Lutjewad

Lutjewad map[maxlat=53.0;minlat=51.0;maxlon=6.0;minlon=4.0;maptype=G_SATELLITE_MAP;zoom=6]

Figure 2: tower and laboratorium

General

Lutjewad atmospheric monitoring and sampling site is located on the Waddensea dike in the north of the Netherlands, 25 km northwest of Groningen in a rural area. Lutjewad is monitoring the Greenhouse gas balance of the Netherlands and north-western Europe. The whole infrastructure is operated by the University of Groningen, Centre for Isotope Research. Due to its unique location it is possible to sample there background air from the North Sea with northerly winds, as well as continental air, influenced by the highly populated and industrialized areas in the west of the Netherlands (Amsterdam-Rotterdam) and in the northwest of Germany (Ruhr area). The station is equipped with a 60 m tall tower, carrying instrumentation and air inlets (60 m, 40 m , 7 m above ground). In the laboratory building next to the tower, monitoring and sampling instruments are running and can be remotely controlled from the Groningen institute (or any other place on special arrangement) via high-speed internet connection. Instrumentation includes a gas chromatograph (CO2, CH4, N2O, SF6 and CO concentrations), a 222Radon monitor, a flask sampler and cryogenic air dryer, and integrated 14CO2 sampling (wind-direction controlled). Twice a day, Radon and CO2 soil fluxes are measured from a soil chamber, upgrading to include CH4 and N2O-fluxes is underway. In the beginning of 2011, continuous oxygen concentration monitoring will be started. In the tower, an CO2 Eddy-covariance system is installed at 50 m height to monitor the regional biosphere-atmosphere exchange. This includes the exchange fluxes of the wetlands and tidal flats to the north. A scintillometer makes use of the church tower in the village of Hornhuizen at 2 km distance, measuring energy fluxes above the agricultural area at 25 m height. Basic meteorological data are sampled at the three air intake heights

Access

Both short-time accompanied visits or longtime running of instruments after user-installation and under user’s remote control are possible. Visiting instruments may form an extension of the station’s measurement program, but instruments for comparison studies are welcome as well. In principle, virtually all kinds of instrumentation can be accomodated. Even modeller-visits to the station might turn out to be useful, in order to learn about the local topography and to discuss Lutjewad- data based model results.

The station infrastructure along with recent results, ongoing projects and near-real-time data are presented on the station website. The station is known within the European atmospheric Greenhouse Gas community from participation in several EU-funded projects (AeroCarb, CarboEurope-IP, IMECC, GHG-Europe etc.). Scientific results are published in peer-reviewed literature, the datasets are used in dedicated as well as all-european modelling studies by international modelling groups.