th

14 International
Workshop on
Greenhouse Gas
Measurements from
Space

Toronto, Canada
2018 May 8-10

Abstract Booklet
1Session 1: On-going and near-term satellite missions and calibration
1.1 Precision, Accuracy, Resolution, and Coverage: A few insights from GOSAT and OCO-2
David Crisp*, Annmarie Eldering, Christopher W. O'Dell*Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Early flux inversion studies indicated that space based remote sensing observations of XCO2 withaccuracies of 0.25% (1 ppm) on regional scales at monthly intervals could substantially improve ourunderstanding of CO2 sources and sinks (Rayner and O’Brien, 2001). Recent products from the OCO-2
mission are now meeting or exceeding this target (Eldering et al., 2017). In spite of this progress, andthat anticipated from the growing fleet of greenhouse gas missions, substantial improvements inmeasurement accuracy, precision, resolution and coverage will be needed to deliver timely information
about anthropogenic emission inventories on the scale of individual nations or to track subtle trends inthe natural carbon cycle resulting from climate change. Spatially- and temporally-correlated XCO2
biases must be reduced to vanishingly-small values (<< 1 ppm) to enable accurate local to regional scale
CO2 flux inversions that account for weak, but spatially-extensive natural sources and sinks as well as
emission hot spots. Greater single-sounding precision is needed to quantify trends in emissions fromlocalized sources such as mega cities and power plants. Higher spatial and temporal resolution isneeded to locate discrete sources and sinks and to track their variations over diurnal to seasonal timescales. Improved coverage is needed, especially at high northern latitudes of the winter hemisphere andin tropical regions covered by persistent, optically-thick clouds. Some of these needs will require
improved space based instruments, calibration techniques, XCO2 retrieval algorithms, validation
capabilities and flux inversion strategies. Others can be addressed by carefully coordinating the available
space-based, aircraft, and ground-based sensors to produce a more effective greenhouse gas monitoring
system. This presentation will summarize the progress and plans in both of these areas.
Rayner, P. J. and O'Brien, D. M.: The utility of remotely sensed CO2 concentration data in surface
source inversions, Geophys. Res. Lett., 28, 175-178, 2001.
Eldering, A., et al.: The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2: first 18 months of science data products,
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 549 - 563, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-549-2017, 2017.
1.2 Recent progress of GOSAT project and preparation for GOSAT-2 at National Institute forEnvironmental Studies (NIES)
Tsuneo Matsunaga*, Akihide Kamei, Shamil Maksyutov, Isamu Morino, Yukio Yoshida, Makaoto
Saito, Hibiki Noda, Hirofumi Oyama, Fumie Kawazoe, and Yukio Terao*Satellite Observation Center, National Institute for Environmental Studies
GOSAT (Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite) and GOSAT-2 are Japanese Earth observation
satellites for greenhouse gas observation from space and jointly promoted by Ministry of the2

Environment, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and NIES (National Institute forEnvironmental Studies). GOSAT was launched in January 2009 and has been operating for more thannine years. GOSAT-2 will be launched in FY2018. NIES is responsible for generation, archiving,validation, and distribution of higher level standard and research products of GOSAT and GOSAT-2.
GOSAT's standard products such as FTS SWIR level 2 CO2 / CH4 / H2O column amount products(V02.72, April 2009 - present), FTS TIR level 2 CO2 / CH4 profile products (V01.20, April 2009 - May2014), and level 4A CO2 / CH4 flux products (CO2: V02.05, June 2009 - October 2015, CH4: V01.03,
June 2009 - September 2013) are freely available from GDAS (GOSAT Data Archive Service). A newversion of level 4A CH4 product (V01.04, June 2009 - September 2015) will be available soon.
GOSAT-2's standard and research products similar to those of GOSAT will be generated by G2DPS(GOSAT-2 Data Processing System) which is currently being developed and available from a dedicate
website, GOSAT-2 Product Archive. For validation of GOSAT-2 products, several new ground-based
measurement stations, such as a TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network) station in
Philippines, a SIF (Solar Induced Fluorescence) station in Shiga, Japan, and an urban air in-situ
measurement and sampling station implemented in Tokyo Skytree, are established.
GOSAT RAs (Research Announcements) were issued eleven times in 2008 - 2017 to promote scientificresearches using GOSAT data. GOSAT RA PIs (Principal Investigators) have several privileges such asaccess to GOSAT standard products earlier than general users, access to research products and othertechnical information, and a right to submit FTS observation requests. In total, more than 120 joint
research contracts with scientists from more than twenty countries were concluded under GOSAT RA
framework. GOSAT-2 RA is now being prepared and will be issued before GOSAT-2 launch.
1.3 TanSat Scientific Achievements and Future Plan
Yi Liu*, Dongxu Yang, Zhaonan Cai, Zhongdong Yang, Zengshan Yin, Yuquan Zheng, Changxiang
Yan, Peng Zhang, Lu Naimeng, Daren Lu*Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
The first scientific experimental CO2 satellite of China - Chinese carbon dioxide observation satellite(TanSat) was launched in 22 Dec, 2016. After on-broad test and calibration, TanSat has been measuring
the backscattered sunlight in scientific earth observation mode and produces XCO2 data for more than
one year. Validation against TCCON measurements and inter-comparison with OCO-2 measurementsfrom near overlap footprints show the preliminary status and data quality of TanSat. On-orbit slit
function and wavelength registration calibrations are evaluated using solar calibration data. The
operational full-physical retrieval algorithm (IAPCAS) for TanSat has been developed and applied toprocess GOSAT and OCO-2 level 1b data. Further validation campions with EM-27 and AirCore systemhave been scheduled in 2018 and next few years in Inner Mongolia, Tibet plateau and megacity region
aim to improve TanSat measurement. In this presentation, we are going to show the status andperformance of TanSat CO2 measurement in 2017, as well as the TanSat retrieval, validation, scientificapplication and international cooperation plans.

31.4 Status of the Sentinel-5 Precursor Mission and First Results on Methane
Claus Zehner*, Kevin McMullan, Herbert Nett
*European Space Agency
Sentinel-5 Precursor (S-5P) is the first of a series of atmospheric chemistry missions to be launchedwithin the European Commission’s Copernicus (former GMES) Programme. Launched during Oct. 13
S-5P will provide continuity in the availability of global atmospheric data products between its
predecessor missions SCIAMACHY (Envisat) and OMI (AURA) and the future Sentinel-4 and -5 series.
S-5P will deliver unique data regarding the sources and sinks of trace gases with a focus on the lower
Troposphere including the planet boundary layer due to its enhanced spatial, temporal and spectral
sampling capabilities as compared to its predecessors. The S-5P satellite carries a single payload,
namely TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument) which is jointly developed by The
Netherlands and ESA. Covering spectral channels in the UV, visible, near- and short-wave infrared, itmeasures various key species including tropospheric/stratospheric ozone, NO2, SO2, CO, CH4, CH2O aswell as cloud and aerosol parameters. The paper includes descriptions of the S-5P spacecraft, theTROPOMI instrument, data products, Ground Segment, in-orbit commissioning, planned data releases
to the public, and first results on S5P Methane retrieval.
1.5 Measurements of Carbon Monoxide from Space using the MOPITT Instrument
James R. Drummond*, Merritt Deeter, David Edwards, John Gille, Florian Nichitiu, Helen Worden,
Jason Zou
*University of Toronto
Carbon monoxide (CO) is not a greenhouse gas in the conventional sense. However, much of its passage
on the planet is associated with burning of carbon fuels, measurements of CO can shed significant lighton the carbon cycle. Fortunately, CO can be measured from space and that has been the task of the
Measurements Of Pollution In the Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument for the last 18 years.
MOPITT is a Canadian instrument and was launched on NASA’s Terra platform on 18th December
1999 and has operated fairly continuously since them providing a long-term record over the planet. This
has enabled us to map sources and sinks of CO as well as transport and also allowed us to look at
temporal variations on a decadal timescale with a single instrument.
In conjunction with models, MOPITT data have been able to shed light on source emissions and to tie
these to greenhouse gas emissions.
After correction for instrument drift and similar factors a global trend of decreasing CO has been
observed, but other phenomena have also been observed, both regular and sporadic. These are caused
by a mix of changes in sources, transport and sinks, particularly with the increasing trend for theconcentration of people in (mega)cities. This paper will consider some of these phenomena by way ofcase studies and statistics.

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MOPITT was built in Canada by COMDEV of Cambridge, ON, data processing is performed at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. The Terra satellite is operated byNASA and the MOPITT instrument and operations are funded by the Canadian Space Agency.
1.6 Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) Greenhouse Gas Measurements: CO2, CH4 and
HFCs
Peter Bernath*, Chris Boone, Anton Fernando, Scott Jones*Old Dominion University and University of Waterloo
ACE (also known as SCISAT) is making a comprehensive set of simultaneous measurements ofnumerous trace gases, thin clouds, aerosols and temperatures by solar occultation from a satellite in low
earth orbit. A high inclination orbit at 74 degrees gives ACE coverage of tropical, mid-latitude and polar
regions. The primary instrument is a high-resolution (0.02 cm-1) infrared Fourier Transform
Spectrometer (FTS) operating in the 750-4400 cm-1 region, which provides the vertical distribution of
trace gases, and the meteorological variables of temperature and pressure. After almost 15 years in orbit,
the ACE-FTS is still operating exceptionally well. ACE measurements of CO2 and CH4 will bepresented, as well as new HFC-134a and HFC-23 research products. These long-lived HFCs have large
global warming potentials and their atmospheric concentrations are increasing rapidly. The Kigali
Amendment to the Montreal Protocol will control HFC emissions starting in 2019.
1.7 GOSAT Calibration Updates and Operations toward an Optimized Observation Pattern
Akihiko KUZE*, Hiroshi Suto, Kei Shiomi, Fumie Kataoka, Nobuhiro Kikuchi, and Makiko Hashimoto*Earth Observation Research Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA EORC)
Since 2009, the Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observation Fourier-Transform
Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) onboard the Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) has been
providing radiometrically and geometrically calibrated data. The recently released Level 1 V210
algorithm has been used to update the nonlinearity correction of the thermal-infrared band and quality
flags. The new dataset exhibits seamless radiometric calibration before and after cryo-cooler anomaliesin May 2014 and August 2015. In addition to the global grid observations, the number of target
observations using an agile pointing system has been increased and the latitudinal range of the glint
observation has been expanded. We have developed two tools from http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/GOSAT/:
the GOSAT trend viewer and the score map. The former provides long-term trend data of the selected
targets, including the large point sources of methane (CH4) and intensive observations of selected megacites. The latter shows the maps of possible emission sources, vegetation, GOSAT observation results,
and successful retrieval ratio together with GOSAT, GOSAT-2, and OCO-2 orbits. These global maps
will help optimizing sampling patterns for better understanding the global and regional fluxes of carbon
dioxide (CO2) and/or CH4 and identifying type of emission sources. They also show match-up locations5

of different greenhouse gases measurement satellites. We will present the recent topics in GOSAT
operation, TANSO-FTS Level 1 V210 products, and analytical tools.
1.8 Characterization of OCO-2 biases and errors for flux estimates
Susan S. Kulawik*, Kathryn McKain, Colm Sweeney, Christopher W. O'Dell, Gregory B Osterman,
Paul Wennberg, Debra Wunch, Coleen Roehl, Nicholas Deutscher, MatthÕ_us Kiel, David Griffith,
Voltaire Velazco, Justus Notholt, Thorsten Warneke, Christof Petri, Martine De Maziere, Mahesh
Kumar Sha, Ralf Sussmann, Markus Rettinger, Dave Pollard, Isamu Morino, Osamu Uchino, FrankHase, Dietrich Feist, Kimberly Strong, Rigel Kivi, Laura Iraci, Kawakami Shuji, Manvendra Dubey,
Eliezer Sepulveda, Omaira Elena Garcia Rodriguez, Yao Te, Pascal Jeseck, Matt Kiel, Pauli Heikkinen,
Matthias Schneider*BAERI at NASA Ames
Characterization of satellite CO2 estimates is a prerequisite for using CO2 measurements for flux
inversion and establishing a long-term atmospheric CO2 data record. We validate recent satellite
observation of OCO-2 v8 using similar analysis as previous work through comparisons to the
Atmospheric Tomogrophy (ATom) and the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) to
estimate regional biases and errors affecting carbon cycle science. CarbonTracker 2017 and NRT are
also compared to the validation data to evaluate the mismatch between the validation and satellite
observations. We also look at the correlation length of biases which can be used to estimate impact ofbiases on flux estimates.
1.9 The OCO-3 Mission: Science Objectives and Instrument Performance
Annmarie Eldering*, Ralph Basilio, Matthew Bennett, Ryan Pavlick, Thomas Kurosu, Brendan Fisher,
Greg Osterman*Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ California Institute of Technology
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3) will continue global CO2 and solar-induced chlorophyll
fluorescence (SIF) using the flight spare instrument from OCO-2. The instrument is currently being
tested, and will be packaged for installation on the International Space Station (ISS). Thermal vacuum
testing was completed in early 2018, and the current launch schedule is February 2019. This talk will
focus on the science objectives, updated simulations of the science data products, and the outcome ofrecent instrument performance tests.
The low-inclination ISS orbit lets OCO-3 sample the tropics and sub-tropics across the full range ofdaylight hours with dense observations at northern and southern mid-latitudes (+/- 52°). The
combination of these dense CO2 and SIF measurements provides continuity of data for global flux
estimates as well as a unique opportunity to address key deficiencies in our understanding of the global
carbon cycle. The instrument utilizes an agile, 2-axis pointing mechanism (PMA), providing thecapability to look towards the bright reflection from the ocean and validation targets.

6

The PMA also allows for a snapshot mapping mode to collect dense datasets over 100 km by 100 km
areas. Measurements over urban centers could aid in making estimates of fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
Similarly, the snapshot mapping mode can be used to sample regions of interest for the terrestrial carbon
cycle. We will share updated simulations of the snapshot area maps, including details maps andfrequency of measurements over the year.
The payload integration and testing was performed over 2018 and early 2019. Key characteristics, suchas instrument ILS, spectral resolution, and radiometric performance will be described. Analysis of direct
sun measurements taken during testing will also be discussed.
1.10 Upper tropospheric and stratospheric trends of greenhouse gases as derived from MIPAS
observations
Gabriele P. Stiller*, Thomas von Clarmann, Maksym Chirkov, Ellen Eckert, Norbert Glatthor, Udo
Grabowski, Florian Haenel, Sylvia Kellmann, Michael Kiefer, Alexandra Laeng, Andrea Linden, Stefan
Lossow, Johannes Plieninger*Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
MIPAS on Envisat measured a large number of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the upper troposphere andstratosphere during it mission lifetime from July 2002 to April 2012. Among these greenhouse gases
measured are H2O, O3, N2O, CH4, CFC-11, CFC-12, HCFC-22, CCl4, and SF6. We have analysed thetrends and shorter-scale variability of the GHGs as a function of altitude and latitude and have related
their variations to the seasonal cycle, QBO impact and, in some cases, to solar variability and ENSO.
We have also derived the linear trends over the 10-years mission lifetime. All GHGs show a similar
trend pattern with a dipole structure in the two hemispheres. We trace this pattern back to a shift of thestratospheric mean circulation to the South that is demonstrated by the shift of the latitudinal positions of
the subtropical mixing barriers. With this we demonstrate that a hitherto not recognised variability modeof the Brewer-Dobson circulation is important for the full understanding of the trends of greenhousegases.
A1.1 Four years of IASI CO2, CH4, N2O retrievals: validation with in situ observations from theMauna Loa station
Carmine Serio*, Guido Masiello, Claude Camy-Peyret, Giuliano Liuzzi, Sara Venafra*University of Basilicata, Italy
IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounder Interferometer) soundings for the years 2014 to 2017 over sea
surface for the Hawaii region have been used to retrieve column amount of CO2, CH4, N2O. The analysis
allowed us to derive CO2 and CH4 and N2O growth rates, trend and seasonality, which have been
compared to in situ observations from the Mauna Loa validation station. Day and night soundings havebeen used. During the day, for CO2 and N2O we make specifically use of the IASI SW band (2000 to
2250 cm-1) which is sensitive to sun radiation. Our forward/inverse module deals with sun radiation

7

using a Cox-Munck model for the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. This makes it possible
to exploit IASI soundings in sun-glint or close to sun-glint mode, which improves sensitivity of
retrievals close to the surface. The analysis has been performed with our total IASI level 2 processor(tau2IP, e.g., doi:10.1364/AO.55.006576, doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.05.022,
doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2017.07.006), which uses the whole IASI spectral coverage, therefore making it
possible to exploit the whole information of data. tau2IP also uses a random projection approach to
reduce the dimensionality of the data space. Random projections provide a) an unified and coherent
treatment of systematic and random errors; b) a compression tool, which can reduce the dimensionalityof the data space; c) a noise model which is truly Gaussian therefore, making it possible to apply
rigorously Optimal Estimation and derive the correct retrieval error; d) a simplified treatment of theinverse algebra to get the final solution. Our analysis show that, although growth rates, trends andseasonality are extracted with high accuracy (for CO2 and CH4 we observe correlation with in situ dataclose to 0.90 and for N2O close to 0.7), the column amount show a bias which is negative for CO2 (about3.5%) and N2O (about 1.5%) and positive for CH4 (about 1%). The nature and sign of this bias is also
discussed in the light of the new HITRAN2016 release.
A1.2 Sentinel-5 Precursor: Early In-Flight Operation
Herbert Nett*, Herbert Nett, Sten Ekholm, Kevin McMullan, Pepijn Veefkind, Quintus Kleipool, Antje
Ludewig*European Space Agency (ESA/ESTEC)The Sentinel-5 Precursor (S-5P) satellite was launched on 13 October ‘17. Carrying as single payload
the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) S-5P is first in a series atmospheric missions in
the European Commission’s Copernicus Programme.
The spacecraft was injected into its near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit by a Rockot launcher from
Plesetsk (Russia). Following a flawless functional check-out of the satellite’s main components, and a
25 days initial outgassing period, the instrument’s radiant cooler was activated and TROPOMI starteddelivering Earth radiance, solar irradiance spectra as well as different types of Phase E1 specificcalibration measurements. All observational data were immediately downlinked using two high latitude
ground stations, Svalbard (N) and Inuvik (Ca), and transferred to the so-called Payload Data Ground
Segment (PDGS), located at DLR-Munich (D). Depending on measurement type the acquired data wereused to verify the instrument’s performance, to update calibration key data or in the functional testing of
the Level 1B / 2 algorithms.
Various minor - though important - corrections to algorithms and configuration settings were identified
shortly after instrument switch on, leading to the installation of enhanced processor versions in the
PDGS mid December ‘17. The modified processors were used to generate a first set of sample products(Level 1B & 2) for use by expert teams worldwide taking part in the S-5P CalVal Announcement ofOpportunity project.
During the first part of the 6 months commissioning phase excellent performance of the S-5P mission
was demonstrated and key parameters regarding the payload’s radiometric sensitivity, spatial resolution8

and sampling capabilities could be fully verified. The Phase E1 specific measurement tasks will becompleted in April ‘18 leading to the release of a second, overall update of L1B/2 processing chains andrelated calibration key data. The routine operations phase (Phase E2), with a nominal duration of 6.5
years, will commence immediately after the spacecraft In-Orbit Commissioning Review scheduled end
April ‘18.
This presentation will summarize S-5P commissioning tasks and report on results of early in-flightcalibration activities. An outlook will be given on the transition to the routine operations phase.
A1.3 Retrieved L2 products from the new version V205 of L1B spectra in the thermal infrared
band of TANSO-FTS over the Arctic Ocean and comparison with retrievals from previous
versions
Sébastien Payan*, Jérôme Bureau, Claude Camy-Peyret*LATMOS/SORBONNE UNIVERSITE/CNRS /IPSL, 4 place Jussieu, Paris, France
Among the instruments performing remote sensing from space, measurements using Fourier transform
spectrometers operating in the thermal infrared (TIR) spectral domain are not hampered by therequirement of not too large solar zenith angles as in SWIR measurements. In this study we concentrateon the calibration/validation of the Thermal and Near Infrared Sensor for Carbon Observation(TANSO)–Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) spectra in the TIR spectral region (B4 band) over theArctic Ocean. We have previously performed inter-comparisons of the retrieved L2 products from four
successive versions of L1B products (V150, V160, V201, V203) to check the differences and theimprovement in the spectral and radiometric calibration of TANSO-FTS spectra in the narrow spectral
domain of 940–980 cm−1 covering CO2 lines of the so-called laser band in the rather clear 10.4 µm
atmospheric window, allowing sounding down to the lowest atmospheric layers. To our knowledge, thiswas the first attempt to retrieve XCO2 from this spectral region. A new L1B version (V205) is now
available and we will present new retrievals using this data. The period covered is the summer months(July, August, September) and the years from 2009 to 2015. Internal comparisons of L1B TANSO-FTS
spectra, as well as comparisons of our previously retrieved L2 products, i.e., Tsurf (sea surface
temperature or SST) and the retrieved column-averaged dry air volume mixing ratio XCO2 derived withthe same algorithm will be presented, as well as the overall trend in the XCO2.
1.4 Characterization of the TanSat slit function using solar measurements
Zhaonan Cai*, Dongxu Yang, Lu Yao, Yi Liu
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences
TanSat, launched into orbit on 22 December, 2016, has collected a large number of measurements in thesolar-mode. In order to improve the CO2 retrieval accuracy, the slit function (i.e. Instrument Line Shape)
must be determined accurately. The on-orbit behavior of slit function need to be characterize across the
spectral pixels and the 9 ground pixels in the three spectrometers. On-orbit slit function and wavelength9registration calibrations are performed by fitting the measured irradiance with a well-calibrated, highresolution reference solar spectrum using a nonlinear least square fitting technique. Following themethod proposed by Sun et al., 2017, several analytical functions such as Gaussian, hybrid Gaussian,Super Gaussian, and asymmetric Gaussian are used to parameterize the slit function, as well as fitting ahomogeneous stretch of the preflight slit function.
A1.5 In-Flight Performance of TanSat Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Grating Spectrometer
Zhong-Dong Yang1, Yan-Meng Bi1, Qian Wang1, Cheng-Bao Liu1, Lei Yang1, Na Xu1, Song-Yan Gu1,
Yu-Quan Zheng2, Chao Lin2, Zeng-Shan Yin3, and Long-Fei Tian3
1

