Obtaining carbon readings from the atmosphere in minus-30 degree Centigrade weather during mid-winter in Sweden sounds like a job for an extreme athlete.
Paul Smith does that work, even though he is more of an extreme research engineer with a few athletic skills to boot. With a doctorate in atmospheric science from the University of Leeds, he manages and serves as principal investigator at the ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) Atmospheric Station in the subarctic Svartberget Forest near Vindeln, Sweden.
When he first signed on for the job to conduct carbon readings and send data to policymakers and researchers, there was no 150-meter-tall mast in the field crammed with sensors to read temperature, moisture, methane and other variables. Since the tower was installed, Smith and another researcher must climb up the mast now and then to maintain the sensors and other gear.
“Climbing wasn’t part of the original job description,” he said with a smile in an online video interview with Fierce Electronics. “They trained us for climbing and safety.” On this day, the snow outside reached chest-high, he said, indicating the height on snow jacket. On January 19, the temperature dropped to minus 24.7 degrees C (Minus 12.46 degrees F.)
Cables running from the mast and various sensors and other gear including lidar are connected to servers in a nearby shed but must be encased in protective conduit to keep deer and other animals from nibbling through them. Sensors are connected to a wired network because it is considered more reliable, but Sweden is susceptible to lightning strikes, which tends to increase cost and add to the maintenance challenge.
Keeping the sensors and cable connectors in top order is part of making world-class measurements that are used to track climate change and how much carbon emissions contribute. Smith also encourages researchers to come and use the facilities.
As a doctoral student in 2009, Smith designed a new sensor using a reaction cell made of 3D printed components to monitor ozone. Now part of his focus is on keeping his data from sensor measurements accurate and consistent.
ICOS is a pan-European measurement system started in 2015 with a 20-year lifetime. https://www.icos-cp.eu/It now has 150 stations in 12 countries with 500 researchers connected to 80 universities and research institutes. Sweden also has a national coordinated infrastructure called SITES (Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science) for terrestrial and limnological field research.
On the ICOS web site, there are shortcut links for scientists, policymakers, others in ICOS and the public. The links provide everything from a data portal to a section labeled “scientific knowledge for better decisions” about climate. “The knowledge generated by the use of ICOS data supports efforts to comply with the Paris Agreement,” the ICOS website says. “ICOS responds to the international goal of establishing global standards for observations as well as open, accessible and interoperable data in order to ensure optimal services for societies in their efforts to mitigate climate change.”
In a keynote address Smith delivered on Monday as part of Embedded Innovation Week Winter, he said the ICOS data types range from raw data to products that use ICOS data.
Amid the challenges of collecting and disseminating data, Smith contends with a “mess” of Ethernet connections from physical equipment to physical servers, he said. Also, the IT shop at the Swedish University of Agriculture protects the mast servers and backup within its firewall. That approach is good for protecting data full-time but makes it difficult for sharing raw data with outside researchers.
In the future, Smith said the research center might rely more on drones to inspect the sensors on the mast and possibly gather other environmental insights.
In the past week, Smith was repairing two covariance systems near the mast and its nearby equipment shed which were not properly forwarding data. The shed is about two miles from a larger research station in Svartberget with 15 full time staff. Another station, Abisko, sits inside the Artic Circle at the Norwegian border.
Smith usually conducts maintenance work at the station twice each winter, but otherwise lives in Madrid from December to March. The rest of his year is busy. “During the main growing season many other staff and researchers come in to do sampling of biomass in the forest,” he said. The staff swells to 30 people at that time with on-site accommodations. A conference center is being built.
In addition to serving as station manager, Smith is principal investigator for the ICOS atmospheric measurements at the mast. In addition to keeping things working, he works at taking data requests and collaborating with research groups.
“ICOS is really starting to take off now,” he said. “At the last major ICOS conference, which was virtual in 2020, I found it really inspiring to see how the data is being used by researchers all around the world and how it is influencing policymakers. I saw a lot of interest from climate modelers who want high-quality datasets that are inter-comparable, the satellite community who can use the data from masts for calibrating instruments and engineers making new sensors that will be useful for ICOS. A Swiss team has developed a miniature methane sensor for drones.”
“I really like my job as there is a lot of variety and you are working outside most of the time,” he added. “However, it is hard physical work, especially in winter, and difficult to be away from loved ones. Plus, as a scientist, I don’t get enough time to really look at the data as you are often trouble shooting problems and helping colleagues at other sites.”
An upcoming project he is looking forward to will be using Carbon Portal Jupyter notebooks to start plotting his own station’s data and writing his own scripts in Python.
Paul Smith spoke on Monday, January 25, at Embedded Innovation Week Winter. The virtual event is free and can be accessed online and on demand. A full schedule of keynotes and panels with Smith and other experts is available online.
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