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Where all the gravel roads end at Uppland, John Bauerskog comes across a hundred meter high mast that, among other things, measures the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. The mast has a measuring radius of 300 kilometers and covers the entire county of Stockholm and much of central Sweden.
Irene Lehner, who is a research engineer stationed at the Norunda survey station, is used to wearing a climbing harness. Climbing is part of the task and on a clear blue sky day like this one, you can glimpse Uppsala Cathedral on the horizon.
– Once you get above the treetops and have everything underneath, you no longer get dizzy, then you can climb as high as you want, says Irene Lehner.
The measuring mast at Norunda, which is just over a mile from Björklinge, extends 100 meters into the air.
Photo: Thomas Karlsson
She takes the mast meter by meter with quick steps and you will soon be less visible than a bird. DN climbing photographer Thomas Karlsson is following up to document some of the sensors that have been measuring the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere here since 2009.
At an altitude of one hundred meters, the air is as heavy with carbon dioxide as usual, despite the fact that Stockholm and Sweden closed this spring.
– We can’t see any corona effects at all. Even if we shut everything down, it would be decades before the levels fell. Emission reductions are seven percent globally and eleven percent in the EU this year, according to the Carbonmonitor site. But the closures lasted a very short period, a few weeks, it’s just a moment, says Irene Lehner.
Colleague Anders Båth monitor height work to help climbers go down if something happens, there are no step cars that reach more than 30 meters. He says that a certain corona effect has been measured at a lower level in larger cities around the world.
– I certainly think the Stockholmers have noticed an improvement in air quality, at the particulate level. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the city’s air was probably lower as well. You can see it locally in the big cities that close completely. But it disappears a bit when carbon dioxide mixes with the entire atmospheric ocean, says Anders Båth.
“Once you get above the treetops and have everything underneath, you no longer get dizzy, then you can climb as high as you want,” says Irene Lehner.
Photo: Thomas Karlsson
Show metering station where high-altitude air is continuously scanned for greenhouse gases that are neither visible nor odorous. The results are sent nightly to Italy and shared on the European ICOS network to provide global data on emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.
A meter shows that the carbon dioxide content today is around 400 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide.
– 400 ppm carbon dioxide was previously a horror scenario, but now we are at 410-420 ppm on average. We rarely go below 400. It should be a really nice summer day when the trees soak up a lot of carbon dioxide, says Anders Båth.
Emissions of greenhouse gases in Stockholm County it has declined in recent decades both in industry and in heating and transport. But at Norunda, the curve steadily points up every year. The content is slightly higher in winter when we shoot higher and lower in summer when the forest absorbs more carbon dioxide.
Here, too, do you see the results of occasional major emission reductions. Not even when Värtaverket, the county’s biggest carbon dioxide culprit, completely shut down its coal-fired boiler this spring.
– It is not at all strange, if you burn biofuel you get as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as you do with coal. Wood does not have zero carbon dioxide emissions. In the short term, there will actually be more carbon dioxide emissions if the forest is cut down and set on fire, says Anders Båth.
Research engineer Anders Båth holds his breath as he removes the cobwebs. A single human exhalation can contain up to 15,000 ppm of carbon dioxide and disrupts measurements of greenhouse gases at the ecosystem level.
Photo: Thomas Karlsson
He guides through the forest where hundreds of measurement instruments record changes at the ecosystem level on the ground. White cloth changers, the so-called front traps, collect everything that falls from the trees and on some tree trunks there are veneer sensors that are used for research at various universities.
– A well-preserved forest has collected charcoal for a hundred years and stored it in tree trunks, roots and organic soil material. Carbon is extracted from the atmosphere and binds to soil and biomass. So we need a lot of forest and we need to reforest places and replant where it was removed to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide, says Anders Båth.
Around the hypersensitive measuring instruments apply the rule of at least two meters. A single human exhalation can produce an eruption of 15,000 ppm on the carbon dioxide meter.
– In Helsinki, there is a station where you can see that the carbon dioxide content increases when people are exercising. We humans leave our mark. We can’t leave big footprints, but we have to live, and exercising is good for our health, says Anders Båth.
Measurements at Norunda agree well with global data. According to Anders Lindroth, professor of natural geography at Lund University, no reduction in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere can be seen anywhere in the world.
– No. There will be a corona effect on the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere, but it will be so small that it is difficult to determine with the help of measurements, says Anders Lindroth.
Irene Lehner believes, after all, that the pandemic will have a long-term effect.
Photo: Thomas Karlsson
Despite carbon dioxide emissions decreases, the content in the air will increase in the coming decades.
– This is simply because fossil carbon dioxide emissions from incineration and emissions from deforestation in the tropics are roughly twice those absorbed in ecosystems and oceans and it is the difference between these that is visible in the atmosphere.
What is required for the carbon dioxide content to decrease overall?
– That the sum of emissions will be less than absorbed by ecosystems and the sea. Today this means that emissions must be cut in half to achieve this.
What is the most important measure to reduce the carbon dioxide content?
– Oh, it’s a ten thousand crowns question. This is how I think: start immediately to develop CCS technology, that is, take care of emissions at point sources and pump them to geological storage. But that is not enough, our energy needs are too great. Therefore, we must invest in new technology for nuclear energy that does not have the same problems with nuclear waste as current facilities. And continue the development of fusion energy. We must do this because we will be dependent on fossil energy for a long time. But that shouldn’t stop us from developing climate-smart solutions like wind and solar, says Anders Lindroth.
For climate activist Greta Thunberg, who visited the Norunda measuring station in the late summer of the BBC documentary series, the increased flux of carbon dioxide comes as no surprise.
– What counts is the accumulated amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is like a balloon that inflates. As more and more air blows, it grows. But when you stop blowing, it doesn’t shrink. It stays the same shape, even if you blow a little less, says Greta Thunberg.
She is very critical to the fact that media reports are primarily about the weather, spiced up with a little girl in pigtails and a yellow rain jacket and the occasional polar bear, and not about the climate crisis that is here and now, and the most acute.
Greta Thunberg is back outside the Swedish Riksdag to attack.
Photo: Roger Turesson
– The very fact that people believed that the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere would decrease with the corona shows how much they have failed to communicate the climate crisis. In fact, when we closed our partnership further in April, we were still below the carbon dioxide emission levels we had in 2006, says Greta Thunberg.
So does it make sense to stop eating meatballs or stop flying?
– I have not stopped flying to reduce my own emissions, but to affect the environment and signal that we are in crisis. What is needed so far is the collective perception of the crisis that is created if more people talk about it and start to question things. But of course every little change makes a difference. We no longer have time to deal with emissions. That it is better to be vegan than to stop flying. We must do all we can, says Greta Thunberg.
In Norunda, Irene Lehner has found her way back to the mainland. She still believes that the pandemic will have a long-term effect.
– It shows that there are opportunities for change. We work differently, we travel less, we are on the right track. I hope it has changed our thinking, it can be a long-term corona effect, says Irene Lehner.
