Professor Debra Wunch, Department of Physics and School of the Environment, has been elected as the next Chair of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON), as well as Chair for the Americas. This is a major leadership role in a very important international observing network that is the gold standard for global measurements of total column abundances of greenhouse gases. Professor Wunch is taking over from Paul Wennberg at Caltech, who was the founding Chair back in the early 2000s.
According to Physics Chair Kimberly Strong “This is a major leadership role in a very important international observing network that is the gold standard for global measurements of total column abundances of greenhouse gases”.
TCCON is a network of ground-based Fourier Transform Spectrometers that record the spectra of the sun in the near-infrared. Data from the spectra measure the abundance of gases such as CO2, CH4, N2O, HF, CO, H2O, and HDO in the atmosphere.
More information on TCCON can be found here: https://tcconwiki.caltech.edu/
A recent report from the European Commission highlights the importance of TCCON: https://www.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/201909/CO2_Green_Report_2019.pdf