Detecting Long-term Changes in Point Source Fossil CO2 Emissions with Tree Ring Archives

We examine the utility of tree ring 14C archives for detecting long term changes in fossil CO2 emissions from a point source. Trees assimilate carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, in the process faithfully recording the average atmospheric 14C content over the growing season in each annual tree ring. Using 14C as a proxy for fossil CO2, we examine interannual variability over six years of fossil CO2 observations between 2004 and 2012 from two trees growing near the Kapuni Natural Gas Plant in rural Taranaki, New Zealand. We quantify the amount of variability that can be attributed to transport and meteorology by simulating constant point source fossil CO2 emissions over the observation period with the atmospheric transport model WindTrax. We then calculate the amount of change in emissions that we can detect with new observations over annual or multi-year time periods given both measurement uncertainty of 1ppm and the modelled variation in transport. In particular, we ask, what is the minimum amount of change in emissions that we can detect using this method, given a reference period of six years? We find that changes of 42% or more could be detected in a new sample from one year at the pine tree, or 22% in the case of four years of new samples. This threshold lowers and the method becomes more practical with a larger signal; for point sources 10 times the magnitude of the Kapuni plant (a typical size for large electricity generation point sources worldwide), it would be possible to detect sustained emissions changes on the order of 10% given suitable meteorology and observations.