Research at a high level

An extensive research investment into climate monitoring, ICOS, is to map greenhouse gases across Europe. The Swedish part of the project was recently inaugurated. Project manager Anders Lindroth, Professor of Physical Geography, does not shy away from the more unusual challenges and is happy to climb a hundred metres straight up a high mast when climate monitoring equipment needs adjusting. In an old spruce and pine forest north of Uppsala, the Norunda mast reaches over a hundred metres towards the sky. At the top of the mast is a newly installed atmospheric station which is to keep track of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the air. Considerably further down on the mast, just over the tree tops at a height of 35 metres, another piece of equipment, a so-called ecosystem station, serves to gather data on a more local level. Down at the foot of the mast, the centuries-old tree trunks are interspersed with large blocks of stone scattered on the ground.