"Popular Science Release of Scientific and Technological Achievements" is a platform jointly created by China Association for Science and Technology, Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology and Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology, and is dedicated to inviting front-line scientists to tell the story of scientific research. Let the whole society pay attention to and love science through this platform, and also make scientists the figure that make the public admire.
One of the main causes of what we are familiar with as "low-carbon life" and "green economy" is the rapid increase in the content of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human activities, triggering global climate change and extreme weather, which seriously threatens the sustainability of human societal developments.
The United Nations has held multiple climate negotiations to slow down global greenhouse gas emissions. Countries around the world are considering economic development and competing with each other, which has caused many uncertainties in international climate negotiations.
Yesterday afternoon, the China Association for Science and Technology and the Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology jointly launched the "Towards the Ocean Season" series of activities for the "Popular Science Release of Scientific and Technological Achievements", which went to the Second Institute of Oceanography of the Ministry of Natural Resources (hereinafter referred to as the "Second Institute of Oceanography").
Scientists used popular science releases to show how to use "eyes from the sky to see the ocean and remotely measure carbon flux." This scientific and technological achievement, which is called "Key Technologies and Application Demonstrations for Dynamic Monitoring of Carbon Flux from Land Sources into the Sea," won the first prize in the Zhejiang Science and Technology Progress Award in 2019.
The publisher, He Xianqiang, is a researcher at the Second Institute of Oceanography. He has been engaged in ocean color satellite remote sensing technology research for nearly 20 years. He has presided over more than 30 national, provincial and ministerial level scientific research projects, won the China Youth Science and Technology Award, and served the executive Committee at the International Ocean Color Coordination Organization (IOCCG).
He Xianqiang said that China's carbon emissions currently rank first in the world, and the pressure to reduce carbon emissions is huge. The ocean is the largest carbon reservoir on earth, and can absorb nearly one-third of man-made carbon dioxide emissions every year. The ocean has great carbon storage potential, and humans have begun to "demand" a share of carbon sequestration from the vast ocean.
The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Summit proposed "Let the Ocean Be the Solution to Climate Change", from green carbon to blue carbon, from land to ocean. Understanding the ocean's ability to absorb and transfer carbon as well as the ocean carbon cycle mechanism is of great significance to the study of global climate change. Satellite remote sensing is one of the important means for monitoring ocean carbon flux.
Technological Innovation After Five Years of Research and Development, Overcome International Problems
Regarding the scientific assessment of carbon flux from land-based sources into the sea, He Xianqiang said that with the support of the Marine Public Welfare Industry Scientific Research Project and the National Natural Science Foundation, nine units across the country, including the Second Institute of Oceanography, have conducted multidisciplinary research to build a land-based carbon flux technical system that is coordinated by the sea and land for dynamic monitoring and evaluation of carbon flux into the sea.
After more than five years of research and development, the team has conquered high-time-resolution satellite remote sensing monitoring of offshore waters, highly dynamic river inflows into the sea, and remote sensing dynamic assessment of offshore carbon flux through multi-disciplinary research such as satellite remote sensing, on-site observations, numerical simulations, and geographic information systems, and other international problems. Therefore, a three-dimensional monitoring and evaluation system for offshore carbon flux has been constructed.
So what impact does this innovative technology have on the general public? In fact, in addition to monitoring carbon flux, this satellite remote sensing technology can also be applied to many aspects, such as land-based sewage discharge into the sea, environmental monitoring of marine farms and fisheries, coastal water quality monitoring, offshore ecological environment monitoring, etc.
National application improves China's land and sea coordinated carbon monitoring capabilities
He Xianqiang introduced that this technology has constructed a land-sea and multi-interface carbon flux remote sensing dynamic assessment system, improved China’s national capabilities in land-sea coordinated carbon monitoring, and obtained an inventory of carbon fluxes and offshore carbon sinks in rivers entering the sea in China’s mainland, and has also played a role in climate change. Applications in change response, ocean monitoring, environmental protection and other fields have achieved significant social benefits.
According to monitoring results, the annual transport volume of organic carbon in rivers entering the sea in mainland China is nearly 10 million tons. Among them, the organic carbon transport volume of small rivers along the southeast coast accounts for about 15% of the national total. This discovery has changed the organic carbon transport volume of small rivers in the past. Flux contribution has been underestimated. In other words, don’t underestimate every small river around you. They are likely to carry traces of human activities on land into the offshore and affect the marine ecological environment.
National output SatCO2 platform users all over the world
The research team also developed SatCO2, an ocean remote sensing online analysis platform that interacts with remote sensing and actual measurements, realizing the rapid acquisition of characteristic satellite data, the integration of online scientific calculations and three-dimensional sphere expression, and providing Internet users with more than 20 satellites, a 30-year span, online sharing and analysis services for more than 60 ocean parameters.
With the efforts of the team, 7 international training courses have been held in the past 4 years, and results have been promoted and applied in more than 20 countries. The SatCO2 platform has conducted international training in parallel with the ocean water color satellite data processing systems of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) in the United States for many times, leading the global ocean carbon remote sensing online service.
