Preliminary Findings From Monitoring of Northeast Asian Greenhouse Gas Emissions at Gosan Station in Jeju Island, Korea

The Northeast Asia region, with its on-going active industrialization, has become important in quantifying the global emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs), as well as creating the regulations to control them. The research presented here are recent measurements of GHGs from Gosan station, in Jeju Island, Korea. Located south of the Korean peninsula and reasonably free from local pollution sources, Gosan station has been and continues to be an important in many regional and international research activities including the Aerosol Characterization Experiments (ACE) - Asia, Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC), and Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) projects. Measurements of ambient CO2 and trace GHGs (CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs, PFCs, SF6, etc.) show that both "baseline" (clean) and "pollution" instances are observed at Gosan station. Baseline conditions seem to coincide with periods when clean air masses from north arrive directly at the site, while pollution conditions are correlated with air masses passing through expected pollution emission regions in China and Korea. Due to general wind patterns, pollution monitoring is most feasible from late fall through winter and early spring. As such, continuous precision measurements are only at their second iteration, and more data may be needed in raising the quality of the emissions analysis. However, early indications are very positive in showing the feasibility of regional emissions estimation with the implementation of appropriate top-down modeling techniques.