National Satellite Meteorological Centre (NSMC), CMA, CHINA
Changchun Institute of Optics Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOFMP), CAS, CHINA
3
Shanghai Engineering Centre for Microsatellites (SECM), CAS, CHINA
2

The latest scientific assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change points out thatclimate warming is unequivocal. Many recent changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The
atmosphere and ocean have warmed, snow and ice have diminished and sea level has risen. Changes
such as these have resulted from positive radiative forcing caused by increased concentrations ofatmospheric greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide (CO2) make the largest contributions to radiative forcing.
TanSat is the first Chinese satellite mission designed dedicatedly to measure column-averaged carbon
dioxide dry-air mole fraction, XCO2, with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to study globe
climate change and distinguish CO2 sources and sinks on regional scales. Atmospheric Carbon dioxide
Grating Spectrometer (ACGS) is a major spaceborne grating hyperspectral spectrometer suite on board
the TanSat that was successfully launched into orbit from JiuQuan Base in Gansu Province of China on
22 December 2016 with an altitude of 700 km above the Earth surface, an inclination angle of 98.25°
and a 13:45 local time ascending node. The ACGS is a three-band high spectral resolution
spectroradiometer on the TanSat satellite, providing operational observations of top-of-atmospherevisible and near infrared radiance spectra for climate applications and into chemistry transport model forinvestigation of carbon source and sink in regional and global scale. It is a major step forward in the
China scientific space based measuring capability of Atmospheric CO2 previously provided by U.S.
OCO-2 and Japanese GOSAT satellite. The ACGS high spectral resolution, large number of channels,
high signal-to-noise ratio, high dynamic range combine to provide much improved resolution andaccuracy in comparison to the GOSAT. The ACGS is the second grating spectrometer dedicated tomeasurement atmospheric CO2 next to OCO-2. ACGS will continue the measurements provided by the
OCO-2. It achieves a similar spectral resolution and spectral coverage on a similar afternoon orbit as the
OCO-2. In this presentation, we present the ACGS in-flight performance during first year after TanSat
has been launched, provides a more details on the ACGS design and on orbit calibration device,describes the in-flight spectroscopic, radiometric, and geolocation performance of the ACGS, describes
a intercomparison results of product between ACGS and OCO-2 simultaneously observation.

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A1.6 Using satellite observations to constrain the combined impacts of ecosystem memory andclimate extremes on the tropical carbon balance
A. Anthony Bloom*, A. Anthony Bloom, Junjie Liu, Kevin Bowman, Alexandra G. Konings, Sassan
Saatchi, John Worden, Helen Worden, Zhe Jiang, Nicholas Parazoo, Mathew Williams, David Schimel*Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
The trajectory of the tropical carbon balance is in part regulated by the size and frequency of extreme
weather events. Specifically, understanding the cumulative impact of ENSO events remains challenging,largely due to uncertainties in the integrated response of carbon cycle processes to climate variability.
Ultimately, an integrated understanding of both climate forcings and legacy effects (“ecosystemmemory”) on the terrestrial carbon balance is needed to understand the net impact of ENSO events on
the tropical C balance. Here we use the CARbon DAta-MOdel fraMework (CARDAMOM) diagnostic
model-data fusion approach - constrained by an array of C cycle satellite surface observations, including
MODIS leaf area, biomass, OCO-2 and GOSAT solar-induced fluorescence, as well as “top-down”
atmospheric inversion estimates of CO2 and CO surface fluxes from the NASA Carbon Monitoring
System Flux (CMS-Flux) - to constrain and predict spatially-explicit tropical carbon state variables
during 2010-2016. The combined assimilation of land surface and atmospheric datasets places key
constraints on the temperature sensitivity and first order carbon-water feedbacks throughout the tropics
and combustion factors within biomass burning regions. We show that across all tropical biomes,
memory effects account for roughly 50% of interannual flux variations; furthermore, we show that aquantitative disentanglement of direct forcing and memory effects is key for understanding the impact ofindividual ENSO events on the tropical C balance, and provides a critical constraint on the cumulative
impact of ENSO events in future projections of the tropical C balance.
B1.1 The PFT results of the mission instruments of GOSAT-2
Masakatsu Nakajima*, Makiko Hashimoto, Hiroshi Suto, Hiroko Imai, Lawrence Suwinski, John
Holder, Chris Ellsworth, Eric Beaubien, Glenn Davis, Takayuki Nakano*JAXA
The GOSAT-2 is the successor satellite to the GOSAT which is the first satellite dedicated to themeasurements of the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. GOSAT was launched in
January of 2009 and has been operated for about nine years.
The development of the GOSAT-2 started in April of 2014, and in early 2018, the manufacturing andthe proto-flight test (PFT) of the mission instruments, TANSO-FTS-2 and TANSO-CAI-2, werecompleted. TANSO-FTS-2 is the Fourier Transform Spectrometer observing greenhouse gases andTANSO-CAI-2 is the imager observing the aerosols and clouds to compensate the TANSO-FTS-2 data
and to grasp the movements of the aerosols such as PM2.5.
The results of the PFT had shown the excellent performances, and these results will promise that theobservation from space will become more useful means than GOSAT. The large part of the11specifications of the TANSO-FTS-2 have exceeded the requirement, especially the signal to noise rationof the thermal infrared region bands have large margin to the requirement.
On the other hand, the development of the TANSO-CAI-2 had faced a lot of anomalies such as thepolarization sensitivities, stray light and so on.
Unfortunately, it was difficult to get settled the stray light issue with the modification of the hardware,
so we decided to resolve this issue by the processing the data on the ground.
In this presentation, the results of the PFT of the TANSO-FTS-2 and the TANSO-CAI-2, and the how toresolve the stray light issue.
B1.3 Methane Sensing by a Small Fabry-Perot Interferometer on the Space Station
William Heaps*, Randy Kawa, Clark Weaver, Tom Flatley*Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
Our team composed mostly of personnel from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have been operatinga small Fabry-Perot based spectrometer on the Air Force STP-H5 platform attached to the International
Space Station for a little more than a year. The instrument was damaged in preflight testing whichcaused its spectral range to move slightly away from the strong methane absorption line which was its
target. This shift has complicated attempts to calibrate the instrument and retrieve methane columns.
Nevertheless the instrument is generating spectra which show an atmospheric absorption that is almost
certainly due to methane. We will present a brief outline of the instrument design and show partly
analyzed data from selected orbits. The small size and low cost of this type of instrument recommends
its use in future monitoring of methane and other atmospheric gases.
B1.4 GHGSat: Towards an Operational Constellation
Jason McKeever*, Berke Durak, David Gains, Dylan Jervis, Warren Shaw, James Sloan, Daniel Varon*GHGSat Inc
GHGSat’s primary activity is measuring greenhouse gas emissions from individual industrial sites using
small satellites in low earth orbit. Our demonstration satellite (GHGSat-D) has been active since June
2016, and the first satellite (GHGSat-C1) of our planned operational constellation will launch in early2019.
In order to inform ongoing retrievals development and the GHGSat-C1 design phase, a series of detailed
end-to-end simulations has been performed using an image simulation tool and the existing retrievals
chain. This allowed us to quantify errors originating from various imperfections in GHGSat-D andtabulate an associated error budget. These simulations used models based on detailed analysis of groundcalibration data as well as on-orbit images. Correspondence between the simulation results and retrieval

12outputs from GHGSat-D allowed us to build confidence in the simulations and prioritize areas of
improvement for GHGSat-C1. The same end-to-end simulation tools were then used to optimize the
GHGSat-C1 design and ultimately produce performance projections. GHGSat-C1, currently being
manufactured, will have GSD below 50 metres and quantify methane column density with an anticipatedprecision of ~2% of background for a nominal observation case. Design changes were selected tomaximize performance improvements while avoiding major engineering changes with respect to
GHGSat-D.
As a complement to the above, we have also developed a ground-based controlled release facility to
conduct field trials with an engineering model of GHGSat-D. We are detecting methane plumes withthis system using just a single adapter lens and minor parameter adjustments to the retrievals tools. This
setup is being used for many purposes, including testing retrievals features, optimizing the instrument
model and understanding and minimizing systematic retrievals artefacts. Furthermore, this setup can beused for additional validation of the end-to-end simulation tools and to test predictions of error levels
and detection thresholds.
We will also discuss progress on GHGSat-D retrievals and plans for an aircraft variant instrument to be
deployed commercially as a complement to the satellite system, and also used to support calibration andvalidation activities.
C1.1 MERLIN Level 0-1 Processing and Calibration Concept
Günter Lichtenberg1, Bernd Aberle1, Markus Meringer1, Thomas Trautmann1, Gerhard Ehret2, Martin
Wirth2, Axel Amediek2
1

German Aerospace Centre (DLR) Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF) Oberpfaffenhofen,
Germany2German Aerospace Centre (DLR) Institute for Atmospheric Physics (IPA) Oberpfaffenhofen,
Germany"
After water vapour and carbon dioxide, methane CH4 is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the Earth’s
atmosphere. The new generation space borne Lidar mission MERLIN (Methane Remote Sensing Lidar
Mission) will make very sensitive measurements of the CH4 distribution with unprecedented quality,with an accuracy <2%. After its launch, MERLIN will track down sources and sinks of methane on a
global scale. MERLIN is an active space-borne instrument using a IPDA (Integrated Path Differential
Absorption) LIDAR that will measure the atmospheric column content of methane. The difference inatmospheric transmission between a laser emission with a wavelength placed around the center of a CH4
absorption line (l_on ≈ 1.6 µm) and a reference wavelength, l_off, slightly shifted from l on by a few
tenths of a nm.
The Level 0-1 processing converts the raw signal coming from the satellite (essentially electronic counts
as a function of time) to the differential absorption optical depth (DAOD). The main steps in the Level
0-1 processing are- the removal of instrument effects and the calculation of the noise- the calculation of the backscatter signal

13

- the calculation of the range- the calculation of the DAOD.
Additionally, quality parameters for the measurements and cloud flags will be retrieved. Technically, theprocessor is based on the framework provided by GCAPS (Generic Calibration and Processing system),
which is developed at DLR-IMF. We will give an overview of the processing steps, the mission
requirements and the first design of the processor.

14Session 2: Retrievals algorithms and uncertainty quantification
2.1 First Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) satellite-derived greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4)
data set
Michael Buchwitz1, Maximilian Reuter1, Oliver Schneising1, Stefan Noël 1, Heinrich Bovensmann1,
John P. Burrows1, Hartmut Boesch2, Jasdep Anand2, Rob G. Detmers3, Ilse Aben3, Otto P. Hasekamp3,
Cyril Crevoisier4, Raymond Armante4
1

Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), University of Bremen FB1, Otto Hahn Allee 1, 28334
Bremen, Germany
2
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
3
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands
4
Labortoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD)/IPSL, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Université ParisSaclay, Palaiseau, France
During recent years, satellite-derived Essential Climate Variable (ECV) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) data
sets have been generated from SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT and TANSO-FTS/GOSAT within theframework of the GHG-CCI project of ESA’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI). Additional climate
variable GHG data sets have been generated from AIRS/Aqua and IASI/Metop. In parallel, data
products from GOSAT and IASI have been and still are generated and delivered to ECMWF in quasi
near-real-time for the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), e.g., XCO2 by University ofBremen. The GHG-CCI activity is now continued operationally within the framework of the Copernicus
Climate Change Service (C3S). The first C3S data set will be released in 2018 via the Copernicus
Climate Data Store (CDS). An overview about this data set will be presented focusing on the underlying
algorithms, the generated data products, their uncertainty quantification and initial use of these data
products for scientific applications.
2.2 Carbon dioxide retrieval from OCO-2 satellite observations using the RemoTeC algorithm:
application to single-view and multiple-angle modes
Lianghai Wu*, Lianghai Wu, Otto Hasekamp, Haili Hu, Jochen Landgraf, Andre Butz, Joost aan deBrugh, Ilse Aben
*SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
In this study, we present the retrieval of the column averaged dry air mole fraction of carbon dioxide
XCO2 from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite observations using the RemoTeC
algorithm, previously successfully applied to retrieval of CH4 and CO2 concentrations from theGreenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). The XCO2 product obtained from single-view
observations has been validated with collocated ground based measurements from the Total Carbon
Column Observing Network (TCCON) for almost 2 years of OCO-2 data from September 2014 to July
2016. We found that fitting an additive radiometric offset in all three spectral bands of OCO-2
significantly improved the retrieval. Based on a small correlation of the XCO2 error over land with fit
residuals, we applied an a posteriori bias correction to our OCO-2 retrievals. In daily averaged results,

15

XCO2 retrievals have a standard deviation ~1.30 ppm and a station-to-station variability of ~0.40 ppm
among collocated TCCON sites. The seasonal relative accuracy (SRA) has a value of 0.52 ppm. The
validation shows relatively larger difference with TCCON over high latitude areas and some specificregions like Japan.
Furthermore, we extended the RemoTeC algorithm to have the capability to take full advantage of the
OCO-2 specific target observation mode, which contains soundings of certain ground sites observed
from different viewing geometries. By using observations obtained under multiple angles
simultaneously will allow for more accurate characterization of the most important error source, namely
atmospheric scattering. We present a first investigation of this new feature with an ensemble ofsimulated multiple-angle observations for aerosol loaded scenes over land surfaces.
2.3 Plume detection and characterization from XCO2 imagery: methodology and expected
uncertainties on derived point source fluxes
Claude Camy-Peyret1, Pascal Prunet2, François-Marie Bréon3, Grégoire Broquet3, Diego Santaren3
1

IPSL (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace)/UPMC-UVSQ, Paris, France
SPASCIA, Toulouse, France
3
LSCE/IPSL, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
2

We have used simulations over Western Europe of daily fields of column averaged dry air carbon
dioxide mixing ratio (XCO2) generated using kilometer scale emission inventories and an Euleriantransport model. Six typical European sites covering power plants in France, Belgium, Germany, GreatBritain and the Netherlands as well as one megacity (Paris) have been selected as targets for the
inversion of emissions from point sources based on XCO2 images of the corresponding areas. Thesesimulated images have been used to assess the potential of satellite instruments able to acquire such
images for such an emission estimate. The simulated plumes have a realistic character and have been
fitted (using an optimal estimation method) with a Gaussian model (with various levels of a priori
constraints). The number of retrieved parameters as well as the dependence of their a posteriori
uncertainties on the input XCO2 uncertainty (in ppmv) or on the assumed spatial resolution (size of the
pixels) and spatial coverage (area of the measurement scene) will be discussed. A test on a few XCO2
images from OCO-2 as well as retrievals from MicroCarb and GeoCarb simulated images (with thepresently known characteristics of these satellite sounders) will be presented. The question ofquantifying the expected precision on the source emissions will be discussed.
2.4 Correction of topography related biases in XCO2 measurements from OCO-2
Matthäus Kiel*, Brendan M. Fisher, Robert F. Schneider, Paul O. Wennberg*California Institute of Technology
NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) has been successfully measuring column-averaged
dry-air mole fractions of carbon dioxide (XCO2) in the Earth's atmosphere for more than three years.

