Regional GHG Flux Monitoring
The GHG monitoring system developed at the Finnish Meteorological Institute quantifies CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes regionally in Finland with higher resolution (0.1°-0.2° lat x lon) and globally with lower resolution (up to 1° lat x lon). Integrating bottom-up flux estimates with atmospheric measurements, the system tracks emissions and their changes to assess mitigation effectiveness.
The GHG monitoring system consists of both bottom-up and top-down estimates. Bottom-up methods start from individual sources and scale up using scientific knowledge, for example, through inventory calculations or process-based models, to estimate total emissions for a sector or region. Top-down methods, on the other hand, use measurements of CO₂ and CH₄ in the atmosphere and combine them with models of atmospheric circulation to infer where the emissions originated. These top-down methods, also called atmospheric inverse models, use bottom-up estimates as a starting point to help constrain the mathematical problem they aim to solve.
The main components developed by FMI for the GHG monitoring system are JSBACH-HIMMELI, which simulates land fluxes, and the inversion model systems CTDAS-FMI and CIF-FLEXPART-FMI, which estimate the fluxes from all the sources. Here, we show the latest daily or monthly results as well as last years' annual budgets.
JSBACH-HIMMELI land ecosystem fluxesCTDAS-FMI fluxesCIF-FLEXPART-FMI fluxesModel descriptionKey publicationsContact informationJSBACH-HIMMELI land ecosystem fluxes
Finland's CO₂ fluxes
Finland's CH₄ fluxes
Global CO₂ fluxes
Global CH₄ fluxes
CTDAS-FMI fluxes
Finland's CH₄ fluxes
Global CH₄ fluxes
CIF-FLEXPART-FMI fluxes
Finland's CO₂ fluxes
Finland's CH₄ fluxes
European CO₂ fluxes
European CH₄ fluxes
JSBACH-HIMMELI
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Drivers: static land-use maps and meteorological reanalysis data, which are updated with a relatively short time lag.
CTDAS-FMI
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In addition to meteorological fields, atmospheric observations of GHG concentrations are required to run the model. Currently, these observations are shared with varying time lags: the situation is better in Europe, where ICOS provides near-real-time observations from most of its atmospheric stations(?). Globally, the situation is worse, and it can take more than a year to obtain enough measurements so that we can have reliable top-down results.
CIF-FLEXPART-FMI
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Key publications
JSBACH-HIMMELI
Petrescu, A. M. R., Peters, G. P., Engelen, R., Houweling, S., Brunner, D., Tsuruta, A., Matthews, B., Patra, P. K., Belikov, D., Thompson, R. L., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Zhang, W., Segers, A. J., Etiope, G., Ciotoli, G., Peylin, P., Chevallier, F., Aalto, T., Andrew, R. M., Bastviken, D., Berchet, A., Broquet, G., Conchedda, G., Dellaert, S. N. C., Denier van der Gon, H., Gütschow, J., Haussaire, J.-M., Lauerwald, R., Markkanen, T., van Peet, J. C. A., Pison, I., Regnier, P., Solum, E., Scholze, M., Tenkanen, M., Tubiello, F. N., van der Werf, G. R., Worden, J. R. (2024). Comparison of observation- and inventory-based methane emissions for eight large global emitters. Earth System Science Data 16: 4325–4350. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4325-2024
CTDAS-FMI
Tenkanen, M. K., Tsuruta, A., Denier van der Gon, H., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Leppänen, A., Markkanen, T., Petrescu, A. M. R., Raivonen, M., Aaltonen, H., Aalto, T. (2025). Partitioning anthropogenic and natural methane emissions in Finland during 2000–2021 by combining bottom-up and top-down estimates. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 25: 2181–2206. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-2181-2025.
Tsuruta, A., Kuze, A., Shiomi, K., Kataoka, F., Kikuchi, N., Aalto, T., Backman, L., Kivimäki, E., Tenkanen, M. K., McKain, K., García, O. E., Hase, F., Kivi, R., Morino, I., Ohyama, H., Pollard, D. F., Sha, M. K., Strong, K., Sussmann, R., Te, Y., Velazco, V. A., Vrekoussis, M., Warneke, T., Zhou, M., Suto, H. (2025). Global CH4 fluxes derived from JAXA/GOSAT lower-tropospheric partial column data and the CarbonTracker Europe-CH₄ atmospheric inverse model. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 25: 7829–7862. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7829-2025.
