Toward accurate CO_2 and CH_4 observations from GOSAT

Creators: Butz, A.; Guerlet, S.; Hasekamp, O.; Schepers, D.; Galli, A.; Aben, I.; Frankenberg, C.; Hartmann, J.-M.; Tran, H.; Kuze, A.; Keppel-Aleks, G.; Toon, G.; Wunch, D.; Wennberg, P. O.; Deutscher, N.; Griffith, D.; Messerschmidt, J.; Macatangay, R.; Notholt, J.; Warneke, T.

Abstract

The column-average dry air mole fractions of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane (X_(CO_2) and X_(CH_4)) are inferred from observations of backscattered sunlight conducted by the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT). Comparing the first year of GOSAT retrievals over land with colocated ground-based observations of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON), we find an average difference (bias) of −0.05% and −0.30% for X_(CO_2) and X_(CH_4) with a station-to-station variability (standard deviation of the bias) of 0.37% and 0.26% among the 6 considered TCCON sites. The root-mean square deviation of the bias-corrected satellite retrievals from colocated TCCON observations amounts to 2.8 ppm for X_(CO_2) and 0.015 ppm for X_(CH_4). Without any data averaging, the GOSAT records reproduce general source/sink patterns such as the seasonal cycle of X_(CO_2) suggesting the use of the satellite retrievals for constraining surface fluxes.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Geophysical Union. Received 21 April 2011; revised 14 June 2011; accepted 20 June 2011; published 30 July 2011. Access to GOSAT data was granted through the 2nd GOSAT research announcement jointly issued by JAXA, NIES, and MOE. Funding of this research came from the Dutch User Support Program under project GO‐2005/064 and GO‐AO/21 (DS), from ESA's CCI on GHGs and the European Commission's 7th framework program under grant agreement 218793 (SG), from DFG's Emmy‐Noether program under project RemoteC BU2599/1‐1 (AB). ECMWF ERA Interim analyses are provided through http://data‐portal.ecmwf.int/data/d/interim_daily/. GTOPO30 is available from the U.S. Geological Survey through the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center (http://eros.usgs.gov/#/Find_ Data/Products_and_Data_Available/gtopo30_info). CarbonTracker data are provided by NOAA ESRL, Boulder, Colorado, USA from the Web site at http://carbontracker.noaa.gov. TM4 fields have been made available through Jan‐Fokke Meirink, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). US funding for TCCON comes from NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program (NNX08A186G), the Orbiting Carbon Observatory Program (NAS7‐03001), the DOE/ARM Program and the Atmospheric CO2 Observations from Space Program. Some of the research described in this paper was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the NASA. We acknowledge the support of the European Commission within the 6th Framework Program through the Integrated Infrastructure Initiative IMECC and the Integrated Project GEOmon. We thank AeroMeteo Service, (Bialystok, Poland) and the RAMCES team at LSCE (Gif‐sur‐Yvette, France) for maintaining the Bialystok and Orleans FTS sites and providing station logistics. The Editor thanks two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in evaluating this paper.

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