Airborne measurement of methane emissions frompermafrost wetland and the ice covered arctic ocean

In recent years the second most important greenhouse gas, methane, moved into the focus of scientific attention for its potential role in feedback processes, for its little understood budget components and for yet unkown production processes. Instrumental advances now allow to directly measure the flux of methane from emitting surfaces into the atmosphere by the eddy correlation technique. In this talk it will be shown how an aircraft can be used to extend the spatial coverage of flux measurements, to analyse the variability of fluxes and to quantify the emission for different arctic regions. The research aircraft Polar 5 was equipped with a turbulence sensor at a noseboom and a fast methane analyser. Thus, eddy correlation measurements of methane fluxes were conducted in northern Alaska, the Mackenziedelta and over the partly ice covered ocean in the Fram Strait. Especially the latter, the measurements over the ice covered ocean, suggest that further campaigns should combine ship and airborne platforms.