Saunois, M., Martinez, A., Poulter, B., Zhang, Z., Raymond, P. A., Regnier, P., Canadell, J. G., Jackson, R. B., Patra, P. K., Bousquet, P., Ciais, P., Dlugokencky, E. J., Lan, X., Allen, G. H., Bastviken, D., Beerling, D. J., Belikov, D. A., Blake, D. R., Castaldi, S., Crippa, M., Deemer, B. R., Dennison, F., Etiope, G., Gedney, N., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Holgerson, M. A., Hopcroft, P. O., Hugelius, G., Ito, A., Jain, A. K., Janardanan, R., Johnson, M. S., Kleinen, T., Krummel, P. B., Lauerwald, R., Li, T., Liu, X., McDonald, K. C., Melton, J. R., Mühle, J., Müller, J., Murguia-Flores, F., Niwa, Y., Noce, S., Pan, S., Parker, R. J., Peng, C., Ramonet, M., Riley, W. J., Rocher-Ros, G., Rosentreter, J. A., Sasakawa, M., Segers, A., Smith, S. J., Stanley, E. H., Thanwerdas, J., Tian, H., Tsuruta, A., Tubiello, F. N., Weber, T. S., van der Werf, G. R., Worthy, D. E. J., Xi, Y., Yoshida, Y., Zhang, W., Zheng, B., Zhu, Q., Zhu, Q., Zhuang, Q. (2025). Global Methane Budget 2000–2020. Earth System Science Data 17: 1873–1958. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1873-2025.
Isomäki, K., McGrath, M.J., Backman, L., Leskinen, J., Berchet, A., Broque,t G., Fortems-Cheiney, A., Junttila, V., Leppänen, A., Lindqvist, H., Mengistu, A., Mäkelä, A., Raivonen, M., Thölix, L., Aalto, T. (2024). Assessing the role of terrestrial ecosystems in Finland’s total CO₂ balance through a comparison of top-down and bottom-up estimates. Boreal Environment Research 29: 77–102. https://www.borenv.net/BER/archive/pdfs/ber29/ber29-077-102.pdf
Tsuruta, A., Aalto, T., Backman, L., Hakkarainen, J., van der Laan-Luijkx, I. T., Krol, M. C., Spahni, R., Houweling, S., Laine, M., Dlugokencky, E., Gomez-Pelaez, A. J., van der Schoot, M., Langenfelds, R., Ellul, R., Arduini, J., Apadula, F., Gerbig, C., Feist, D. G., Kivi, R., Yoshida, Y., and Peters, W.: Global methane emission estimates for 2000-2012 from CarbonTracker Europe-CH4 v1.0, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 1261-1289, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-1261-2017, 2017.
CIF-FLEXPART-FMI
Mengistu, A. G., Tsuruta, A., Berchet, A., Thompson, R., Tenkanen, M., Lindqvist, H., Markkanen, T., Leppänen, A., Laitinen, A., Martinez, A., Fortems-Cheiney, A., Höglund-Isaksson, L., and Aalto, T.: High-resolution inversion of methane emissions over Europe using the Community Inversion Framework and FLEXPART, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5877, 2026.
Berchet, A., Sollum, E., Thompson, R. L., Pison, I., Thanwerdas, J., Broquet, G., Chevallier, F., Aalto, T., Berchet, A., Bergamaschi, P., Brunner, D., Engelen, R., Fortems-Cheiney, A., Gerbig, C., Groot Zwaaftink, C. D., Haussaire, J.-M., Henne, S., Houweling, S., Karstens, U., Kutsch, W. L., Luijkx, I. T., Monteil, G., Palmer, P. I., van Peet, J. C. A., Peters, W., Peylin, P., Potier, E., Rödenbeck, C., Saunois, M., Scholze, M., Tsuruta, A., and Zhao, Y. (2021) The Community Inversion Framework v1.0: a unified system for atmospheric inversion studies, Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 5331–5354, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-5331-2021.
Contributions
Antti Leppänen (JSBACH-HIMMELI), Maria Tenkanen (CTDAS-FMI, visualisation), Anteneh Mengistu (CIF-FLEXPART-FMI), Rebecca Ward (CTDAS-FMI), Aki Tsuruta (CTDAS-FMI)
Contact information
To access the data, please contact Tuula Aalto (tuula.aalto@fmi.fi).
18.2.2026
