Europe's Most Polluted Area: Germany's Steel and Coal Haven
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 03.21.08
Having firmly cemented its status as one of Europe's most coal-friendly states, Germany can now lay claim to also having the continent's most polluted area: a strip of land between Amsterdam and Frankfurt, home to the country's steel and coal industries. According to a new report by Bremen University scientists published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, this small region of Western Germany has Europe's highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
As reported in Deutsche Welle, the scientists used a novel technology (see below the fold for an image), called SCIAMACHY (Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Cartography), to detect levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The unique device was built by the German Aerospace Center and has been in orbit on a satellite around the Earth since 2002.
SCIAMACHY is able to detect carbon dioxide by measuring the amount of sunlight reflected from the atmosphere; different gases reflect light differently so the scientists were able to accurately pinpoint carbon dioxide's signal. The scientists collected three years' worth of data before analyzing the results. Michael Buchwitz, one of the study's lead scientists, said he was confident of the group's findings, explaining that "the raised CO2 concentrations can be attributed to human activities because the patterns in this European urban area are very stable," despite slight fluctuations caused by seasonal changes.
If Germany truly intends on significantly reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, they could do worse than follow these policy prescriptions: stop all proposed coal power plant projects and impose stricter regulations on the existing ones.
Image courtesy of hAdamsky via flickr
Via ::Deutsche Welle: Europe's Worst Pollution Pocket Found Above Western Germany (news website)
See also: ::WWF: Europe's Dirtiest Power is in Germany, ::Coal Mining Returns to UK
Isn't it wonderful how Germany is leading the way in phasing out nuclear power?
The idea was to offset the loss in nuclear generating capacity with renewables but while renewable capacity has increased admirably, rising demand means that coal use has also increased.
Greenpeace mentality in action. Sad. They could be accomplishing so much, if it weren't for their nuclear hang-ups.
Um, Most of that red area is in Belgium and the Netherlands. Cologne (Koln) anchors the eastern edge, but German territory actually is a minority of that zone.
Which is a surprise, because I would have expected Germany's Ruhr district to completely dominate the map - as you describe it. The Ruhr is to the North and East of Cologne, and is shaded orange rather than red, suggesting that it is not the most polluted area
I think you could make an excellent case that the C02 plume in Germany has been driven by prevailing winds from the low countries. This would suggest that Germany is suffering from the C02 generation of others, must as the northeast US suffers from acid rain fallout of midwest coal power plants.
In case you are unclear on the distinction, there were a couple of twentieth century wars fought to sort that out.
Is ground level C02 concentration actually a problem? I thought it was an issue at higher altitudes and globally. There may be a positive value to concentrating C02 generation in one small area, to prevent a larger, though more diffuse, production generally. Sort of like cities are more environmentally benign than suburbs.
As always with statistics. How big is the impact compared to landmass, how much CO2 per person, how much compared to the produced/used energy. Showing a spot of high CO2 on the map says almost nothing. I could open a bottle of sparkeling water, measuring that spot would give a high reading, too.
From the site that provided the data in the first place:
http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de/sciamachy/NIR_NADIR_WFM_DOAS/
"First detection of regionally elevated CO2 from man-made emissions based on SCIAMACHY: Clearly visible is an extended plume of CO2 over Europe's most populated area located roughly between Amsterdam and Frankfurt:"
From germany alone we went to most populated region, which includes germany, netherlands and belgium.
Another interesting picture is on that site, emission on NO2.
http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de/doas/images/results/sciamachy/scia_europe_no2_0208.gif
In this picture it looks like there is a small gap between germany and the netherlands, so it seems the neterlands produce quite a bit of NO2 (as seems the south-east of the UK). That could lead someone to say, well they must produce a lot of CO2, too, so maybe the red area displayed in the first picture says that the netherlands produced the most CO2 in there...which would be a completely different headline. Maybe: Is dutch agriculture driving up CO2?
Ragnar,
I think you're missing the reasons for this type of technology, which is not to create interesting pictures for Treehugger.
Being able to measure local concentrations of GHGs gives a method of estimating production of GHGs, which allows the models and reporting mechanisms to be verified. If the world is embarking on a serious and expensive effort to control GHG emissions, we need to know what the sources are. This technology will allow monitoring of industrial and agricultural sources of man made GHGs. It will also aid in assessments of the carbon flows associated with natural systems such as forests and oceans.
Jup.. I must agree with my fellow anonymous german. Most of that area is actually the netherlands, a very densly populated area in europe (although they tend to use their bikes a lot and are very environmently aware over there). The "Ruhrgebiet", which is Germany's industrial center, is surprisingly orange on that map. Anyhow, it's true that they are thinking about building new coal-plants, although 10 of the most polluting european coal plants are located in germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,482113,00.html
The planned plant in hamburg-moorburg could just be stopped by civil initiatives. I hope this goes on..