16

There are three key types of biases addressed by the OCO-2 Version 8 bias correction procedure:
footprint-dependent biases; spurious correlations of the retrieved XCO2 with other retrieval parameters;
and a multiplicative factor to scale to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Moreover, thesurface altitude is spatially correlated with changes in XCO2. This topography related bias is caused by
two factors: 1) an slight offset in the pointing of the instrument boresight and 2) a relative pointing
mismatch between the O2 A-Band and the weak and strong CO2 bands. In this study we show that OCO2 target mode data is well suited to determine the pointing offset and band mismatch. We present a
method to correct for topography related biases in XCO2 without re-running the L1B and L2 retrieval
algorithm.
2.5 Vertical distribution of Arctic methane from ground-based FTS measurements
Otto Lamminpää1, Tomi Karppinen2, Simo Tukiainen1, Janne Hakkarainen 1, Rigel Kivi2, Pauli
Heikkinen2, Tuomas Laurila1, Huilin Chen3, Marko Laine1, Hannakaisa Lindqvist1, and JohannaTamminen11Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
Finnish Meteorological Institute, Sodankylä, Finland
3
Center for Isotope Research, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
2

In this work, we studied retrievals of vertical distribution of atmospheric methane (CH4) using Fourier
Transform Spectrometer (FTS) data measured in Sodankylä Northern Finland. Sodankylä often lies
beneath the middle or on the edge of the stratospheric polar vortex resulting considerable variability inthe vertical profile of methane. The CH4 profiles were retrieved from the ground-based direct Sun FTS
measurements using a method that utilizes a novel dimension reduction approach and Bayesianinference. The instrument belongs to Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON), source for
accurate and precise column-averaged abundance of several trace gases and the data are used forclimatological studies and act as important reference for satellites such as OCO-2, GOSAT and S5P
TROPOMI. The new profile data set covers years from 2009 to the present day (from February to
November) and altitudes 0-40 km. The retrieved FTS profiles were validated against the ACE satellite
measurements and AirCore balloon measurements. The total columns derived from the profiles werecompared to the official TCCON XCH4 data. Finally, we analyzed the altitude-dependent time series of
CH4 using a flexible method that allows smooth variations in the trend and seasonal cycle. These results
provide valuable information on the CH4 vertical distribution at a high-latitude site, and thus have a
direct connection to further investigations of methane fluxes in the Arctic. The profile retrieval method
developed in this work was proven particularly successful in the challenging conditions of a strong polar
vortex and is directly applicable to other trace gases (e.g., CO2) and, ultimately, to space-based
retrievals.
2.6 IASI for Surveying Methane and Nitrous Oxide in the Troposphere: MUSICA products andits validation
Omaira García*, O.E. Garca, M. Schneider, B. Ertl, F. Hase, C. Borger, E. Sepúlveda, T. Blumenstock,
Uwe Raffalski and A.J. Gómez-Peláez

17*Meteorological State Agency of Spain (AEMET)
The large potential of the space-based instruments for observing global methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide(N2O) distributions has extensively been reported in the literature. Among the current space-based
remote sensing instruments, IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) has special relevance,since it successfully combines the needed requirements for atmospheric trace gases retrievals (very goodsignal to noise ratio and a high spectral resolution), and a long-term data availability (between 20072022 on-board the EUMETSAT/Metop meteorological satellites). Within the European ResearchCouncil MUSICA project (MUlti-platform remote Sensing of Isotopologues for investigating the Cycleof Atmospheric water) an IASI processor has been developed for simultaneously retrieving troposphericwater vapour isotopologues and middle and upper tropospheric CH4 and N2O concentrations.
In this work the MUSICA IASI CH4 and N2O products are presented, characterised andcomprehensively validated by using a multi-platform reference database. As validation references weconsider: (1) aircraft CH4 and N2O profiles from the HIAPER Polo-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO)
campaigns (missions 1-5), (2) continuous in-situ CH4 and N2O observations performed at the subtropicalIzaña Atmospheric Observatory (Tenerife, Spain) in the framework of the WMO/GAW programme, and(3) continuous ground-based Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) measurements taken in the frameworkof the NDACC (Network for Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change) at the subtropical Izaña
Atmospheric Observatory, mid-latitude Karlsruhe station and polar Kiruna site. This extensive
validation exercise enables us to properly document the quality and long-term consistency of theMUSICA IASI CH4 products as well as their geographical uniformity. Moreover, we will discuss thepossibilities of using the co-retrieved N2O estimates for reducing errors in the CH4 product.
A2.1 The total IASI level 2 processor τ²IP: Application to Seven-years of IASI sea surface
temperature, CO2, CH4, N2O retrievals for the Arctic Ocean during the summer season
Guido Masiello*, Carmine Serio, Claude Camy-Peyret, Giuliano Liuzzi, Sara Venafra*School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, via Ateneo Lucano, 10, Potenza, Italy
This paper will describe the level 2 processor we developed for IASI. The processor, we call τ²IP (total
level 2 processor for IASI, e.g., doi:10.1364/AO.55.006576, doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.05.022,
doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2017.07.006), uses the whole IASI spectral coverage, therefore making it possible toexploit the whole information of data. τ²IP also uses a random projection approach to reduce thedimensionality of the data space. Random projections provide a) an unified and coherent treatment ofsystematic and random errors; b) a compression tool, which can reduce the dimensionality of the data
space; c) a noise model which is truly Gaussian therefore, making it possible to apply rigorously
Optimal Estimation and derive the correct retrieval error; d) a simplified treatment of the inverse algebra
to get the final solution.
IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounder Interferometer) observations for the years 2010 to 2016 over the
Artic Sea during the summer season have been processed for the simultaneous retrieval of skintemperature, methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide. The analysis allowed us to derive CO2 and CH418

growth rate for a region, where SWIR-based instrument operated in sun-glint mode cannot be operated.
In fact, the satellite observations of greenhouse gases for the arctic region are rare. Comparison with insitu observations shows that IASI is capable to show the increase of greenhouse gases in the arctic
atmosphere with a rate that in 2013 has reached the larger value on record of about 7 ppmv per year. The
analysis has considered clear sky, sea water, IASI soundings for a latitude greater than 65°, which has
allowed us to derive maps covering the whole Arctic sea.
Results have been rendered with maps of grid spacing of 1°×1°, which show a wealth of spatial
structures. These findings are unexpected, mostly for CO2, and could be used to tune and validate
transport models.
A2.2 Reducing Biases in Greenhouse Retrievals by Quantifying Aerosol Scattering Effects: Case
Study Using Measurements from the California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing(CLARS)
Vijay Natraj*, Zhao-Cheng Zeng, Run-Lie Shia, Stanley Sander, Yuk Yung
*JPL/Caltech
In addition to their impact on climate, air quality and human health, aerosols influence greenhouse gas
retrievals from space by modifying the path of atmospheric radiation. For example, Orbiting Carbon
Observatory-2 (OCO-2) retrievals of CO2 abundances are showing biases up to 3 ppm at high southernlatitudes over the ocean in the southern winter compared with measurements from the Total Carbon
Column Observing Network. While spatially and temporally localized, this is significant consideringthat most sources and sinks of CO2 produce 1 ppm or smaller changes in the background CO2
distribution. A major portion of the residual error is attributed to the presence of aerosols in theatmospheric column. However, uncertainties about the origin and composition of aerosol particles, theirsize distribution, concentration, spatial and temporal variability make it challenging to mitigate thesebiases.
There are four ways to obtain aerosol information from passive remote sensing measurements — multiangle, multi-wavelength, hyper-spectral and polarization measurements. Multi-angle measurements
provide information on the aerosol single scattering albedo and phase function, while observations at
multiple wavelengths provide extinction as a function of wavelength, and hence the loading andAngstrom exponent. Together, they provide information on the aerosol loading and composition.
Polarization measurements provide aerosol particle size, optical depth, and some information on
speciation. They can also distinguish between spherical and non-spherical particles. Further, they
provide constraints to discriminate from the underlying surface. However, these measurements lacksensitivity to the vertical distribution of aerosols. On the other hand, hyper-spectral measurements ingaseous absorption bands (e.g. O2 A-, B- and γ-bands and H2O bands) can be used to characterize thevertical distribution of aerosol loading. This is because the large dynamic range of absorption in thesebands allows different regions of the atmosphere to be probed at different absorption line strengths.
Measurements in different bands also provide information on the wavelength dependence of aerosol
extinction. Further, usage of O2 absorption has the advantage that O2 is well mixed with known

19

concentration. H2O, on the other hand, is variable, but has absorption features all across theelectromagnetic spectrum.
We demonstrate this novel approach to describe the scattering effects of atmospheric aerosols using
measurements from the California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing Fourier Transform
Spectrometer on top of Mt. Wilson, California, and a two-stream-exact single scattering radiativetransfer (RT) model.
A2.3 Spectroscopy for the OCO-2 mission: Progress and plans for addressing remaining
challenges
Vivienne Payne*, Brian Drouin, Fabiano Oyafuso, Alexandre Guillaume, David Crisp, Joe Hodges, Erin
Adkins, David Long, Elizabeth Lunny, Gautam Stroscio, Mitchio Okumura, Eli Mlawer*Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
The accuracy of remotely sensed quantities depends directly on the accuracy of the forward model usedin the retrieval algorithm. Retrievals of well-mixed greenhouse gases place particularly stringent
demands on the accuracy of the forward model, since the variations of these gases in the atmosphere aresmall compared to the background. Systematic errors in the forward model can lead to regional-scale
and/or time-dependent biases in the retrieval products, which in turn can lead to biases in flux estimatesderived from those products. Here we present recent and ongoing work on spectroscopy for the 0.76
micron O2 A-band and the 1.61 and 2.06 micron CO2 bands utilized by the NASA Orbiting Carbon
Observatory (OCO-2) mission and discuss future directions relevant for OCO-2 and other greenhousegas missions.
For the OCO-2 mission, efforts are underway to incorporate advanced line-shape formulations and to
derive improved experimental line parameters. Advances in spectroscopy are included in the OCO-2
forward model by updating look-up tables for molecular absorption coefficients (ABSCO tables). The
ABSCO v5.0 tables are utilized within the B8 version of the OCO-2 Level 2 algorithm. While the
ABSCO v5.0 tables represent a significant improvement compared to previous versions, systematicfeatures in spectral residuals remain for closure studies using new laboratory measurements as well as
ground-based and spaceborne atmospheric measurements.
We show comparisons of ABSCO v5.0 against new, high signal-to-noise laboratory measurements in
the O2 A-band. These include spectra from both Photoacoustic Spectroscopy (PAS) and Cavity
Ringdown Spectroscopy (CRDS) measurements. We show preliminary results from analysis of these
new laboratory measurements to demonstrate potential improvements for the next ABSCO version. We
also provide an update on status and plans for the 1.6 and 2.06 micron CO2 bands. ABSCO v5.0 CO2tables have previously been validated using ground-based atmospheric spectra from the Lamont TCCON
site. Here we quantify the impact updates to the water vapor line list (utilizing parameters from the
HITRAN 2016 compilation) and continuum (utilizing the latest version of the MT_CKD continuum) on
retrievals using these CO2 bands. We also discuss progress and plans for testing of alternative CO2 line
mixing formulations.

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A2.4 Aerosol properties in the atmosphere from GOSAT/CAI and GOSAT-2/CAI-2
Makiko Hashimoto*, Hideaki Takenaka, Chong Shi, Teruyuki Nakajima*Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Aerosols continue to contribute the largest uncertainty to estimates and interpretations of the Earth'schanging energy budget (IPCC, 2015) because of the strong temporal and spatial variability and a wide
range of microphysical and optical properties of the aerosol particles.
The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite-2 (GOSAT-2), which is a satellite for monitoring theconcentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane from space, will launched infiscal year 2018. The satellite has two sensors, TANSO-FTS-2 (Thermal And Near-infrared Sensor for
carbon Observation; Fourier Transform Spectrometer-2, FTS-2) and TANSO-CAI-2 (Cloud and Aerosol
Imager-2, CAI-2). CAI-2 is a supplement sensor of FTS-2 and measures cloud and aerosol properties.
CAI-2 observes ten bands of seven wavelength regions from two-directional viewing, forward andbackward. Forward viewing. The forward viewing has 343, 442, 674, 869 and 1630 nm; backward, 380,
550, 674, 869 and 1630 nm. The spatial resolutions are 460 m for bands 1-4 and 6-9, 920 m for band 5
and 10.
We have developed a satellite remote sensing algorithm to retrieve the aerosol optical properties using
multi-wavelength and multi-pixel information of satellite imagers (MWPM). The method
simultaneously derives aerosol optical properties, such as aerosol optical thickness (AOT), single
scattering albedo (SSA) and aerosol size information, by using spatial difference of wavelengths (multiwavelength) and surface reflectance (multi-pixel). The method is useful for aerosol retrieval overspatially heterogeneous surface like an urban region.
In this algorithm, the inversion method is a combination of an optimal method and smoothing constraint
for the state vector. Furthermore, this method has been combined with a radiation transfer calculation
model (RTM) accelerated by neural network-based method, EXAM (Takenaka et al., 2011). We will
apply the algorithm for CAI-2 Level 2 aerosol products.
We applied the MWPM combined with EXAM to GOSAT/TANSO-CAI (Cloud and Aerosol Imager,
CAI). CAI has four bands, 380, 674, 870 and 1600 nm, and observes in 500 meters resolution for band1,
band2 and band3, and 1.5 km for band4. Retrieved parameters are aerosol optical properties, such as
aerosol optical thickness (AOT) of fine and coarse mode particles at a wavelength of 500nm, a volume
soot fraction in fine mode particles, and ground surface albedo of each observed wavelength bycombining a minimum reflectance method and Fukuda et al. (2013). We will show the results of global
aerosol properties from CAI and discuss the accuracy of the algorithm for various surface types.

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A2.5 What Can We Learn From Performing Simplified XCO2 Retrievals on Synthetic NearInfrared Observations?
Robert R. Nelson*, Christopher O'Dell, Thomas Taylor*Colorado State University
The NASA OCO-2 retrieval algorithm for column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of carbon dioxide(XCO2) has been significantly improved in terms of both precision and accuracy since its inception.
However, one of the primary sources of uncertainty in the algorithm remains its cloud and aerosolparameterization. This is because near-infrared measurements are highly sensitive to even small levelsof cloud or aerosol contamination. Thus, the retrieval algorithm must include clouds and aerosols as
retrieved properties in its state vector. Information content analyses demonstrate that there are only 2-6
pieces of information about aerosols contained in the OCO-2 radiances. However, the current OCO-2
algorithm (B8) attempts to retrieve 9 aerosol parameters; this over-fitting can hinder convergence andhas been shown to produce multiple solutions. In this work, we investigate several simplified cloud andaerosol parameterizations ranging from non-scattering algorithms to the operational NASA algorithm.
We then use these algorithms to retrieve XCO2 from synthetic, near-infrared radiances generated using
the CSU OCO Simulator with the goal of learning how different levels of complexity in the algorithm
impact both the precision and accuracy of the XCO2 measurement. Expected benefits of reduced
algorithm complexity include faster convergence, less nonlinearity, and greater throughput.
A2.6 Sensitivity test for PPDF-S retrieval method using atmospheric radiative transfer model
Chisa Iwasaki*, Ryoichi Imasu, Bril Andrey, Tatsuya Yokota, Yukio Yoshida, Isamu Morino, Sergey
Oshchepkov*Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo
Photon path length probability density function-Simultaneous (PPDF-S) method is one of effective
algorithms for retrieving column-averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide (XCO2) and methane(XCH4) from Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) spectra in Short Wavelength InfraRed(SWIR) [Oshchepkov et al., 2013]. In this study, we investigated accuracy of XCO2 retrieved by the
PPDF-S method through sensitivity tests using atmospheric radiative transfer models. One of themodels are a multiple radiation transfer code based on Discrete Ordinate Method (DOM), Polarization
System for Transfer of Atmospheric Radiation3 (Pstar3) [Ota et al., 2010], and sensitivity of surface
albedos to gas concentrations was examined using the model. The accuracy of XCO2 was defined by thedifference between the retrieved XCO2 and assumed values for Pstar3, and the values are described as“XCO2 bias” hereafter. We calculated the biases for four types of the surface reflectance; “brown sandyloam”, “green grasses”, “ice” and “fine snow”. The results showed that the accuracy of XCO2 retrievedby the PPDF-S method depends on wavelength dependency of surface albedo as well as its absolutevalue.

22

A2.7 Single-band carbon dioxide retrievals from the OCO2-satellite using the 2 micron band
Haili Hu*, Lianghai Wu, Jochen Landgraf, Andre Butz, Otto Hasekamp*SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
Passive remote sensing of atmospheric carbon dioxide depends on spectroscopic measurements ofsunlight backscattered by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. The current state-of-the-art retrieval
methods use the oxygen A-band at 0.76 micron and the weak and strong CO2 absorption bands at 1.61
and 2.06 micron respectively, to infer information on light scattering and the carbon dioxide columnaveraged dry-air mole fraction XCO2. In this study, we propose to retrieve XCO2 by using solely the2.06 micron band measurements from the OCO-2 satellite with RemoTeC in a new algorithm setup. We
examine the validity and accuracy of our single band XCO2 retrievals by comparing to multi-band
retrievals and ground-based measurements from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network(TCCON).
A2.8 Toward improvement of the retrieval algorithm for GOSAT TANSO-FTS SWIR L2
products
Hirofumi Ohyama*, Yukio Yoshida, Haruki Oshio, Isamu Morino, Osamu Uchino, Tsuneo Matsunaga*National Institute for Environmental Studies
The column averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2, CH4, and H2O (XCO2, XCH4, and XH2O) havebeen globally retrieved from the reflected sunlight spectra observed by TANSO-FTS onboard GOSAT.
Although the latest NIES L2 products (V02.72) have generally high quality, there are several issues toaddress. Uchino et al. (2017) found negative bias in XCO2 in the southern hemisphere, especially at
Lauder due to increased stratospheric aerosols after the volcanic eruption of Mt. Calbuco in April 2015.
When integrated water vapor is large, most data are screened out due to large residuals caused byinaccurate spectroscopic line parameters of H2O (Dupuy et al., 2016). We present significant changes in
the retrieval products induced by taking into account stratospheric aerosol and by utilizing line
parameter available recently.
In the operational L2 retrieval algorithm, fine and coarse mode aerosol profiles (logarithms of aerosol
mass mixing ratio) are individually retrieved, simultaneously with partial columns of CO2, CH4, andH2O and other ancillary parameters. We modified the algorithm such that an additional aerosol layer,
which was assumed to be composed of small sulfate particles and to be distributed uniformly in thelayer, was included in the stratosphere and optical thickness and top height of the aerosol layer wereretrieved. The retrieved XCO2 and XCH4 data showed better agreement with the TCCON data at Lauderthan V02.72 data, although the negative bias was not completely resolved.
The operational L2 retrieval algorithm uses HITRAN 2008 database as line parameters of CH4 and H2O.
In this study, CH4 line parameters were taken from Devi et al. (2015; 2016) for 12CH4 lines in the 2ν3band and the HITRAN 2016 (Gordon et al., 2017) for weak 12CH4 lines and minor isotopologues. A
speed-dependent Voigt line profile with line-mixing was used to calculate the absorption coefficient. As

23

for H2O line parameters, HITRAN 2016 database or atm line list (Toon, 2014) were used to evaluate
impact of the differences in line parameters. The revised CH4 line parameters slightly improved thespectral fits (residuals) and made latitude (airmass) dependent XCH4 differences compared to those fromthe HITRAN 2008. We found that the atm line list could provide the smallest residuals for H2O lines in
the 1.6 and 2.0 µm regions and increase the number of available data by approximately 10%.
A2.9 Yonsei CArbon Retrieval Algorithm: Validation, Error Analysis, and Its Application to
OCO-2 Satellite
Jaemin Hong*, Jhoon Kim, Yeonjin Jung, Woogyung Kim, Hartmut Boesch, Tae-Young Goo, Hanlim
Lee*Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yonsei University
The Yonsei CArbon Retrieval (YCAR) algorithm, which retrieves the column-averaged dry air mole
fraction of carbon dioxide (XCO2) based on optimal estimation method, was developed to reduce the
XCO2 retrieval errors caused by uncertainty of aerosol information. Focused on East Asia, the YCAR
algorithm uses a realistic aerosol information derived from the AERONET and the CAI measurements,
and was also modified by simultaneously considering aerosol optical information to reduce aerosolinduced errors (Jung et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2016). Using short-wave infrared (SWIR) channels
observed by the Thermal And Near-infrared Sensor for carbon Observation - Fourier Transform
Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) onboard the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT), thisalgorithm was validated with ground-based FTS measurements (g-b FTS), showing higher correlation,
lower biases, and improved data availability than operational algorithm.
In this study, we also applied the YCAR algorithm to Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 satelliteconsidering polarization. In addition, the effects of Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF) are considered,and a real-time aerosol information from the MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) andthe Cloud-Aerosol LIdar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) measurements are used to reduce
retrieval errors. The preliminary results were tested for validation with the g-b FTS. We expect to reduce
apparent biases when proper pre- and post-screening procedures is added in the future.
A2.10 CO2 Retrievals from OCO-2 using the UoL Retrieval: Validation against TCCON andevaluation of fast RT methods
Peter Somkuti*, Hartmut Boesch, Robert Parker, Jasdeep Anand, Otto Hasekamp, Vijay Natraj, Chris
O'Dell*University of Leicester
We have applied the UoL retrieval algorithm to spectra acquired by NASA’s OCO-2 mission andevaluated the retrieval results against ground-based TCCON observations and the operational Level-2 v8
product. Such an intercomparison provides an independent assessment of the OCO-2 retrieval result andcan help to identify regimes where retrieval uncertainties are large.

