Toward Establishing a Low-cost UAV Coordinated Carbon Observation Network (LUCCN): First Integrated Campaign in China

In this study, we introduce our newly developed measurement-fed-perception self-adaption Low-cost UAV Coordinated Carbon Observation Network (LUCCN) prototype. The LUCCN primarily consists of two categories of instruments, including ground-based and UAV-based in-situ measurement. We use the GMP343, a low-cost non-dispersive infrared sensor, in both ground-based and UAV-based instruments. The first integrated measurement campaign took place in Shenzhen, China, 4 May 2023. During the campaign, we found that LUCCN’s UAV component presented significant data-collecting advantages over its ground-based counterpart owing to the relatively high altitudes of the point emission sources, which was especially obvious at a gas power plant in Shenzhen. The emission flux was calculated by a cross-sectional flux (CSF) method, the results of which differed from the Open-Data Inventory for Anthropogenic Carbon dioxide (ODIAC). The CSF result was slightly larger than others because of the low sampling rate of the whole emission cross section. The LUCCN system will be applied in future carbon monitoring campaigns to increase the spatiotemporal coverage of carbon emission information, especially in scenarios involving the detection of smaller-scale, rapidly varying sources and sinks.