The National Physical Laboratory (NPL)

	Dr Nigel Fox with the heart of the TRUTHS calibration satellite

The challenge of climate change demands unprecedented national and international coordination and cooperation. It will need new technologies and new solutions to old problems. It will also need ever more accurate measures of human activity and its impact on climate and environment, including the establishment of agreed measurement techniques and standards. These will allow co-operative mitigation and adaptation strategies with the credibility needed to gain widespread support. The UK (United Kingdom) government’s investment in the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) makes it a valuable national and international resource for research and development in this area, informing policy development, and supporting regulation and monitoring.

Leading-edge measurement science and standards are vitally important for driving the development of innovative low-carbon technologies and providing confidence that new products will deliver the benefits claimed and needed. Work at NPL is already making a significant contribution in areas as diverse as; new materials for energy efficiency in buildings and transport; fuel cells; photovoltaics; clean coal; nuclear power; wind-turbines; low carbon technologies for lighting. Looking ahead robust measurement and standards will also be increasingly important for carbon pricing and validating climate change data.

Underpinning carbon pricing

Putting a price on carbon emissions through tax or trading is widely accepted as a cornerstone of a global strategy for mitigation of climate change. However, in order for this policy to gain the widespread confidence of both government and business, carbon pricing will need to be based on a demonstrably sound, consistent and internationally accepted framework for measurement and monitoring of CO2 and other GHG (greenhouse gases). Without a robust measurement framework, any carbon-pricing regime risks losing credibility and support.

NPL has well-established expertise in emissions monitoring, and is ideally placed to take a central role in efforts to develop agreed international standards for assessment, measurement and verification of CO2 emissions and sequestration. For many years, NPL has made important contributions to the measurement of industrial emissions ranging from the improvement of field measurement techniques to the development of standards supporting monitoring and trading schemes. NPL works closely with trade associations and regulators including work to develop performance standards for the UK Environment Agency’s MCERTS (certified monitoring) scheme, a framework quality assurance programme enabling UK industry to meet the requirements of EU Emissions Directives.

NPL has also developed technologies for the detection and measurement of both bulk and the more difficult fugitive emissions. These include Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) which can remotely map concentrations of compounds in the atmosphere in 3D. At present NPL is working with US (United States) Authorities to assess the use of DIAL and other optical techniques to improve the quantification of fugitive emissions.

Accurate knowledge of the efficiency of carbon sequestration from natural and artificial sinks is another crucial component for any long-term mitigation strategy. NPL is developing techniques and standards to ensure that this is underpinned by fully traceable and internationally accepted measurements, providing standards and instrumentation for improving the accuracy of ground, air and space-based studies of these sinks.

Validating climate-change data

Although the evidence that our climate is changing is now unequivocal, its impact, cause, and the optimal mitigation strategy are still highly debated topics. One of the prerequisites for resolution of this debate is high-quality climate information. Increased confidence in this information will reduce economic risk and facilitate wider international agreement on mitigation and adaptation policy. Critical to this is validated and accurate data from measurements, both on a local and global scale. Localised measurements are needed for specific sensitivity studies and for the validation of crucial global measurements – which can only be made from space. In many cases such measurements are seeking to detect small changes over longtime periods. At present, there is considerable uncertainty over the quality and reliability of such data, with a variation from data source to data source much greater than the accuracy claimed and certainly much greater than the accuracy considered vital by such bodies as the GCOS (Global Climate Observing System) committee of the UN.

NPL is taking a leading role in the international Earth Observation community in grappling with this issue, taking steps to provide both technical and procedural tools to put the data on a firm footing – working with bodies such as ESA (European Space Agency) and CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Satellites) within the overarching framework of GEO (Group on Earth Observation). In addition NPL has proposed a dedicated satellite based calibration mission called TRUTHS, effectively a calibration laboratory in space, offering the prospect of a factor of ten improvement in the accuracy of key climate data. Such a mission could operate independently, or as a component of a “international climate calibration constellation” such a CLARREO (Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory), where it would provide the reference for the solar reflected portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

W: www.npl.co.uk