different interpolation methods will affect the assessment of air pollutant levels in the urban environment and identify the optimal sampling strategy. The study discusses the schemes for optimization of the interpolation results that may be adopted in areas where no observations are available, which is based on the kriging error predictions for an appropriate spatial density of measurement locations. Finally, the interpolation results were extended regarding the average prediction bias by exploring additional experimental configurations and introducing the limitation of the future sampling strategy on the seasonal representation of the CO2 levels in the urban area.