24

The UoL algorithm is an optical estimation retrieval algorithm based on a forward model that employs
the LIDORT, TWOSTR, and 2OS radiative transfer (RT) solvers and makes use of the PCA-based(principal component analysis) method to speed up the calculations. Two scene-dependent aerosol
mixture extinction profiles are informed by MACC/CAMS, where each mixture is sampled from fivedifferent tropospheric types with multiple size bins: sea salt, dust, organic matter, black carbon, andsulphate. For dust, the spherical shapes are replaced by non-spherical particle shapes from MISR. An
additional ice cloud mixture is employed, where the peak height is varied with latitude.
Furthermore, current CO2 algorithms employ different techniques to speed up the computationally very
expensive multiple-scattering RT calculations. We have evaluated three established methods (LSI,
linear-k and the PCA-based method) in a consistent framework and applied them to OCO-2 retrievals.
For relatively low and modest aerosol loads (τ ≤ 0.1), all three methods yield consistent results. At larger
aerosol optical thicknesses, however, we observe small, but significant differences between methods.
This suggests that the fast RT methods can ultimately give rise to biases in XCO2 in particular forregions with enhances aerosol loadings (e.g. urban areas).
A2.11 CO2 concentration in the boundary layer estimated from a synergy of SWIR and TIR of
TANSO-FTS/GOSAT
Ryoichi Imasu*, Chen Qi, Yu Someya, Naoko Saitoh, and Kei Shiomi*Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo
The objective of this study is to estimate the CO2 concentration in the lower atmosphere, particularly inthe boundary layer based on the synergetic usage of thermal infrared (TIR) and short wavelength
infrared (SWIR) data, and applying this method to assess the budget of CO2 emission from megacities.
CO2 concentration near the surface is an important parameter for estimating the uptake speed of CO2
into the forests and oceans, and/or emission strength over the urban areas. Generally, air is well mixed in
the boundary layer (mixing layer) during the daytime keeping the columnar concentration of the gas, andthe gas concentrations near the surface is almost same as the average concentration in the boundary
layer. However, CO2 mixing ration in the boundary layer is not directly determined only from thecolumnar concentration of the gas, i.e. the thickness of the boundary layer is necessary to determine it.
The boundary layer height (or layer thickness) was estimated from temperature (or potential
temperature) profiles retrieved from TIR band spectra as well as the tropopause height. By combining
CO2 columnar concentration retrieved from SWIR band spectra, upper air concentration retrieved from
TIR spectra, and the tropopause height and boundary layer thickness, CO2 concentration in the boundary
layer was estimated assuming the concentration in the stratosphere based on the yearly trend. Thismethod was applied to the dataset obtained over the Kanto Plain during the GOSAT specific observation
periods were validated using in situ measurement data at the ground level. The results show that thedifference between the estimated CO2 concentrations in the boundary layer and those from in situ
measurement was 2.9 ppmv (STD) and better than the value, 4.0 ppmv (STD), evaluated assuming afixed layer height at 850 hPa.

25

A2.12 The improvement of using aerosol information from CAPI/TanSat nadir observation in
CO2 retrieval: Theoretical analysis
Xi Chen*, Dongxu Yang, Yi Liu, Zhaonan Cai*Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Aerosols affect the radiative transfer in the absorption bands of carbon dioxide (CO2), thereby
contributing to the uncertainties in the retrieval of CO2 from space. A Cloud and Aerosol Polarimetric
Imager (CAPI) has been designed to fly on the Chinese Carbon Dioxide Observation Satellite (TanSat)
and provide aerosol and cloud information to facilitate the measurements of CO2. Based on previous
study about aerosol retrieval ability of CAPI, this study aims to estimate the improvement of XCO2
posterior error if aerosol information from CAPI measurements are used in TanSat CO2 retrieval. We
simulate TanSat hyperspectral observations using a forward model, from which the Jacobians of CO2
concentration and aerosol properties could also be calculated to get the interference error of XCO2 fromthe uncertainties of aerosol parameters, as well as posterior error according to optimal estimation theory.
Five aerosol parameters in bimodal aerosol model with the largest information are selected based on
CAPI simulation. All aerosol parameters are included in the state vector of CO2 retrieval and the resultsof four types of aerosols with different properties from AERONET are compared. Both the interference
error from aerosols and the improvement of XCO2 error due to aerosol measurements are related toaerosol mixture described by fine mode fraction (fmfv) and highly depend on aerosol optical depth(AOD). When AOD changes from 0.1 to 1.0 with 0.1 to 0.9 fmfv, the total error in XCO2 due to aerosols
ranges from 0.05 ppm to 1.1 ppm. After the a priori uncertainties of aerosol properties are improved
from CAPI measurements, XCO2 posterior error could be reduced 0.1 ppm in average, depending on
AOD, fmfv and solar zenith angle (SZA).
B2.1 MIPAS IMK/IAA carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) retrieval and first comparison with other
instruments
Ellen Eckert*, Thomas von Clarmann, Alexandra Laeng, Gabriele P. Stiller, Bernd Funke, Norbert
Glatthor, Udo Grabowski, Sylvia Kellmann, Michael Kiefer, Andrea Linden, Arne Babenhauserheide,
Gerald Wetzel, Christopher Boone, Andreas Engel, Jeremy J. Harrison, Patrick E. Sheese, Kaley A.
Walker*University of Toronto
MIPAS thermal limb emission measurements were used to derive vertically resolved profiles of carbon
tetrachloride (CCl4). MIPAS level-1b data were converted into volume mixing ratio profiles using thelevel-2 processor developed at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Institute of Meteorology andClimate Research (IMK) and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Instituto de
Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA). Consideration of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) as an interfering species,
which is jointly retrieved, and CO2 line mixing is crucial for reliable retrievals. Despite the inclusion ofline mixing in the forward model, parts of the CO2 Q-branch region overlapping with the CCl4 signature
were omitted because the spectral residuals were above the noise. Note, however, that without

26

accounting for line mixing the omitted spectral region would have been noticeably wider. A new CCl4
spectroscopic dataset was introduced by Harrison et al., 2016, during the development of the MIPAS
CCl4 retrieval setup. Using it leads to slightly smaller volume mixing ratios. In general, latitude-altitude
cross sections show the expected CCl4 features with highest values of around 90 pptv at altitudes at andbelow the tropical tropopause and values decreasing with altitude and latitude due to stratosphericdecomposition. Other patterns, such as subsidence in the polar vortex during winter and early spring, arealso visible in the distributions. The decline in CCl4 abundance during the MIPAS Envisat measurement
period (July 2002 to April 2012) is clearly reflected in the altitude-latitude cross section of trends
estimated from the entire time series. Comparisons with other instruments, such as ACE-FTS andMIPAS-B, show excellent agreement with the newly retrieved MIPAS CCl4 dataset.
B2.2 Progress status of the GOSAT and GOSAT-2 SWIR L2 retrievals
Yukio Yoshida*, Haruki Oshio, Akihide Kamei, Isamu Morino, Osamu Uchino, Hirofumi Ohyama,
Makoto Saito, Hibiki Noda, Tsuneo Matsunaga, and TCCON partners*National Institute for Environmental Studies
The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) has been operating for more than nine years, andthe column-averaged dry air mole fractions of carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor (XCO2, XCH4,
and XH2O; hereafter called Xgas) have been retrieved globally from the Short-Wavelength InfraRed(SWIR) spectral data (0.76 µm, 1.6 µm, and 2.0 µm bands) observed with Thermal And Near-infrared
Sensor for carbon Observation Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) onboard GOSAT. Xgas
are simultaneously retrieved using a so-called full-physics retrieval method. The retrieval results are
released as the FTS SWIR L2 product and available via GOSAT Data Archive Service (GDAS;
https://data2.gosat.nies.go.jp/). Recently, JAXA prepared FTS L1B sample product (V205.205) for
upcoming version up. We have been re-evaluating the characteristics of the new spectral data, andresults will be reflected to the next major version up of the SWIR L2 products (V03).
As a successor mission to the GOSAT, GOSAT-2 is planned to be launched in FY2018. According to
the latest design of the TANSO-FTS-2 (FTS onboard the GOSAT-2), its SNR is higher than or almost
equal to the TANSO-FTS, and its spectral range is expanded to cover the 2.3 µm carbon monoxide (CO)band. The SWIR L2 retrieval algorithm for GOSAT-2 is developing based on the latest retrieval
algorithm for GOSAT. Our preliminary sensitivity test based on the designed specification shows that
the SNR improvement in SWIR bands reduces the retrieval random error (precision) about 15% for
XCO2 and 35% for XCH4 than those of GOSAT. In addition to the full-physics based XCO2, XCH4,XH2O, and XCO products, we are planning to provide the proxy-based XCH4 product as well as solar
induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) product.
B2.3 Evaluation of OCO-2 Small-Scale Variability Using Lidar and In Situ CO2 Observations
from the ACT-America Campaign
Emily Bell1, Christopher O’Dell1, Edward Browell2, Bing Lin2, Susan Kooi2, Jeremy Dobler3, and Ken
Davis427

1

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CONASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
3Harris Corp., Fort Wayne, IN
4Penn State University, State College, PA
2NASA’s Atmospheric Carbon and Transport – America (ACT-America) field campaign provides theunique opportunity to validate small-scale satellite column CO2 measurements. The Orbiting Carbon
Observatory 2 (OCO-2) satellite provides a robust XCO2 dataset on a global scale, but the sparseness ofground-based networks makes validation on the finest OCO-2 resolutions, 1-10km, a challenge. After
three complete ACT-America field campaigns, the Multi-functional Fiber Laser LIDAR (MFLL)
instrument has completed nine underflights of OCO-2, allowing for direct spatial comparison of the twodatasets over several North American regions. Comparisons show a respectable level of agreement
between satellite- and LIDAR-observed XCO2 gradients over the course of several hundred kilometers,
but little agreement on smaller scales. Further comparisons to models and in situ column data, including
two-dimensional CO2 “curtains” constructed from in situ data along the flight track, show varying levelsof spatial correlation and reveal idiosyncrasies in each dataset that must be considered in comparison
evaluation. There is also evidence that the OCO-2 data remain contaminated to some degree by 3-D
cloud effects, motivating current work by the science team on the identification and mitigation of such
effects. In this work, we show key comparisons to date and attempt to draw conclusions on the fidelityof the remotely-sensed CO2 gradients, including our ability to reconstruct these gradients using thecurtain approach.
B2.4 Preliminary XCO2 retrieval results of TanSat in Dunhuang
Shupeng Wang**National Satellite Meteorological Center (NSMC), China Meteorology Administration (CMA)
TanSat is the first Chinese satellite to monitor the carbon dioxide (CO2) globally from space. It has beenlaunched on December 22, 2016. Two instruments: A high-resolution Carbon Dioxide Spectrometer formeasuring the near-infrared absorption by CO2 and CAPI (Cloud and Aerosol Polarimetry Imager) tocompensate the CO2 measurement errors by high-resolution measurement of cloud and aerosol areaccommodated on TanSAT. In order to fulfill the need of TanSat orbit test, a comprehensive groundexperiments is conducted in Dunhuang calibration field during April 2017. Target mode of TanSat isused to cooperated with the ground experiments. WFM_DOAS algorithm is used to process the TanSat
spectrum in weak CO2 absorption band to retrieval XCO2. The retrieval results are compared withground measurements. Good spectrum fits and less than 1% bias from ground measurements show thegood ability of TanSat in monitoring the greenhouse gas.

28

Session 3: Validation and supporting observations including groundbased and in-situ observations
3.1 First results of the ESA AO project TCCON4S5P focusing on the validation of the Sentinel-5P
methane and carbon monoxide using TCCON data
Mahesh Kumar Sha*, Martine De Mazière, Bavo Langerock, Bart Dils, Dietrich G. Feist, Ralf
Sussmann, Frank Hase, Matthias Schneider, Thomas Blumenstock, Justus Notholt, Thorsten Warneke,
Rigel Kivi, Yao Té, Paul O. Wennberg, Debra Wunch, Laura Iraci, Kimberly Strong, David W. T.
Griffith, Nicholas M. Deutscher, Voltaire Velazco, Isamu Morino, Hirofumi Ohyama, Osamu Uchino,
Kei Shiomi, Tae-Young Goo, David F. Pollard, Tobias Borsdorff, Haili Hu, Otto Hasekamp, Jochen
Landgraf, Coleen Roehl, Matthäus Kiel, Geoffrey Toon and TCCON team*Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB)
The ongoing TCCON4S5P, project led by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRAIASB) and supported by the TCCON community, was submitted as an answer to the ESA-AO(announcement of opportunity) call for the calibration and validation of the Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P)
mission. This project is focused on the geophysical validation of S5P methane (CH4) and carbon
monoxide (CO) total column products using coinciding TCCON data from the whole network, which
includes currently about 25 globally distributed stations. The S5P was successfully launched on 13
October 2017 with the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) as the single payload
onboard. It measures the Earth’s reflected radiances from the ultraviolet to the shortwave infrared
spectral range with a spatial resolution down to 7x7 km2 and has a daily global coverage. The S5P data
will be made available to the S5PVT projects during the commissioning phase E1. The proposed
validation activity in this project will be carried out using the TCCON rapid delivery data for the firsttwelve months of the satellite data followed by a second phase where the focus will be on the continuous
long-term validation during the operational lifetime of the satellite. In this presentation we propose toshow the first validation results of S5P CH4 and CO products using TCCON data from the wholenetwork provided there will be a sufficient number of satellite data available by that time. In addition,
the presentation will give an overview and discuss the current status of the project.
3.2 Comparisons of MOPITT XCO with TCCON
Jacob Hedelius*, Thomas Blumenstock, Martine De Maziere, Manvendra Dubey, Dietrich G. Feist, TaeYoung Goo, David Griffith, Frank Hase, Laura T. Iraci, MatthÕ_us Kiel, Rigel Kivi, Isamu Morino,
Justus Notholt, Dave F. Pollard, Coleen Roehl, Matthias Schneider, Kei Shiomi, Kimberly Strong, Ralf
Sussmann, Yao Te, Voltaire Velazco, Thorsten Warneke, Paul Wennberg, and Debra Wunch*University of Toronto
The Measurements of Pollutants in the Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument onboard the Terra satellite(launched December 1999) measures carbon monoxide (CO) globally. In Aug 2016, the latest data
version was released (v7) which has a combined near-infrared and thermal infrared product to produce a29

total column dry-air mole fraction (XCO). Here we present comparisons of MOPITT v7 retrievals
against observations from the ground-based Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). The
focus of this work is to characterize the accuracy and precision of MOPITT retrievals against theTCCON measurements, which are tied to the World Meteorological Organization trace gas scale for CO
through comparisons with coincident aircraft and in situ profile. We perform a small area analysis(SAA) to assess and quantify sources of bias in the MOPITT retrievals and find, in agreement withprevious work, that pixel 1 is biased lower and produces noisier results compared with the other 3
pixels. We use the SAA, and comparisons with TCCON to derive a set of recommend data quality
filters. Finally, we describe progress in using these comparisons to derive a set of empirical bias
corrections.
3.3 Update on the Validation of OCO-2 XCO2 Data
Greg Osterman*, Debra Wunch, Paul Wennberg, MatthÕ_us Kiel, Brendan Fisher, Coleen Roehl, Chris
O'Dell, Hannakaisa Lindqvist, Annmarie Eldering*Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The first attempt to validate OCO-2 observations of column-averaged dry air mole fraction CO2 (XCO2)
by comparing to data from the Total Carbon Column Observation Network (TCCON) was documented
by Wunch et al. (2017). That work built on the methodology developed validating XCO2 observations
utilizing data from the Japanese GOSAT satellite and the OCO-2 retrieval algorithm Wunch et al.
(2011). Recently, the OCO-2 team has released the Version 8 data set and work has been underway to
update the validation analysis for this data set. We will present an update on the validation analysis
including the latest comparisons to TCCON data. We will provide the latest information on OCO-2
target mode observations and the status of the Observatory as well as updates on the biases seen in thedata and efforts to mitigate those biases. An update on the latest retrievals of GOSAT data using the
OCO-2 retrieval algorithm (ACOS v8) will be also be presented.
Wunch et al., Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 2209-2238, 2017
Wunch et al. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 12317-12337, 2011
3.4 Application of TanSat algorithm on GOSAT observation - ATANGO and OCO-2 XCO2
retrieval: validation, inter-comparison and new approach
Lu Yao*, Xi Chen, Yi Liu, Dongxu Yang, Zhaonan Ca*Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese carbon dioxide observation satellite (TanSat) successfully launched in December 2016. A
hyperspectral grating spectrometer onboard the TanSat is monitoring the column-averaged CO2 dry-air
mixing ratio (XCO2) in global. The objective of TanSat retrieval algorithm is to approach the XCO2 in ahighly accuracy and precision as the scientific requirement. Application of TanSat algorithm on GOSAT
observation (ATANGO), as well as TanSat algorithm, has been developed from Institute of Atmospheric

30

Physics Carbon Dioxide Retrieval Algorithm for Satellite Observation (IAPCAS). The XCO2 isapproached from satellite hyperspectral measurement of NIR/SWIR by the ‘full physical’ optimal
estimation method. Recently, this algorithm is applied on OCO-2 retrieval. In this presentation, we aregoing to show the validation of XCO2 approached from GOSAT and OCO-2 data retrieval experiments
against TCCON measurement and inter-comparisons with NIES-FP, ACOS, UoL and RemoTeC
products. The precision of XCO2 will be reflected in the results, as well as the seasonality. Further
studies on aerosol information and retrieval strategy is also a new approach of ATANGO.
3.5 Views from the 6 aircraft campaigns (ACT-America, HIPPO, CONTRAIL, ATom, ORCAS,
and ABoVE): assimilation of airborne CO2 measurements into GEOS and comparisons withsatellite retrievals
B. Weir*, C. O'Dell, E. Bell, L. Ott, A. Chatterjee, and S. Pawson*NASA GSFC/USRAThis presentation describes the assimilation of airborne measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the
Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) general circulation model. The main goal is to constructobservationally constrained fields of CO2 starting from the bottom of the atmosphere and extending
through the entire vertical column. These fields can then be compared directly to retrievals of column
CO2 (XCO2) from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory 2 (OCO-2) by using the averaging kernel and a priori profile. This approach does not
require a direct satellite overpass, but rather an overpass of the much broader region impacted by theassimilation, which alleviates some of the jeopardy of coordinating flights with satellite tracks.
Furthermore, checking if the story stays the same or if it changes when the unassimilated fields arecompared to the satellite soundings allows us to separate model errors from retrieval errors. This work
attempts to answer a number of questions including: What are the possible causes of systematicdifferences between model and satellite XCO2 over the Pacific Ocean? What is the contribution ofstratospheric uncertainty to XCO2 errors? What is the impact of errors in boundary layer physics onmodeled XCO2?
3.6 Validation for Greenhouse Gases Measured by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE)
Satellite Mission
Kaley A. Walker1, Patrick E. Sheese1, Jiansheng Zou1, Christopher E. Sioris2, Chris D. Boone3 and C. T.
McElroy4
1

Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Environment and Climate Change Canada, Atmospheric Science and Technology Directorate, 4905
Dufferin St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
3
Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada4
Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
231

The Canadian-led Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) satellite mission has completed fourteen
years of measurements from orbit. It uses infrared and UV-visible spectroscopy to investigate thechemistry and dynamics of the Earth's atmosphere. The two instruments on-board are the ACE Fourier
Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS), a high-resolution (0.02 cm-1) FTS operating between 750 and
4400 cm-1, and a dual UV-visible-NIR spectrophotometer called ACE-MAESTRO (Measurements of
Aerosol Extinction in the Stratosphere and Troposphere Retrieved by Occultation), which extends the
ACE wavelength coverage to the 280-1030\,nm spectral region. The ACE instruments make solar
occultation measurements from which altitude profiles of atmospheric trace gas species, temperature andpressure are retrieved. The 650 km altitude, 74 degree circular orbit provides global measurement
coverage with a focus on the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This paper will describe validation results for
the ACE-FTS and ACE-MAESTRO greenhouse gas data sets including CH4, H2O and N2O.
A3.1 Philippines TCCON Project: Result on One-year Measurements and Future
Isamu Morino*, Voltaire A. Velazco, Akihiro Hori, Osamu Uchino, Hirofumi Ohyama, Tetsu Sakai,
Toshiharu Izumi, Tomohiro Nagai, Gerry Bagtasa, Yukio Yoshida, MatthÕ_us Kiel, Beata Bukosa,Nicholas M. Deutscher, Jenny A. Fisher, David W. T. Griffith*National Institute for Environmental Studies
TCCON is dedicated to the precise measurements of total column-averaged abundances of greenhousegases (GHGs) such as CO2 and CH4. TCCON measurements have been and are currently used
extensively and globally for satellite validation, for comparison with atmospheric chemistry models andto study atmosphere-biosphere exchanges of carbon. With the global effort to cap GHG emissions,
TCCON has taken on a vital role in validating satellite-based GHG data from past, current and future
missions like Japanese GOSAT and GOSAT-2, NASA's OCO-2 and OCO-3, Chinese TanSat,
TROPOMI, and others. The lack of reliable validation data for the satellite-based GHG observing
missions in the tropical regions is a common limitation in global carbon-cycle modeling studies thathave a tropical component. The international CO2 modeling community has specified a requirement for"expansion of the CO2 observation network within the tropics" to reduce uncertainties in regional
estimates of CO2 sources and sinks using atmospheric transport models.
To address this challenge, we installed a newly-constructed TCCON FTS at a wind farm operated by the
Energy Development Corporation in Burgos, Ilocos Norte, Philippines (18.5326°N, 120.6496°E), which
followed rigorous site assessments and discussions at several TCCON and GOSAT-2 science teammeetings. After installation and setup of the instruments in Mar. 2017, we started operations in thePhilippines using TCCON protocols. Here, we will show result on one-year measurements, someinteresting phenomena such as CO and CH4 enhancements, comparisons with GOSAT and OCO-2
soundings, participation in aircraft observation campaigns such as EMeRGe-Asia and NASA
CAMP2Ex.

