Preparing for OCO/GOSAT

New space borne instruments for measuring atmospheric column CO₂ concentration, OCO and GOSAT are to be launched in 2008. There is considerable interest in assimilating these data into global C models.

CarbonFusion, working with the UK National Centre for Earth Observation, has produced a working note for a UK research programme exploiting carbon dioxide measurements from the NASA Orbiting Carbon Conservatory (OCO) and the JAXA Greenhouse gas Observing SATellite (GOSAT)

For background on the two missions, click on the links to OCO and GOSAT to see powerpoint presentations from the science teams at the CarbonFusion International Meeting in May 2006.

Paul Palmer has produced a report on the recent International Workshop on Greenhouse Gas Measurements from Space, 25-27 June, 2007, CNES, Paris. For more details on the meeting click here.

Paul Palmer is also leading a relevant project funded by NERC:

Preparing for CO₂ column datastreams from OCO and GOSAT satellite instrument

NERC EO Mission Support Scheme
PI: Paul Palmer, University of Edinburgh
Start date: September 2007 for 18 months.
PDRA: Liang Feng
Abstract
Humans have influenced the evolution of Earth's climate in many ways, the most dramatic of which has been the burning of fossil fuels and the subsequent emission of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases. A better quantitative understanding of the controls on biospheric continental CO₂ fluxes is essential to reduce uncertainty of the human contribution to climate. Much of what we understand about continental biospheric fluxes has been inferred from in situ data. These data are sparse in both time and space, making it difficult to make reliable flux estimates. In contrast, the ocean CO₂ fluxes typically vary over 100s km, making it easier to estimate global fluxes from in situ data. Two purpose-built satellite instruments will provide observations of CO₂, representative of regional scales, from 2008. These data have the potential to revolutionize our quantitative understanding of the land-component of the carbon cycle, but using them presents significant challenges to the carbon cycle community. The data are not straightforward to interpret, representing a measurement of CO₂ absorption in the near-infra red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Processing the hundreds of thousands of observations per day also represents a significant technical challenge. Data assimilation provides a flexible and efficient method of estimating surface CO2 fluxes that are consistent with the observed CO₂ concentrations, accounting for their respective uncertainties. Here, we propose to develop efficient data assimilation tools to interpret these upcoming CO₂ data streams and assess the strengths and weaknesses of these data for quantifying regional carbon fluxes. The tools will be tested rigorously using simulated observations from the two new instruments, providing the investigators an excellent opportunity to also assess the impact of instrument and model errors on surface flux estimates of CO₂. The data assimilation tools, and the subsequent results from the simulations, will be invaluable when we process real data, with the purpose of reducing uncertainty in estimating future climate.