32

A3.2 TCCON Updates and Improvements to Precision Requirements
Coleen M. Roehl*, Matthäus Kiel, Paul O. Wennberg, Debra Wunch, Joseph Mendonca, Sebastien
Roche, Geoff Toon
*California Institute of Technology
The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (or TCCON), which is currently made up of 26 sites,
internationally, is a well established network of ground-based Fourier Transform Spectrometers thatrecord direct solar spectra in the near-infrared. Accurate and precise column-averaged abundances of
CO2 (as well as of other atmospheric constituents - CH4, N2O, HF, CO, H2O, and HDO) are retrieved
from these spectra. Dating back to 2004, TCCON data have already proven to be valuable in providing
ground truth for satellite measurements of CO2 and CH4 column abundances and in evaluating largescale carbon models and improving global estimates of the sources and sinks of CO2 and CH4.
In this work, we will briefly describe developments to the TCCON network over the past year, including
the most up to date CO2 and CH4 time series, the introduction of new network sites, and the extended
measurement capabilities into the mid-IR at several sites. In addition, we will highlight ongoing efforts
to reduce errors / improve precision of the TCCON results through a number of changes to the GGG
retrieval software.
A3.3 Calibration of TCCON observations on Ascension Island with aircraft profiles from theNASA ATom campaigns
Dietrich G. Feist*, Sabrina G. Arnold, Julia Marshall, Debra Wunch, Kathryn McKain, Colm Sweeney,
Roisin Commane, Bruce Daube, Steven Wofsy, Glenn S. Diskin*Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany
The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) provides the most precise column-averaged
dry-air mole fraction observations of CO2, CH4, CO, N2O and several other atmospheric trace gases.
This is vital for satellite observations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) like CO2 or CH4 as the precision
requirements for these GHGs are on the sub-percent level. Consequently, all current and (foreseeable)
future satellite instruments for CO2 and CH4 rely on TCCON for calibration and validation.
However, to link TCCON (and thus satellite) observations to the established WMO GHG scale, TCCON
itself must be calibrated with respect to in-situ GHG measurements. Otherwise, the accuracy of spectral
parameters needed for the TCCON retrievals does not match the achievable precision. The standard
procedure is to measure atmospheric profiles with aircraft in-situ instruments above the TCCON stations
and compare these to the total column TCCON observations derived at the same time. Jet aircraft areneeded for this to cover as much of the tropospheric column as possible. The results from many aircraftprofiles derived over many TCCON stations are used to calculate network-wide calibration factors for
all major TCCON target species.

33Each TCCON station is required to have at least one aircraft calibration before it can become a full
member of the network. However, the logistical constraints at some sites can be very limiting. It took
more than four years of operation before the TCCON station on Ascension Island was visited by theNASA DC-8 aircraft during the Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission in August 2016 to receiveits first aircraft calibration. Among many other species and parameters, altitude profiles of CO2, CH4,
CO, and N2O were measured by instruments from NOAA and Harvard University on board. Two more
visits took place during ATom-2 in February 2017 and ATom-3 in October 2017. The results are now
used to improve TCCON’s in-situ calibration factors. The station itself was promoted to full TCCON
status in mid-2017 as a result.
A3.4 Simultaneous Nadir Overpass Matchups of GOSAT/TANSO-FTS and AQUA/AIRS: TIR
Band April 2009 - August 2017
Jonathan Gero*, Robert Knuteson, Kei Shiomi, Akihiko Kuze, Fumie Kataoka, Hiroshi Suto, Nobuhiro
Kikuchi*University of Wisconsin - Madison
The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) was launched in January 2009 to monitor global
atmospheric concentration and flux of CO2 and CH4 from space. The TANSO-FTS sensor is aninterferometer spectrometer measuring shortwave reflected solar radiation with high spectral resolution
in three spectral bands. A bore-sighted Band 4 uses the same interferometer to measure thermal infrared
radiation (TIR) at the top of the atmosphere. This paper presents a comparison of the TANSO-FTS TIRband with coincident measurements from the NASA Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) grating
spectrometer. The time and space coincident matchups are at the Simultaneous Nadir Overpass (SNO)
locations of the orbits of GOSAT and the NASA AQUA satellite. GOSAT/AQUA SNOs occur at about
40N and 40S latitude. A continuous set of SNO matchups has been found from the start of valid
TANSO-FTS radiance data collection in April 2009 through August 2017. UW-SSEC has obtained thetime, latitude, and longitude of the SNO locations using the ORBNAV software at
http://sips.ssec.wisc.edu/orbnav. UW-SSEC obtained the matching AIRS v5 L1B radiances from theNASA archive. JAXA has reprocessed the entire TANSO-FTS TIR band dataset using the previous
calibration version v161.161, and a new version v205.205 which includes parameter optimizations. The
TANSO-FTS observations have been reduced to the AIRS spectral channels using the AIRS spectral
response functions (SRFs). This paper shows the time series of observed brightness temperatures fromAIRS and GOSAT TANSO-FTS TIR observations from the SNO matchups. Furthermore it validates
the improvements in the GOSAT ground calibration software by providing an independent reference to
the AIRS on-orbit calibration accuracy. Improvements in the ground calibration software are expected
to lead to improvements in the TIR band Level 2 retrievals of CO2 profiles.
A3.5 GOSAT and OCO-2 validation activities at Saga station and campaign sites
Kei Shiomi*, Nobuhiro Kikuchi, Hirofumi Ohyama, Akihiko Kuze, Hiroshi Suto, Jacob Hedelius,
Harrison Parker, Coleen Roehl, Paul Wennberg, Gregory Osterman, Fumie Kataoka, Koki Kasai, Isamu
Morino, Shuji Kawakami

34

*JAXAGOSAT has been operating since 2009 to monitor the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) andmethane (CH4) by a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS). The column-average dry air mole
fractions of CO2 (XCO2), and CH4 (XCH4) are measured from space using surface-reflected sunlight at
near-IR wavelengths with ten-kilometer resolution by pointing system of wide swath. OCO-2 has been
operating since 2014, carries a grating spectrometer to make precise XCO2 observations with a-fewkilometer resolution of narrow swath. GOSAT and OCO-2 target at particular calibration and validationsites.
Ground-based FTS with high spectral resolution has been operated at Saga University in the southwestern part of Japan belonging to the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) since July
2011. XCO2 and XCH4 are retrieved from direct sunlight spectra with high accuracy. TCCON dataset isutilized to make validation for the satellite observations such as GOSAT and OCO-2 with simultaneous
measurements. The GOSAT observes at Saga every 3 days by pointing mirror orientation, while the
OCO-2 has less opportunity because of satellite body pointing.
We measured XCO2, XCH4 and XCO using a portable FTS in western US and central Japan at different
type emission areas. We targeted Pasadena as a large city near Los Angeles, and Railroad valley as adesert playa in Nevada. These measurements were conducted during the GOSAT/OCO-2 joint campaign
in early summer. We also targeted Nagoya as one of the largest cities with industrial area in Japan for
the airborne sensor model flight campaign. Before and after the campaigns, the portable FTS wascompared with those from NIES, Caltech beside TCCON FTSs at NIES, Caltech, and JPL to ensure theaccuracy.
We will present GOSAT and OCO-2 validation results at Saga station and campaign sites by the groundbased and the portable FTSs.
A3.6 Long-term Monitoring of Greenhouse Gases at the Izaña Atmospheric Observatory
O.E. García*, E. Sepúlveda, E. Cuevas, A.J. Gómez-Peláez, M. Schneider, F. Hase. T. Blumenstock, A.
Redondas, and V. Carreño.
*Meteorological State Agency of Spain
The Izaña Atmospheric Observatory (IZO), run by the Izaña Atmospheric Research Centre (IARC)
belonging to the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET), is a subtropical high-mountain observatory
on Tenerife (Spain, 28.3°N, 16.5°W, and 2373 m a.s.l.). It is usually well above the level of a strong
subtropical temperature inversion layer, which acts as a natural barrier for local pollution. This fact,
together with the quasi-permanent subsidence regime typical of the subtropical region, makes the air
surrounding the observatory representative of the background free troposphere. Hence, it offers excellent
conditions for the in-situ and remote-sensing of the atmospheric composition.

35

The IZO has a long-term experience in monitoring and researching a large variety of atmosphericconstituents, concentrating numerous measurement techniques and contributing to international
networks and databases (WOUDC, NDACC, TCCON, WDCGG,…). This is fundamental since they
allow for inter-comparing and documenting the quality and long-term consistency of the different
observations. Regarding greenhouse gases monitoring, IZO has been a Global GAW (Global
Atmospheric Watch) station since 1984, recording continuous in-situ concentrations of the maingreenhouse gases (GHGs). In addition, since 1999 total column amounts and low-resolution verticalprofiles of many different atmospheric trace gases, GHGs among them, are retrieved by using Fourier
Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTS) in the framework of NDACC and TCCON. In this context, thiswork will give an overview about the IZO capabilities and activities for monitoring of atmospheric tracegases, especially focusing on the validation of space-based greenhouse gases observations
A3.7 Comparison of N2O and CH4 retrievals from PARIS-IR and ACE-FTS.
Paul S. Jeffery*, Debora Griffin, Kaley A. Walker, Ellen Eckert, Pierre F. Fogal, Jim R. Drummond,
Gloria L. Manney, Kimberly Strong, and Chris D. Boone*University of Toronto
The Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment satellite, also known as SCISAT-1, was launched into a low
Earth polar sun-synchronous orbit in 2003 and began scientific operations in early 2004. Aboard thesatellite are two instruments, the primary of which is a high resolution (0.02 cm-1) Fourier Transform
Spectrometer (ACE-FTS), operating in the spectral region of 750 - 4400 cm-1. ACE-FTS operates in asolar occultation mode, recording absorption spectra at tangent heights spanning from the cloud tops to150 km in altitude. The Portable Atmospheric Research Interferometric Spectrometer for the InfraRed(PARIS-IR) was designed as a ground-based version of ACE-FTS, with an identical spectral resolution
and range. Between 2004 and 2017, PARIS-IR was a part of the annual Canadian Arctic ACE/OSIRIS
Validation Campaign, which takes place at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory(PEARL; 80.05°N, 86.42°W) located in Eureka, Nunavut. For the six-week duration of this annual
campaign, from just after polar sunrise in late February through to the beginning of April, PARIS-IR
recorded a solar absorption spectra every seven minutes, weather permitting. Due to ACE-FTS’s orbit
and the timing of the validation campaign, a significant number of measurements coincident both
spatially and temporally have been made by ACE-FTS and PARIS-IR for this period each year. The
focus of this study is the comparison, for validation purposes, of retrieved quantities of atmospheric
trace gases obtained from most recent coincident measurements made by PARIS-IR and ACE-FTS in
the Canadian high Arctic over the period spanning 2014 to 2017. Analysis of two particular greenhousegases, N2O and CH4, forms the focus of this effort in comparing the two data products.
A3.8 Ground based and satellite borne observations of greenhouse gases at Sodankylä, Finland
Rigel Kivi*, Pauli Heikkinen, Johanna Tamminen, Hannakaisa Lindqvist, Janne Hakkarainen, Ella
Kivimäki, Juha Hatakka, Tuomas Laurila, Huilin Chen, Jochen Landgraf*Finnish Meteorological Institute36

Sodankylä is one of the sites participating in the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON).
The retrievals include column-averaged, dry-air mole fractions of carbon dioxide (XCO2) and methane(XCH4), based on measured solar spectra. Here we provide results of the ground based FTS
measurements since early 2009 and comparisons with the satellite based data. The relevant satellite
missions include the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT), the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory-2, (OCO-2), TROPOMI on board ESA’s Sentinel-5P satellite and the Chinese TanSat
mission. Comparisons with the GOSAT observations show good agreement: the relative difference in
XCH4 has been -0.07 +/- 0.02 % and the relative difference in XCO2 measurements has been 0.04 +/0.02%. In addition to the FTS measurements we have also performed a series of AirCore launches since
September 2013 to obtain accurate in-situ profiles from lower stratosphere and troposphere. The
AirCore measurements are calibrated to the World Meteorological Organization in situ trace gas
measurement scales. The accuracy of AirCore measurements of CO2 and CH4 is 0.05 %.
A3.9 Development of a portable, low-cost XCO2 observation system using a grating spectrometerand analysis of observation results
Xiu-Chun Qin*, Tomoo Nagahama, Hiroshi Sasago , Tomoki Nakayama, Yutaka Matsumi, Masahiro
Kawasaki,Ryoichi Imasu,Hirofumi Oyama*Nagoya University
The ground-based observation of CO2 column concentration which is performed by near-infrared
spectroscopy of solar light is very important. To obtain the CO2 column concentration, The TCCON
uses a large FTS (Bruker 125HR wavenumber resolution ~ 0.01 cm-1), some groups uses a small FTS(Bruker EM 27 resolution 0.5 cm-1). Both of them had highly cost. In previous research, we used OSA(Optical Spectrum Analyzer wavelength swept type spectrometer, resolution 0.2 cm-1) to obtain the CO2column concentration with lower cost. FTS and OSA take several seconds to several minutes tointerferometer drive and wavelength sweep, and disturbance due to the passage of thin clouds there
between may cause distortion of the spectrum.
In this study, we use a small size fiber spectrometer of a commercially available array type infrared
sensor (Ocean Optics, NIR Quest, 1557-1625 nm resolution 1.0 cm-1) and an equatorial mount foramateur astronomy (Kenko Sky Memo S). This system uses an array type sensor, there is an advantage
in that the entire area can be measured instantaneously. It can be observed even in cloudy weather. The
sun tracking device is simple and easy to observe even in unstable places such as ships and automobiles.
It was realized with a budget of about 1.8 million yen for the whole system such as spectrometer andautomatic equatorial mount. Since it is sufficient for a budget of 1/50 or less of the large FTS and about
1/10 of the small FTS, this compact apparatus can be arranged in a large number. We used this
instrument to conduct continuous solar spectrum observations at Nagoya University during one-month,
calculated the XCO2 column concentration and analyzed the results.
Finally, we are expecting it is possible to analyze the dynamics of CO2 in urban areas from multipoint
observations and not only in satellite verification at various places.

37

B3.1 Time Series Analysis for the ACE-FTS and MIPAS CFC-11 and CFC-12 Data Products
Jason Zou1, Kaley A. Walker1, Patrick E. Sheese1, Chris D. Boone2, Gabriele Stiller3 and Thomas vonClarmann3.
1

Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
3
Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe,
Germany2

To progress from monitoring atmospheric composition to investigating and quantifying atmosphericchanges, well-characterized measurements over many years are required. The long lifetime of the
Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) has provided more than a decade of composition
measurements that contribute to our understanding of ozone recovery, climate change and pollutant
emissions. To enable the generation of climate data records using multiple data sets, characterization of
the differences between data sets is required. This study analyzes and compares the time series ofchlorofluorocarbon (CFC) measurements from two infrared satellite sensors, the ACE-Fourier
Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) and the Michelson Interferometer for Passive AtmosphericSounding (MIPAS). The long-term trend as well as annual, semi-annual and quasi-biennial oscillation
terms derived from each data set will be compared for different altitude and latitude regions.
B3.2 Study on the first ground-based FTS measurements at Beijing, China and comparisons withGOSAT and OCO XCO2 data
Xingying Zhang*, Wenguang Bai, Xiaoyang Meng
*National Satellite Meteorological Center,China Meteorological Administration
In this study, the first observation of ground-based Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) in Beijing(40.057N, 116.275E) was carried out. The FTS system and retrieval strategy are discussed. The
spectrum has been recorded from March 2006 to December 2017 based on the FTS. The GGG2014 code
was used to XCO2 retrieval, which is the standard software used in the total carbon column observing
network (TCCON). The first validation of GOSAT and OCO XCO2 data was explored by comparison
with the FTS retrieved XCO2 data in Beijing.
B3.3 Evaluation of the seasonal cycle and variability of the trend from GOSAT methane retrievals
Ella Kivimäki*, Hannakaisa Lindqvist, Janne Hakkarainen, Marko Laine, Aki Tsuruta, JohannaTamminen, GOSAT partners and TCCON partners*Finnish Meteorological Institute38

In this study, we evaluate the seasonal cycle and variability of the trend of XCH4 from three GOSAT
XCH4 retrievals: National Institute for Environmental Studies retrieval algorithm version 02.72 (NIES),
RemoTeC CH4 Proxy retrieval algorithm version 2.3.8 (RemoTeC Proxy) and RemoTeC CH4 Full
Physics retrieval algorithm version 2.3.8 (RemoTeC Full Physics) retrievals. To study the cycle and thetrend, we apply the dynamical linear model (DLM), which models the cycle with harmonic components
and is able to consider nonlinear trends. The evaluation is done at 15 Total Carbon Column Observing
Network (TCCON) sites, from which eleven are at the Northern Hemisphere and four at the Southern
Hemisphere. The evaluation at the TCCON sites is done for the time period from 2009 to 2015. In
addition, we study the latitudinal dependence of the seasonal cycle and growth rate by comparing thethree retrievals against each other at latitude bands between 45 S and 54 N. We also compare the growth
rates at latitude bands against NOAA's Marine Boundary Layer (MBL) reference data. [1]Our results suggest that NIES, RemoTeC Proxy and RemoTeC Full Physics retrievals can present theseasonal cycle and variability of the trend accurately, if there are sufficiently co-located soundings
available throughout the year. We show that if the number of co-located soundings is sufficient, GOSAT
can capture the seasonal cycle amplitude to within 5 ppb. Generally, the day of maximum methane
concentration is captured better than the day of minimum methane concentration. At most TCCON sites,
both days are captured to within one month for the three retrievals. At the latitude bands, the three
retrievals and the MBL reference are generally agreeing better in the growth rate of XCH4 in theSouthern Hemisphere. The seasonal cycle of XCH4 is in agreement between the GOSAT retrievals at
most of the latitude bands, except in the tropics. Reasons for the differences in the tropics might be
explained by the lack of data but also by differences in the locations of soundings processed by the
retrievals. [1][1] Kivimäki, E., Lindqvist, H., Hakkarainen, J., Laine, M., Tsuruta, A., Tamminen, J., Detmers, R.,
Deutscher, N., Hase, F., Hasekamp, O., Kivi, R., Notholt, J., Pollard, D. F., Roehl, C. M., Schneider, M.,
Sha, M. K., Sussmann, R., Velazco, V. A., Warneke, T., Wunch, D., Yoshida, Y.: Evaluation of theseasonal cycle and variability of the trend from GOSAT methane retrievals, in preparation, 2018.
B3.4 Improving OCO-2 Northern High Latitude Retrievals Over Snow
Joseph Mendonca*, Ray Nassar, Debra Wunch*Environment and Climate Change Canada and University of Toronto - Department of Physics
The impact of a changing climate on the carbon cycle at high northern latitudes is not well understood.
Satellite measurements of CO2 in the Arctic and Boreal regions can help with this but retrievals oversnow-covered surfaces are complex. Due to the high albedo of snow in the O2 A band (used by OCO-2
to determine surface pressure and the presence of clouds) soundings over snow are typically removed by
pre-processor cloud screening. This limits the amount of OCO-2 measurements available at highnorthern latitudes, during the winter, early spring, and late fall, obscuring the seasonal cycle of CO2. To
complicate matters further, the albedo of snow in the CO2 bands is low, decreasing the signal to noise
ratio (SNR) and increasing the error on the XCO2 measurement. However, the albedo of snow in theCO2 bands varies with snow grain size and other factors, which might provide enough signal to reduce
the error on CO2 measurements made over some snow covered surfaces. In this study, we will first39

determine the criteria in the OCO-2 cloud screening that are responsible for filtering out measurements
made over snow. Secondly, we will report on preliminary modifications to the OCO-2 retrieval
algorithm that show improved results for selected cases for soundings over snow near high latitude
TCCON validation sites.
B3.5 A real-time retrieval of greenhouse gases from portable, ground-based Fourier-Transform
Spectrometers
Kang Sun*, Jonathan Franklin, Matthaeus Kiel, Steven Wofsy, Taylor Jones, Xiong Liu, and Kelly
Chance*University at Buffalo
Both existing and proposed future spaceborne greenhouse gas measurements rely heavily on groundbased total column measurements for validation and bias correction. The TCCON network has served as
the global standard, but the TCCON sites are sparse and immobile, making it impractical to cover thefull ranges of surface and atmospheric conditions observed by the satellites. We present a clean, modern,
open-source retrieval for the portable Fourier-Transform Spectrometers (EM27/SUN) that enables
virtualization and decision-making for the field operators in real time. An absorption coefficient look-up
table (ABSCO) approach is implemented to generate spectroscopic data before the field deployment,leveraging the HITRAN Application Programming Interface (HAPI) package. Temperature, pressure,water vapor profiles are fetched from operational forecasts (e.g., North American Mesoscale Forecast
System, NAM). The retrieval algorithm performs real-time quality control, applies DC correction to theinterferogram, and calculates spectrum with Fast Fourier Transform. A nonlinear least-square fitting is
implemented to retrieve columns of Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, and Methane. The processing time is< 3 s per sounding on a consumer-grade laptop with similar algorithm physics in offline retrievals.
B3.6 Validation of Satellite Measurements with Portable Fourier Transform Spectrometers(EM27/SUN)
Nasrin Mostafavi Pak*, Jacob Hedelius, Jonathan Franklin, Taylor Jones, Sajjan Heerah, Harrison
Parker, Elaine Gottlieb, Debra Wunch, Steven Wofsy, Paul Wennberg*University of Toronto
On July 11th 2017, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) nadir ground track passed through thenorth end of the South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB) in Southern California, USA. On that day, we
deployed three low-resolution portable spectrometers (EM27/SUN) across the north end of the SoCAB,
near I-210 highway, and measured time-resolved column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2(XCO2). The three instruments were distributed evenly between the Pasadena TCCON station to theWest, and the OCO-2 measurement track about 50 km to its east. Measurements of XCO2 with the
EM27/SUNs are compared with the OCO-2 retrieved values at the time of the overpass, with a particularfocus on the east-west gradients within the SoCAB. We use these gradients to investigate the contrast in
XCO2 between the urban central part of the SoCAB and the more rural East.

40

On January 26th 2018, both OCO-2 and the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) madeobservations in Boston, MA, USA. We deployed four EM27/SUN instruments in the area on that day:one instrument was deployed in Harvard Forest approximately 20 km east of the OCO-2 measurement
track, and the other three instruments were deployed downwind of the Harvard Forest on the east end of
the Greater Boston Area. GOSAT collected target-mode measurements that were coincident with two of
the EM27/SUN locations: Harvard Forest and Harvard University. The measurements are used tocompare XCO2 retrieved values from the satellites and the EM27/SUN spectrometers. In addition, we
use the measured XCO2 values from the upwind site and the three downwind sites to estimate CO2enhancements from the Boston area.
B3.7 Comparison of atmospheric CO2 column measurements at high latitudes from ground-based
and satellite-based methods
Nicole Jacobs*, William Simpson, Thomas Blumenstock, Manvendra Dubey, Frank Hase, Rigel Kivi,
Greg Osterman, Harrison Parker, Qiansi Tu, Debra Wunch*University of Alaska Fairbanks
Total column measurements of carbon-dioxide (CO2) from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)
satellite have been validated at mid-latitudes by comparison to the Total Carbon Column Observing
Network (TCCON), but there are still a limited number of sites providing high-latitude validation data
for satellite observations of CO2, and no TCCON sites in Alaska. To understand the global distributionof CO2 sources and sinks, it is essential that we increase the abundance of high-latitude satellite
validation data. Total-column observations from ground-based infrared spectroscopy are highly
comparable to OCO-2 satellite observations, which use infrared spectroscopy to measure the total
atmospheric column from space. By comparing ground-based and satellite-based observations of CO2 incentral Alaska, we can determine whether significant disparities exist amongst these different
observation methods and quantify biases. A careful comparative analysis may elucidate importantcharacteristics of ground-based and satellite-based column measurements that would allow for improved
methodologies in future measurements to enhance agreement amongst different types of high-latitude
CO2 measurements.
In August of 2016, we began the Arctic Mobile Infrared Greenhouse Gas Observations (AMIGGO)
campaign in the Boreal Forest region around Fairbanks, Alaska with the goal of satellite validation andmeasurement of natural ecosystem fluxes across large transects at high-latitudes. In this campaign, weused the EM27/SUN mobile solar-viewing Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer (EM27/SUN FTS)
then retrieved the total CO2 column and column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of CO2 (XCO2) with the
GGG2014 algorithm. The EM27/SUN FTS was designed by Bruker in collaboration with the Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT) (Gisi et al., 2012, doi:10.5194/amt-5-2969-2012) and has been deployedin urban areas to measure anthropogenic fluxes of CO2, CH4, and CO. To evaluate the EM27/SUN
performance, co-located observations were made with two EM27/SUN spectrometers, and we found that
XCO2 differed consistently by ~0.06% or ~0.24ppm. Five days of EM27/SUN observations coincident
with OCO-2 targeted overpasses collected between May and July 2017 in central Alaska showed thatafter bias-corrections and recommended OCO-2 quality filters OCO-2 measured higher XCO2 than the41

EM27/SUN FTS by ~2 ppm on average. We will present an exploration of the distribution OCO-2
parameters for quality filtering of satellite-based measurements at high latitude Boreal forest sites
including Fairbanks, Alaska, East Trout Lake, Saskatchewan, and Sodankyla, Finland that evaluatestarget, glint, and nadir soundings coincident to ground-based column measurements, as well as longterm trends in CO2 observations at these sites.
B3.8 COCCON - a framework for operating the EM27/SUN spectrometer
Omaira García*, F. Hase, M. Frey, D. Dubravica, J. Groß, T. Blumenstock, Q. Tu, J. Orphal, A. Dehn,
P. Castracane, A. Butz, R. Kleinschek, A. Luther, J. Chen, R. Harig, G. Surawicz, W.R. Simpson, N.
Jacobs, M. Grutter, W. Stremme, N. Jones, D. W. Griffith, G. Mengistu Tsidu, K. Shiomi, I. Morino, H.
Ohyama, S. Wofsy, O. Garcia, D. Pollard, M. Dubey, D. Wunch, P.O. Wennberg, M.K. Sha, H.
Gadhavi, D. Ene, M. Ramonet, Y. Sun, and H. Boesch*Meteorological State Agency of Spain
We will outline the development of a portable FTIR spectrometer for measuring column-averaged
abundances of carbon dioxide and methane (commercially available from Bruker Optics today, typedesignation EM27/SUN). We will explore the performance of the novel device, which turns out to beadequate for supplementing the TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network) by providing longterm measurements at remote locations. Moreover, the application of several spectrometers in an area ofinterest allows the quantification of local sources as cities, landfills, coal mine exhausts, etc., fromdifferential upstream-downstream column observations. We will provide several application examples.
We will introduce the concept of the COCCON (Collaborative Carbon Column Observing Network),
which offers a framework for standardized, quality-controlled operation of the EM27/SUN
spectrometer.
B3.9 Retrieving CO2 profiles from TCCON near-infrared spectra
Sébastien Roche*, Kimberly Strong, Debra Wunch, Joseph Mendonca, Geoffrey Toon, Brian Connor*University of Toronto
The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is composed of high-resolution ground-based
Fourier transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometers that record solar absorption spectra. Column-averaged
dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) are retrieved from the recorded spectra and used to validate
satellite observations of XCO2 and to study the carbon cycle.
Even though TCCON XCO2 observations are precise, they currently make no attempt to extract
information about the vertical distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is of interest for thevalidation of satellite measurements and model simulations.

42

GFIT is a non-linear least-squares spectral fitting algorithm used for TCCON retrievals. Amongst otherparameters, volume mixing ratio scale factors are retrieved for several gases. A single scale factor scales
the a priori concentration profile of each fitted trace gas, thus it does not change the shape of the profile.
GFIT2 is a profile retrieval algorithm that allows the profile shape to vary during the retrieval process.
The algorithm thus has more freedom to fit the observed spectra, but is also more sensitive to
uncertainties in the forward model calculations such as spectroscopic errors and instrument
misalignment, for example.
To exploit different sources of vertical information, CO2 profiles were retrieved from spectral windows
centered at 1.58, 1.61, 1.65, and 2.06 µm. Steps to improve the forward model of GFIT2 will bepresented, as well as a method that attempts to account for remaining errors, and to combine the profiles
retrieved from the different windows.
C3.1 Atmospheric CO2 Concentration Measurements to Cloud Tops from an Airborne Lidar
during 2017 ASCENDS Science Campaign in Alaska
Jianping Mao*, James B. Abshire, S. Randy Kawa, Haris Riris, Graham R. Allan, William E.
Hasselbrack, Kenji Numata, Jeff Chen, Xiaoli Sun, Joshua P DiGangi and Yonghoon Choi
*University of Maryland
Globally distributed atmospheric CO2 concentration measurements with high precision, low bias and fullseasonal sampling are crucial to advance carbon cycle sciences. However, two thirds of the Earth’s
surface is typically covered by clouds, and passive remote sensing approaches from space are limited tocloud-free scenes and to the time when surface reflected sunlight is sufficient. NASA Goddard isdeveloping a pulsed, integrated-path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar approach to measureatmospheric column CO2 concentrations, XCO2, from space as a candidate for NASA’s ASCENDS
mission. Measurements of time-resolved laser backscatter profiles from the atmosphere also allow thistechnique to estimate XCO2 and range to cloud tops in addition to those to the ground with precise
knowledge of the photon path-length.
We demonstrate this measurement capability using airborne lidar measurements from summer 2017
ASCENDS airborne science campaign in Alaska. It is the first time that our airborne lidar measurement
was extended to the Arctic region where atmosphere is more dynamic and measurement conditions are
more challenging. We show retrievals of XCO2 to a variety of cloud tops in addition to those to theground. We also demonstrate how the partial column XCO2 to cloud tops and cloud slicing approach
help resolving vertical and horizontal gradient of CO2 in cloudy conditions. The XCO2 retrievals fromthe lidar are validated against on-board in situ measurements.
Adding this measurement capability to the future lidar mission for XCO2 will provide full global andseasonal data coverage and some information about vertical structure of CO2. This unique facility is
expected to benefit atmospheric transport process studies, carbon data assimilation in models, and global
and regional carbon flux estimation.

43

C3.2 Methane Monitor: An Airborne, Wide-Swath, Methane Mapping InstrumenTWilliam Tandy*, Jarett Bartholomew, Paula Wamsley, Lyle Ruppert, and Betsy Farris*Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Ball Aerospace flew its Methane Monitor system in the San Juan basin of Colorado and New Mexico in
February 2018. The primary campaign objective was to map methane from compressor facilities in ajoint effort with Colorado State University. Secondarily, the team took advantage of the opportunity to
map a section of the Fruitland Outcrop, a region known for its natural methane seeps. Our presentation
will cover some of our early findings from both industrial and natural sources in that region. The
Methane Monitor is a differential absorption lidar system that measures the total column density ofmethane from an airplane flying 1,000 meters above the ground. The instrument can measure plumes
with emission rates on the order of 50 Standard Cubic Feet per Hour (SCFH) while maintaining
sufficient dynamic range to capture the largest plumes. The instrument can measure concentration path
lengths up to 100,000 ppm-m before saturating. (The highest concentration path length measured to dateis about 60,000 ppm-m.)

44

Session 4: Greenhouse gas observations and studies to quantify hot spots
and local/urban emissions
4.1 Comparing carbon dioxide enhancement from anthropogenic emissions observed by GOSAT
and OCO-2
Hui Zhong*, Liping Lei, Shaoyuan Yang, Nian Bie, Zhonghua He, Mengya Sheng
Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences
The increasing of atmospheric CO2 abundances is primarily induced by the anthropogenic emissions
including fossil fuel combustion, cement production and other human activities. To monitor CO2 levelsin the atmospheric, independent measurement, reporting and verifying are required, especially emissions
in urban areas.
The satellite observation of CO2 gives us an important way to obtain accurate global and regional
measures of CO2 variations. Current orbiting satellites for greenhouse gas observation like Greenhousegases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) and Orbit Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) have been providing
global measurement of column averaged dry air mole fraction (XCO2). We collected XCO2 data
retrieved from GOSAT and OCO-2 observations in the study areas of urban intensive regions such asurban agglomerations around Beijing in northern China and around New York in eastern USA, aiming
to quantify the enhancement from anthropogenic emission using the regional contrast method between
emission and background. Our results indicate that OCO-2 observations show higher sensitivity to CO2emission variation due to its high spatial resolution and spectral resolving power compared with GOSAT
observations. Regionally elevated CO2 originating from urban intensive areas, about 3 ppm, is detectedby comparing XCO2 observations with nearby background areas. And the enhancements of CO2
significantly present seasonal variations due to seasonal activities of CO2 release and uptake from
biosphere.
This study demonstrates the sensitivity to CO2 emission variation and differences in anthropogenic
emissions detected from different satellite observations, GOSAT and OCO-2. The CO2 signals from
biosphere flux and transport flux remained in the regional contrasts should be removed by a proper andvalid way in the future work.
4.2 Global XCO2 anomalies: Direct space-based observations of anthropogenic CO2 emission areasfrom OCO-2 and comparison with inventory-based estimates
Janne Hakkarainen*, Iolanda Ialongo, Shamil Maksyutov*Finnish Meteorological Institute
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion have large impacts on climate. In order tomonitor the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, accurate spaceborne observations - asavailable from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) - are needed. In our recent work45

[Hakkarainen et al., 2016] we provided a new approach to study anthropogenic CO2 emission areas bydeseasonalizing and detrending OCO-2 XCO2 observations for deriving XCO2 anomalies. The spatial
distribution of the XCO2 anomaly matches the features observed in the maps of the Ozone Monitoring
Instrument NO2 tropospheric columns, used as an indicator of atmospheric pollution, as well as thefeatures observed in the ODIAC emission dataset. In addition, the results of a cluster analysis confirmed
the correlation between CO2 and NO2 spatial patterns.
In this work, we study this idea further and provide the global XCO2 anomaly maps for three full years
2015, 2016 and 2017. The patterns observed in these maps are compared with inventory-based estimates
given by the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART driven by the high-resolution ODIAC
emission dataset. We also analyze the changes observed in XCO2 anomaly maps and compare thesechanges to the inventory-based estimates, as well as to the changes observed in other trace gases (NO2and SO2).
Hakkarainen, J., I. Ialongo, and J. Tamminen (2016), Direct space-based observations of anthropogenic
CO2 emission areas from OCO-2, Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, 11,400 -11,406, doi:10.1002/2016GL070885.
4.3 Advances in Quantifying Power Plant CO2 Emissions from Space
Ray Nassar*, Cameron MacDonald, Tim G. Hill, Chris McLinden, Debra Wunch, Dylan B.A. Jones,
and David Crisp*Environment and Climate Change Canada
In our earlier work, we presented the first estimates of CO2 emissions from individual coal power plantsfrom space, using Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) version 7 XCO2 data. With OCO-2’s limited
imaging capability, we fit observations to a vertically-integrated Gaussian plume model to derive
emission and uncertainty estimates. The method was first demonstrated on US coal power plants, whichhave detailed emission data available from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), then it wasapplied to international power plants where CO2 emissions have larger uncertainties. Here we extend ourearlier work to present new estimates of power plant CO2 emissions using the improved OCO-2 version
8 data, with a longer data record and the assistance of new prior emission information. We also discuss
limitations, lessons learned and studies with simulated data that are relevant to the design of a future
constellation for anthropogenic CO2 emission monitoring.
4.4 Quantifying methane point sources from fine-scale (GHGSat) satellite observation of
atmospheric plumes
Daniel J. Varon*, Daniel J. Jacob, Jason McKeever, Dylan Jervis, Berke O. A. Durak, Yan Xia, Yi
Huang*Harvard University

46

Anthropogenic methane emissions originate from a large number of relatively small point sources. Thereis considerable interest in developing the ability to quantify these sources from satellite observations ofatmospheric methane columns. The 1-10 km pixel resolution of conventional methane observing
satellites is too coarse to resolve individual methane point sources. GHGSat aims to fill this gap bymeasuring methane plumes over selected 12-km domains with an effective pixel resolution of 50x50 m2
and 1-5% measurement precision. Our study develops an algorithm for retrieving point source emissions
from such limited-domain, fine-resolution satellite observations of methane plumes. We conduct
observing system simulation experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) inlarge eddy simulation (LES) mode to simulate a large ensemble of plumes from point sources at
GHGSat resolution and with representative noise. Several emission retrieval methods are evaluated,
including Gaussian plume inversion, source pixel mass balance, cross-sectional flux estimates, andinference from the integrated mass enhancement (IME) of the plume. We show that the Gaussian plumemethod is unsuitable because the instantaneous plumes are too small to follow Gaussian statistics, andthe source pixel method is unsuitable because winds across 50-m pixels are too variable. The IME
method provides, by contrast, a robust approach to quantify point sources larger than ~0.5 tons h-1 basedon knowledge of the 10-m wind speed from local measurements or meteorological databases. The crosssectional flux method is similar to the IME method, but less robust.
4.5 First methane retrievals and hotspot identification with TROPOMI
Haili Hu*, Jochen Landgraf, Sudhanshu Pandey, Rob Detmers, Tobias Borsdorff, Joost aan de Brugh,Andre Butz, Ilse Aben, Sander Houweling, Coleen Roehl, Laura Iraci, Paul Wennberg, Otto Hasekamp*SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
The Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) was successfully launched on October 13th, 2017
aboard ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. The spectrometer measures sunlight reflected by
the Earth's surface and atmosphere in the ultraviolet, visible, near and short-wave infrared spectral
range. From these measurements, concentrations of key atmospheric species are determined formonitoring air quality, climate and the ozone layer on a global daily basis with unprecedented
combination of spatial resolution and spatial coverage. In this work, we present the first results on
methane retrievals using TROPOMI measurements in the short-wave infrared band around 2.3 microns.
We retrieve the column averaged dry air volume mixing ratio of methane while accounting foratmospheric scattering with the RemoTeC algorithm that employs the so-called full-physics approach.
This algorithm was developed by SRON as the operational methane retrieval algorithm for TROPOMI.
We compare our results with the proxy methane product from the Japanese GOSAT satellite that SRON
delivers in the context of the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS). Although different
spectral ranges and retrieval methods are used, we find excellent agreement between the methane
products obtained from the two satellites. Our results capture the latitudinal gradient and show expected
regional and local enhancements. As a first case study, we focus on the US region where we have
performed preliminary TCCON validation and show local methane enhancements and comparing themagainst emission databases.

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4.6 Detection of local CH4 sources using the WRF-CHEM model and TROPOMI XCH4
Sudhanshu Pandey*, Haili Hu, Sander Houweling, Jochen Landgraf, Tobias Borsdorf, Dekker Iris, Otto
Hasekamp, Hugo Denier van der Gon, Ilse Aben
*SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) promises to greatly improve our capability tomeasure atmospheric constituents, such as O3, CH2O, NO2, CO, CH4 and SO2, at an unprecedented
combination of resolution, coverage and precision. One of the exciting prospects of TROPOMI is thedetection of local CH4 sources. Each pixel of TROPOMI is 7x7 km resolution which can allow detectionof strong local sources of CH4 of ~100kt/yr (in single overpass) to ~20kt/yr (after averaging).
Recent studies have shown that reducing CH4 emissions from local sources can help to achieve shortterm climate change mitigation targets. Many of these local sources are controlled or accidental releases
from the natural gas industry which are also economically unfavorable. Hence, there is a substantial
interest from the industry in the detection and quantification of their local CH4 emission.
We show results from the first analysis of TROPOMI XCH4 measurements to investigate its capability
to detect local CH4 sources. The observed CH4 enhancements are further analyzed using WRF-CHEM
model simulations of CH4 to relate existing source estimates to TROPOMI observed signals, and to take
into account the role of atmospheric transport.
4.7 CO2 emissions from power plants derived from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument NO2 dataset
Debora Griffin*, Chris McLinden, Enrico Dammers, Ray Nassar, Junhua Zhang, Vitali Fioletov,
Nickolay Krotkov
Environment and Climate Change Canada
With the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) annual NOx (NO2+NO) emissions can be accurately
estimated for individual, isolated power plants. NOx is a good tracer for anthropogenic CO2 emissions,as the largest part of tropospheric NOx originates from the combustion of fossil fuel, it has a relatively
short lifetime (of a few hours), and in areas near emission sources the vertical column densities exceed
the background by as much as on order of magnitude.
Emission ratios of NOx:CO2 are derived from in-situ measurements at North American power plants,
using the Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMS), Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting
Program (GHGRP), and the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) datasets. This ratio was foundto be between 0.001 and 0.003 for facilities emitting at least 5kt NOx per year and linearly increasing
with the NOx emissions.
Annual CO2 emissions can be estimated from the OMI NOx emissions and the linear NOx:CO2 ratio.
These estimates are in good agreement with CO2 emissions using a site-specific ratio (from CEMS,

48

GHGRP and NPRI), as well as OCO-2 derived emissions [Nassar et al., 2017], and the Open-source
Data Inventory for Anthropogenic CO2 (ODIAC) emission inventory for US plants.
To provide a better understanding of CO2 emissions from power plants globally this NOx:CO2 ratio canalso be applied to sources outside of North America, which especially proves to be valuable in areas thatare not well monitored. As an example, we found that our estimates for power plants in Matimba (South
Africa) and Sasan (India) are in good agreement with the CO2 emissions derived from OCO-2 [Nassar etal., 2017].
Nassar, R., Hill, T. G., McLinden, C. A., Wunch, D., Jones, D. B. A., & Crisp, D. (2017). Quantifying
CO2 emissions from individual power plants from space. Geophysical Research Letters, 44,
10,045_Ñ_10,053. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074702.
A4.1 Benchmarking chemistry-climate model top-of-atmosphere flux in the 9.6 micron infraredozone absorption band with comparisons to satellite observations
Helen Worden*, Le Kuai, Kevin Bowman, Andrew Conley, Jean-François Lamarque, Drew Shindell,
Greg Faluvegi, Cathy Clerbaux, Pierre-François Coheur, Stamatia Doniki, Susan Kulawik, Fabien
Paulot, David Paynter, Luke Oman, Sarah Strode, Eugene Rozanov, Andrea Stenke, Laura Revell*NCAR
The 9.6 micron infrared absorption band of ozone is the primary contributor to long wave radiative
forcing by tropospheric ozone, the 3rd most important greenhouse gas. Biases of present day top-ofatmosphere (TOA) flux for the 9.6 micron ozone band, which is predicted by IPCC chemistry-climate
models, have never been evaluated with measurements and these biases impact estimates of ozone
radiative forcing (RF) from pre-industrial to present day. Satellite measurements of TOA spectral
radiances and ozone profiles allow evaluation of the performance of chemistry-climate models for both
TOA flux and Instantaneous Radiative Kernels (IRK), which give the sensitivity of TOA flux to changes
in the vertical distribution of atmospheric state, e.g. tropospheric ozone, water or temperature. Changes
in the atmospheric state can then have a feedback effect on ozone radiative forcing by altering thesensitivity of TOA flux to ozone.
We compute the ozone band flux and the IRK, from Aura-TES and MetOP-IASI and SNPP-CrIS
Fourier Transform spectrometer (FTS) measurements. The IRKs from spectrally resolved radiances
explicitly account for more dominant radiative processes such as clouds and water vapor, due to thespectrally resolved absorption features, and allow attribution of changes in ozone RF to vertical changes
in ozone and ozone precursor emissions. The continuation of the TES record of infrared ozone spectra
and corresponding IRK with long-term IASI and CrIS data will allow accurate predictions of futureozone forcing and an assessment of the feedback from changes in the hydrological cycle on ozone RF.
We use these IRK to evaluate the TOA flux bias in a suite of chemistry-climate models in terms ofozone, temperature, and water vapor. We show that the spatial pattern and the sign of these biases differs
significantly between models. This evaluation suggests opportunities for model improvement in climate
sensitive regions.

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A4.2 First year results of the Fiducial Reference Measurements for GreenHouse Gases(FRM4GHG) intercomparison campaign performed at the Sodankylä TCCON site
Mahesh Kumar Sha*, Martine De Mazière, Christian Hermans, Justus Notholt, Christof Petri, Huilin
Chen, David Griffith, Nicholas Jones, Frank Hase, Thomas Blumenstock, Qiansi Tu, Rigel Kivi, Pauli
Heikkinen, Damien Weidmann, Alex Hoffmann, Angelika Dehn
*Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB)
The ongoing campaign “Fiducial Reference Measurements for Ground-Based Infrared Greenhouse Gas
Observations (FRM4GHG)” at the Sodankylä (Finland) TCCON site, funded by the European Space
Agency (ESA), aims at characterizing the assessment of several low-cost portable spectrometers for
precise solar absorption measurements of CO2, CH4 and CO. These measurements are performed
simultaneously next to the TCCON instrument covering all seasons. In addition, regular AirCore
launches are performed from that site which provide in-situ reference profiles of the target gases; this isuseful for the verification of the instrument calibration. As the first year (2017) of the FRM4GHG
campaign provided a significant dataset of CO2, CH4 and CO measurements from March to October
2017. It has been extended for performing another year of measurements in 2018. The campaign gave an
important contribution for the assessment of small and mobile spectrometers for GHG measurements
and demonstrated that small and mobile instruments can be used reliably. The extended campaign will
also provide a significant dataset for validation of satellite and model data, and in particular for thevalidation of Sentinel-5P during its commissioning phase. The outcome of the campaign will then be aguideline for the further deployment of low-cost portable instruments at new observation sites tocomplement the TCCON network and better support the validation of the existing and future satellite
missions and models.
This presentation will discuss the campaign objectives and its set-up, the results of the first year of
measurements performed in 2017 and an overview of the extension of the campaign in 2018.
A4.3 The SACH4 project: Source Attribution of CH4 using satellite observations, isotopic
measurements and GEOS-Chem simulations
Evelyn De Wachter1, Whitney Bader2, Emmanuel Mahieu2, Bavo Langerock, Nicolas Kumps, AnnCarine Vandaele, Martine De Mazière
1
2

Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB)
Infrared Group of Atmospheric and Solar Physics (GIRPAS), University of Liège (ULiège)

The SACH4 project’s main objective is to improve our current understanding of the balance between thesources and sinks that shape the CH4 distribution. We use BIRA-IASB IASI CH4 satellite observations
together with GEOS-Chem tagged simulations to examine the contribution from different source regions
to the total budget of CH4. In addition, we investigate the possibility of retrieving the isotopic
concentrations of CH4 from ground-based FTIR measurements, to give additional information about thesources and reaction pathways.

50

For this symposium we will present first results of the comparison between IASI upper troposphericCH4 and GEOS-Chem tagged simulations on a global scale. These results will be complemented byground-based FTIR measurements of methane. This study will allow us to quantify source region
contributions to regional and global CH4 concentrations and quantify unidentified source regions.
B4.2 The TROPOMI CO data product: Monitoring pollution with daily global coverage and highspatial resolution
Tobias Borsdorff*, Joost aan de Brugh, Haili Hu, Otto Hasekamp, Ralf Sussmann, Markus Rettinger,
Frank Hase, Jochen Gross, Matthias Schneider, Omaira Garcia, Wolfgang Stremme, Michel Grutter,
Dietrich G. Feist, Martine De Maziere, Mahesh Kumar Sha, David F. Pollard, Matthäus Kiel, Geoffrey
C. Toon, Paul O. Wennberg, Jochen Landgraf*SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, the Netherlands
ESA’s Sentinel-5 Precursor mission with the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) as its
single payload was successfully launched on 13th October 2017. The spectrometer measures earthshinereflectance spectra from the ultraviolet (UV) to the shortwave infrared (SWIR) spectral region and oneof the primary targets of the mission is to monitor the atmospheric trace gas carbon monoxide (CO) with
unprecedented daily global coverage and a spatial high resolution of 5.5 7.5 km2. CO is emitted byincomplete combustion to the atmosphere. It is known as an indirect greenhouse gas because through its
reaction with the atmospheric OH radical, it regulates the atmospheric lifetime of methane and otherstrong greenhouse gases. Furthermore, it is an important precursor of tropospheric ozone and so
influences air quality. In this study, we present first results of the TROPOMI CO data product showing
the ability of the instrument to detect weak pollution signals above mega cities with only single orbit
overpasses. Moreover, due to its moderate lifetime CO can be used to track the transport of pollution
from e.g. biomass burning in Africa and Madagascar with daily resolution on regional and global scales.
We validate the TROPOMI CO total columns with independent observations at nine ground-based
Fourier-transform spectroscopy stations operated by the TCCON network and compare the TROPOMI
product with the ECMWF-IFS model results on a global scale.
B4.3 Greenhouse gas emission from megacities observed by GOSAT TANSO-FTS
Nobuhiro Kikuchi*, Akihiko Kuze, Fumie Kataoka, Kei Shiomi, Hiroshi Suto, Makiko Hashimoto*Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
To meet an increasing demand for monitoring the anthropogenic emission of greenhouses gases fromlarge cities, GOSAT has carried out extensive target mode observations since 2016. In this observationmode, GOSAT covers a target city with a dense matrix of sampling points, the number of which is up to17, using the agile pointing mechanism of TANSO-FTS. Another advantage of TANSO-FTS is that it
has spectral windows in both SWIR and TIR, making it sensitive not only to the column amount, but

51

also to the vertical profile of carbon dioxide and methane. Information on the vertical profile is usefulespecially for estimating the surface flux of the greenhouse gases from megacities.
For some selected megacities including New York City, Delhi, and Mumbai, we retrievedconcentrations of carbon dioxide and methane from TANSO-FTS measurements in both SWIR and TIR.
Our retrieval algorithm was developed by adding a TIR module to the existing SWIR algorithm of
Kikuchi et al. (2016). To represent the vertical profile of gas concentrations, we used 5 layers in total,
with 2 layers in the troposphere.
We estimated the surface flux of carbon dioxide and methane from the retrieved gas concentrations
using a simple 1-dimensional steady state model. In this model, we assumed that the surface flux was
uniform within a city, and that the wind blew with a constant velocity. Under these assumptions, thesurface flux is proportional to the gradient of the gas concentrations along the wind direction.
From the gradient of the retrieved gas concentrations and the wind velocity of the NCEP data, we
obtained the surface flux of carbon dioxide and methane from megacities. We found that in many cases
the surface flux derived in this way is comparable to that of the emission inventory such as EDGAR. In
addition to the 1-dimensional model, a time-dependent 2-dimensional model is now under investigation,
which would further improve the estimates of the surface flux.
B4.4 Analysis on possible anomalous regional emission and absorption events of greenhouse gaseswith GOSAT and OCO-2
Koki KASAI*, Kei Shiomi, Atsushi Konno, Takeo Tadono, Masahiro Hori
*Hokkaido University, Japan
Global observation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) with highspatio-temporal resolution and accurate estimation of sources and sinks are important to understandgreenhouse gases dynamics. Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) has observed columnaveraged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) and CH4 (XCH4) over 9 years since January 2009 withwide swath but sparse pointing. The GOSAT conducts strategic target observations frequently as well as
grid pattern observations every 3 days over megacities and possible emission sources. Orbiting Carbon
Observatory-2 (OCO-2) has observed XCO2 jointly on orbit since July 2014 with narrow swath but highresolution. The OCO-2 is operated with a 16-day (233-revolution) repeat cycle, thus there also exist
finer-resolved observations over megacities.
We use satellite observed XCO2 and/or XCH4 datasets with GOSAT and OCO-2, and TCCON groundbased observation dataset. Curve fitting method and harmonic analysis are applied to time series of
XCO2 and XCH4. The smoothed curve, trend, detrended seasonal cycle, and growth rate are calculated
and compared among datasets. The purpose of this study is to detect typical time series variation andanomalous emission and absorption events on a regional scale.
Possible cause estimations of extracted anomalous events are also performed in order to validate thechange of anthropogenic or biogenic effects. Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) from satellite52

observation and Open-source Data Inventory of Anthropogenic CO2 emission (ODIAC) datasets areused in this study. Additionally, XCO (column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of carbon monoxide)
observed by Terra/MOPITT dataset is utilized to conduct correlational analysis between XCO andXCO2 to distinguish fossil fuel combustion. This analysis could be a preliminary analysis of GOSAT-2,
which will observe XCO2, XCH4 and XCO.
B4.5 CO2 emissions from anthropogenic and fire activity based on SCIAMACHY, GOSAT and
OCO-2
Yusheng Shi*, Yusheng Shi, Mingdong You, Zhenghan Lv, Tsuneo Matsunaga*Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and fire CO2 emissions from biomassburning both have large impacts on climate. The spatial distributions and temporal variations ofatmospheric CO2 concentrations are significantly affected by the anthropogenic and fire activity
worldwide. This study explored the correlations between the changes of CO2 concentrations andanthropogenic CO2 emissions and fire CO2 emissions in human and fire-dominated regions in Asia. The
used available spaceborne observations included the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for
Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY), The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT)
and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2). The seasonal cycle and interannual variations of columnaveraged volume mixing ratios of atmospheric carbon dioxide (XCO2) over the main pollution regions(North China) and fire-affected regions (Southeast Asia) were analyzed from 2003 to 2017. The XCO2
anomaly in different regions from the three datasets were derived by detrending the SCIAMACHY,GOSAT and OCO-2 XCO2 observations. Results showed the spatial distribution of the XCO2 anomaly
corresponded well with the features observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument NO2 troposphericcolumns, used as an indicator of atmospheric pollution. We found strong positive correlation between
XCO2 anomalies and emission inventories after cluster analysis in both North China and Southeast Asia.
The results demonstrate the ability of spaceborne data for monitoring CO2 emissions and provide an
insight in information on the interannual variability of land-atmosphere exchange over anthropogenic
and fire affected regions.
C4.1 Temporal and spatial variability of methane over Alberta as observed from space
Heba Marey*, Zaher Hashisho, Long Fu*University of Toronto
This study aims to assess the CH4-levels in Alberta, based on total column data measured by the
Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the EOS/Aqua satellite from 2003 to 2013. Space-borne
measurements by AIRS provide a global view of CH4 distribution in the mid-upper troposphere. Land
cover and meteorological data sets, were also used in this study. The results show that, the temporalvariations of the CH4 levels demonstrates a significant rise in the last ten years. This ascending trend isconsistent with the increase of global CH4 levels in the same time period. However, the abrupt CH4

53

concentration increase in 2010 coincides with the significant change in economic activities during thattime period. The monthly averaged variability of CH4 over Alberta fluctuates, with a peak occurring inAugust, which is probably driven by enhanced convection. Spatial distributions of CH4 reveal a strong
west-east gradient with maximum levels in northern regions (55-65 N). The enhanced summer levels
over northern and eastern regions suggest possible pathways for CH4 emitted from natural sources(wetlands, lakes and permafrost) in high northern latitude regions and Canadian wetlands (e.g. Hudson
Bay wetland). Since some of the wetland CH4 fluxes are collocated with large anthropogenic sources, so
it is difficult to disentangle various sources. Thus, further studies about CH4 emission and transport over
Alberta are recommended to reduce the uncertainties about the natural and anthropogenic contributionsof Alberta to Canada’s CH4 emissions.
C4.2 Finding emission sources with lightweight data driven modeling
Jouni Susiluoto*, Alessio Spantini, Heikki Haario
Lappeenranta University of Technology / Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The OCO-2 satellite has provided valuable data now for three years with a global coverage of the planet.
While this data is a valuable source of information regarding emission sources, it has also several
limitations, such as temporal and spatial sparsity. We present ongoing work, where we attempt to extract
information such as locations of major emission sources without the use of computationally expensive
dynamical models.
C4.3 A methodology for characterizing methane emissions from urban and oil and gas producing
regions using a methane column imaging satellite
Joshua Benmergui*, Steven C. Wofsy, Steven Hamburg, Ritesh Gautam, Kang Sun*Harvard University
Emerging satellite technologies promise to provide high resolution images of total column methane.
Such observations could be used to identify and quantify emissions with an unprecedented combinationof detail and coverage. In this study, we designed and tested an algorithm that takes in a satellite imageof total column methane and outputs a characterization of emissions. The algorithm uses image
processing techniques to find the locations of large emissions sources. It then uses these locations asprior information in a geostatistical inverse modeling framework to simultaneously estimate the large
emitters and the field of smaller emitters. The optimized emissions are attributed to sources, both
directly and statistically, by linking the optimized emissions to infrastructure databases. We tested thealgorithm using simulated scenes of the MethaneSAT concept in Dallas-Ft. Worth, San Francisco,
Indianapolis, Prudhoe Bay, London, and the Gulf of Mexico.

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C4.4 The ODIAC - A global monthly high-resolution fossil fuel CO2 emissions data product for
tracer transport simulations and surface flux inversions
Tomohiro Oda*, Shamil Maksyutov, Lesley Ott, Miguel Roman, Zhousen Wang, Thomas Lauvaux, Sha
Feng, Sally Newman, Rostyslav Bun, Steven Pawson*USRA/NASA Goddard
The Open-source Data Inventory for Anthropogenic CO2 (ODIAC) is a global, monthly, high resolution
gridded data product for fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The ODIAC was primarily
designed to prescribe high-resolution CO2 transport model simulations for inverse flux calculations,especially using data collected by carbon observing satellites such as the Japanese Greenhouse gas
Observation SATellite (GOSAT) and NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2). Since its
establishment in 2009, the ODIAC has been extensively used in global and regional flux inversions andalso successfully applied to studies for localized emissions sources such power plants and cities. In thispresentation, we will present the current status of the ODIAC project, highlighting the recent ODIAC
emission data production, the application of NASA's Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer Suite(VIIRS) Nighttime Environmental Product (nightlight), as well as extensive data evaluations.
C4.5 Comparing potential of a satellite constellation to monitor fossil fuel CO2 emissions fromlarge cities and industrial sites
Franck Lespinas**LSCE
Reducing the emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHG) is considered one of the most importantenvironmental challenges of the 21st century to keep global warming below 2°C with respect to preindustrial times. This objective implies use of independent observation systems to accurately monitor
GHG emissions at spatial scales relevant to carbon policy. Low earth orbiting satellites can provide
imagery of CO2 concentrations at spatial scales as small as 2 x 2 km2 ground pixel size at daily intervals
over the globe, with a contiguous sampling over a 350 km-wide swath. Combining these data withinversion methods allows to give estimates of CO2 emissions from large cities and industrial sites, andhence to evaluate the efficiency of CO2 emissions reduction policies coming from fossil fuelcombustion. This study compares the performance of 2 km resolution imagery of CO2 concentrations
from the shortwave-infrared measurements provided by various combination of low earth orbiting
satellites to monitor the fossil fuel CO2 emissions from main cities and large industrial sites throughout
the globe. This comparison is based on Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) with anatmospheric inversion approach at local scale. The inversion system solves for hourly fossil fuel CO2
emissions during the three hours before a given satellite overpass. These three hours correspond to theperiod during which emissions produce CO2 plumes that can be identified on satellite imagery. The
statistical framework of the inversion accounts for the existence of some prior knowledge about thehourly emissions from an inventory based on energy and carbon fuel consumption statistics. A Gaussian
plume model is used to simulate the link between the hourly emissions and the vertically-integrated

55

columns of CO2 concentrations observed by the satellites. Preliminary results indicate that theperformance of the inversion system significantly increase as a function of the number of satellites.

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Session 5: Flux inversions on regional and global scales
5.1 “Are we there yet?” A look at the status and prospects of inferring top-down carbon fluxes
from CO2 remote sensing
Christopher O'Dell*, Annmarie Eldering, David Crisp, David Schimel, Andrew Schuh, Sean Crowell,and Lesley Ott*Colorado State University
Over the past decade, satellite-based measurements of column-averaged carbon dioxide concentration,
called XCO2, have proliferated with sensors such as GOSAT, OCO-2, and TanSAT. Even more capable
future systems are planned to launch both polar and geostationary orbits, in the hopes of using thesemeasurements to answer fundamental questions about the carbon cycle and to possibly measure or evenmonitor anthropogenic emissions of CO2. Previous work has shown that persistent spatiotemporalbiases in satellite measurements of CO2 can lead to spurious flux signals, when these measurements are
assimilated into inverse carbon flux models. Coherent regional biases or transport errors of even 0.5
ppm out of the ~400 ppm background appear too large.
Such a tight requirement represents a daunting challenge for instrument calibration, retrieval algorithms,
and tracer transport models alike. In general, rather than making either random errors or constant biases,
these sources of error create patterns of uncertainty that can alias into the fluxes we are attempting toinfer. In this talk I give a broad outline of the various challenges we face, focusing on the measurementof XCO2 itself. It is found that while systematic errors have generally decreased over time because of
improvements in spectroscopy, instrument characterization, and the retrieval algorithm itself, importantsystematic errors remain. I will close with an ambitious series of proposed OSSEs that may shed lighton how far we have to go before we can infer regional and seasonal carbon fluxes of with confidence,
based upon space-borne measurements of CO2.
5.2 On the spatial scales informed by surface and GOSAT CO2 observations
Saroja Polavarapu*, Feng Deng, Brendan Byrne, Dylan B. A. Jones, Michael Neish*Environment and Climate Change Canada
In this work, we present a new way of assessing the spatial scales of CO2 informed by posterior fluxes.
Using the GEOS-Chem 4D-Var flux inversion system of Deng et al. (2014, 2016), we obtain two sets ofposterior fluxes informed by either the surface in situ network, or by GOSAT observations. Then wecompute the “flux signal” which is defined as the 3D CO2 distribution obtained from posterior fluxes
minus that obtained from prior fluxes. The flux signal reflects the impact of the observing system as
manifested in the posterior fluxes convolved with a time history of atmospheric transport and is afunction of the transport model as well as the prior fluxes. We use two different transport models(GEOS-Chem and GEM-MACH-GHG) to compute the flux signal in order to assess the sensitivity of
results to transport model errors. Moreover, we are able to define a “minimum” transport error level as
the change in CO2 distributions arising from imperfect wind fields by repeating simulations with57

perturbed wind fields from the ECCC operational ensemble Kalman filter system. It is only when thisminimum transport error level is exceeded that we trust the flux signal. For in situ-informed fluxes, wefind that in the lower troposphere, zonal asymmetries in the flux signal exceed that arising frommeteorological uncertainties only in boreal summer. However, GOSAT-informed fluxes produce
zonally asymmetric structures that exceed this minimum error year-round in the tropics and in thenorthern extratropics in all seasons except boreal winter. GOSAT-informed fluxes also better capture
the seasonal cycle of CO2 in the northern extratropics, but using in situ data yields better a match to
independent observations on the global, annual scale. Such complementarity of the observing systems
can be exploited in greenhouse gas data assimilation systems.
5.3 GOSAT CO2 Inversion Inter-comparison Experiment Phase-II: intermediate progress report
Hiroshi Takagi1, Sander Houweling2, Shamil Maksyutov1, David Baker3, Frederic Chevallier4, Feng
Deng5, Liang Feng6, Fei Jiang7, and Julia Marshal8
1

National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
Netherland Institute for Space Research, The Netherlands
3
Colorado State University, USA
4
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, France
5
University of Toronto, Canada
6
University of Edinburgh, UK
7Nanjing University, China
8
Max Plank Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany
2

Atmospheric inversion techniques have been utilized for estimating the space-time distribution of GHG
surface fluxes in gaining insight into how anthropogenic activities modify the stocks and flows ofcarbon over the globe. To make further progress in the effort, it is essential to evaluate, quantify, andsubsequently reduce the uncertainties in the flux estimation process. Inter-comparisons of existing
atmospheric inversion systems as well as their components provide the opportunity to investigate theuncertainties. In the late 1990s, the TransCom model inter-comparison studies assessed the role oftransport model uncertainties in flux estimation, and more recently, after the advent of satellites
dedicated to GHG monitoring, the GOSAT inversion inter-comparison (Phase-I) evaluated the fulluncertainty of GOSAT-based CO2 flux estimation by allowing the study participants to use the inversion
system, a priori flux dataset, surface CO2 observation dataset, and GOSAT column-mean CO2 (XCO2)
retrieval dataset of their choice.
Here, in the second phase of the GOSAT inversion inter-comparison, we explore differences among theexisting inversion systems and evaluate their contribution to the uncertainties of flux estimates. For this,the participants used a common input dataset that consists of an a priori flux dataset, GOSAT XCO2
retrieval dataset, and a surface CO2 observation dataset. A common criterion for observation datafiltering was also specified. The second phase study takes advantage of a 5-year-long analysis period(2009-2014) during which GOSAT XCO2 retrievals are continually available, to assess the robustness of
inversion-derived estimates of the impact of major weather anomalies on carbon fluxes. We contrast andcharacterize fluxes that are estimated from satellite and surface CO2 data combined, satellite data only,and surface data only, respectively. Our latest results are presented.

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5.4 The OCO-2 Level 4 Flux Product: The Global Carbon Cycle as Seen From Space
Sean Crowell*, Andrew Schuh, Sourish Basu, David Baker, Junjie Liu, FrÕ©dÕ©ric Chevallier, LiangFeng, Feng Deng, Andrew R Jacobson, Chris O'Dell, Annmarie Eldering, David Schimel, Michael
Gunson, David Crisp*University of Oklahoma
With over three years on orbit, the OCO-2 mission is providing a mature, high precision data productconsisting of column concentrations of CO2. Numerous modeling teams have taken part in a large
intercomparison project whose focus has been to assess the information content of OCO-2 data on
regional flux estimates over and above obfuscating factors such as transport model uncertainty andinstrument noise. Early results have shown that OCO-2 observations drive greater agreement between
flux estimates than the global in situ network in regions such as the tropics.
In this presentation, we will introduce the official OCO-2 Level 4 Flux Product and show that OCO-2
detected an earlier ramp up in terrestrial emissions due to the 2015-2016 El Nino than that inferred by
the global flask and in situ network. Additionally, we will show comparisons of posterior concentrations
with measurements from the Total Column Concentration Observing Network (TCCON), observations
from CONTRAIL, ACT America, and other aircraft campaigns, as well as surface measurements.
In addition to providing flux information in poorly constrained regions, comparisons between different
observing modes of OCO-2 alongside in situ constrained inversions allow the science team to diagnose
potential biases in the OCO-2 measurements. This feedback loop between the flux and retrieval
communities has led to a quicker maturation of both processes than either on their own.
5.5 Role of Climate Variability and Land Use on Fire Emissions of Carbon Gasses in the 21stCentury
John Worden*, Anthony Bloom, Yi Yin, Zhe Jiang, Helen Worden, Kevin Bowman, Junjie Liu, Sassan
Saatchi, David Schimel*JPL / Caltech
Large scale reductions in biomass burning are observed across the globe from 2002 through the present
through measurements of burnt area and carbon monoxide. These reductions are likely due to shifts inland-use changes as most declines are related to agricultural expansion. However, these reductions are in
the context of environmental variability that can create dry conditions in Indonesia and the N. American
Western states and possibly increased lightning in the Boreal forest that in turn can create large-scale
fires. The changing character of fires has also altered the expected emissions. For example, emissions
from fires in 2007 from South America were found to be larger than those in 2010 despite increased
burnt area in 2010, likely because of changes in biomass density and combustion efficiency. Across thetropics, emissions in CO are decreasing faster than burnt area, also suggesting that the widespread shift
in land-use is resulting in (not unexpectedly) changing fire combustion characteristics. Here we use data59

from the Terra MOPITT, Aura TES, OCO-2, and MODIS instruments as well as a state-of-the art
land/atmosphere/ocean carbon cycle modeling data/model system to quantify emissions of carbon gasses
using CO emissions and the range of emission factors up-scaled from vegetation type. We show that atleast over the last two decades, until the 2015 El Nino, these changes in land-management practices has
a substantial effect on the fire-component of global respiration that is larger in aggregate thanenvironmental variability. We then examine how these constraints on fire emissions of carbon (CO2,
CH4, and CO) affect our understanding of the other components of the carbon budget such as the global
land sink of CO2.
5.6 Evaluating GPP and respiration estimates over northern mid-latitude ecosystems using solar
induced fluorescence and atmospheric CO2 measurements
Brendan Byrne*, Debra Wunch, Dylan B. A. Jones, Kimberly Strong, Feng Deng, Ian Baker, Philipp
Koehler, Christian Frankenberg, Joanna Joiner, Vivek K. Arora, Bakr Badawy, Anna Harper, Thorsten
Warneke, Christof Petri, Rigel Kivi, Coleen M. Roehl*University of Toronto
On regional to global scales, few constraints exist on gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem
respiration (Re) fluxes. Yet, constraints on these fluxes are critical for evaluating and improving
terrestrial biosphere models. In this study, we evaluate the seasonal cycle of GPP and Re produced byfour terrestrial biosphere models and FLUXCOM (upscaled flux tower observations) over northern midlatitude ecosystems. First, we evaluate the seasonal cycle of GPP using Solar Induced Fluoresence
observations from GOME-2. We calculate an optimized Re seasonal cycle by combining constraints on
GPP with constraints on NEE from two flux inversions. Using this approach, we infer a seasonal cycleof Re which has a systematically broader summer peak from early June through mid-August than Re
fluxes produced by FLUXCOM and the four terrestrial biosphere models. The results presented here
show consistency between bottom up and top down estimates of GPP, but indicate systematicdifferences between bottom up and top-down (flux inversion based) estimates of Re.
5.7 Detecting drought impact on terrestrial biosphere carbon cycle over US in the context ofcarbon-climate interannual variability
Junjie Liu1, Kevin Bowman1, Nicholas C Parazoo1, A. Anthony Bloom1, Debra Wunch2, Zhe Jiang3,
Kevin Gurney4, Dave Schimel1
1

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech
University of Toronto, Canada
3
NCAR
4
Arizona State University"
2

Atmospheric inversion shows that North America (NA) terrestrial biosphere absorbs ~0.9±0.4 GtC/year
from the atmosphere, offsetting ~25%-50% of the total NA fossil fuel emissions. However, theterrestrial biosphere carbon sink has large interannual variability that is closely related to the variability

60

of the physical climate system, especially drought and heat waves. With the projection of increasing
drought and heat events in the future over NA, understanding how the natural carbon cycle responds todrought events is a prerequisite to predict the fate of land carbon sink and atmospheric CO2
concentrations and climate. In this study, with satellite observations, we investigated the impact of 2011
and 2012 droughts on terrestrial biosphere carbon cycle over contiguous US (CONUS) in the context ofcarbon-climate interannual variability over 2010 and 2015. We quantified Net Biome productivity(NBP), and its components including Gross Primary Productivity (GPP), fire, and total ecosystem
respiration (TER) with column CO2 (XCO2), Solar Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) from theGreenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), and CO observations from Measurements of Pollution
in the Troposphere (MOPITT) using the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Flux (CMS-Flux) carbon
cycle data assimilation system. We found that the anomaly of NBP and its component fluxes resulted
from the 2011 and 2012 drought events showed similar spatial and temporal patterns as previous studies(Wolf et al., 2015), indicating the ability of satellite observations to detect drought impact on terrestrial
biosphere carbon cycle. Over the drought-impacted region, the NBP decreased by 0.20±0.10 GtC and
0.23±0.16 GtC respectively in 2011 and 2012, with half the NBP reduction attributed to decrease of
GPP and the other half attributed to increase of TER. We further showed that the drought impact onterrestrial biosphere carbon cycle occurred in the context of covariation between climate states (e.g., soil
moisture and temperature) and carbon fluxes. On the interannual timescale, the soil moisture variability
explains more than 80% of GPP variability while it explains 40% to 70% of NBP variability during
summer, indicating the opposite effect of soil moisture on GPP and TER.
5.8 Anomalies in Chinese CO2 fluxes during 2015/2016 El Niño: Comparison between satellite andin-situ observation assimilation
Liang Feng, Jing Wang*, Liang Feng, Paul I. Palmer, Robert Parker, Hartmut Boesch, Peter Somkuti,
Chris O’Dell, David Crisp, Yi Liu, Dongxu Yang, Suangxi Fang
*Chinese Academy of Sciences
We report Chinese carbon dioxide (CO2) flux estimates 2009-2016, inferred from GOSAT XCO2
retrievals and newly available in-situ CO2 mole fraction measurements using an ensemble Kalman filter.
Our control in-situ inversion assimilates NOAA/ESRL data that is supplemented by additional datacollected around mainland China, including Siberia, Japan and Hong Kong. We find the magnitude anddistribution of the revised in-situ inversion are consistent with fluxes inferred from GOSAT (2009-2016)
and OCO-2 (2014-2016) XCO2 retrievals. During the 2015/2016 El Niño period, both the satellite andin-situ inversions show elevated uptake during the summer of 2015 (compared to previous summers),
while being muted during summer months in 2016. This year-to-year variation is supported by GOSAT
measurements of solar induced fluorescence. We use land-surface and correlative atmospheric remotesensing data to explore the relative importance of different processes associated with Chinese carbon
cycle dynamics during the 2015/2016 El Niño period.

61

5.9 Reconciling satellite and in-situ estimates of North American methane emissions during theunconventional gas boom of 2007 - 2014
Joshua Benmergui*, Joshua Benmergui, Arlyn Andrews, Kirk Thoning, Scot Miller, Michael Trudeau,
Marikate Mountain, Thomas Nehrkorn, Edward Dlugokencky, Kenneth Masarie, Doug Worthy, Colm
Sweeney, Lori Bruhwiler, Steven C. Wofsy*Harvard University
There have been several studies of trends in methane emissions over North America over the recent
period of rapid growth in unconventional gas production (2007 - 2014). Some studies that analyzed
GOSAT observations have shown evidence of increasing emissions, while others called into question
the ability of these studies to constrain the trends.
The effect of transport is a major source of the disagreement. To estimate emissions, one must
distinguish local enhancements from background concentrations. Background methane concentrations
are highly variable and sensitive to transport, because there is a sharp latitudinal gradient of methane
concentrations. There is multi-year variability in mean transport due to teleconnections. If transport is
not carefully considered in the calculation of background concentrations, then inter-annual variability intransport can alias the latitudinal methane gradient as a trend in emissions.
In this study, we estimated North American methane emissions for the period 2007 - 2014 using
independent geostatistical inverse models of 1) GOSAT (for August 2009 - August 2014) and 2) surface
and aircraft data (for January 2007 - August 2014). We used the WRF-STILT Lagrangian particle
dispersion model to account for transport. For background concentrations for surface and aircraft data,
we used the NOAA empirical boundary curtain. For background concentrations for GOSAT, we createda quantile regression model that incorporates the NOAA empirical boundary curtain and stratosphericmethane concentrations from the CLAMS model. The optimized emissions agree well, and do not show
a statistically significant trend on the continental or national scale.
5.10 Identifying leaky wells in oil/gas fields by satellite observation of atmospheric methane
Daniel Cusworth*, Daniel Jacob, Alexander Turner, Jeremy Brandman, Laurent White, and Cynthia A.
Randles*Harvard University
Oil/gas fields have thousands of wells. A small population of leaky wells can make up a large proportionof total emissions from the field. Here we examine the potential of recently launched or plannedsatellites to promptly identify leaky wells through monitoring of atmospheric methane, alone or
supplemented by a surface observation network, in order to enable corrective action. We model
atmospheric methane for a 1-week period (WRF-STILT simulation) with 1.3 x 1.3 km2 resolution andfor many random realizations of 100-500 oil/gas wells of different categories over a 70x70 km2 field.
Bimodal probability density functions (pdfs) for each well category are applied to simulate leaky wells.
This atmospheric field is sampled with different satellite and surface observing configurations, and62

inverse modeling using either L-1 or L-2 norms as prior constraints is used to assess the ability of thesedifferent configurations for identifying the leaky wells. The L-1 norm performs consistently better for
optimizing the bimodal distribution. We find that the recently launched TROPOMI instrument (lowEarth orbit, 7x7 km2 nadir pixels, daily return time) and the planned geoCARB instrument(geostationary orbit, 2.7x3.0 km2 pixels, 2x or 4x/day return time) are unsuccessful at precisely locating
the leaks, but are far more successful at locating them within a 5-km radius (24% false alarm ratio for
TROPOMI, 6% for geoCARB). A next-generation geostationary satellite with 1.3x1.3 km2 pixels,
hourly return time, and 1 ppb precision would produce almost no false alarms. We compare satellite
OSSEs to the detection capability of deploying 5-20 surface monitors in the same subdomain, and findthat geoCARB is able to detect high mode emitters at almost nearly the same capacity as 5-10 surface
monitors. Our results indicate that satellites can be a useful tool for interested parties to monitor the
status of production sites and locate regions of anomalously high emissions.
B5.1 Broad-scale CO2 fluxes given by inverting new (v8) retrievals of OCO-2 column CO2
David Baker**CIRA/Colorado StateA new version (v8) of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) column CO2 retrievals has recent beenreleased. The calibration, validation, and bias correction of the measurements have been improved, andthe treatment of stratospheric aerosols that caused problems in ocean glint mode has been corrected.
What do these new OCO-2 retrievals (especially those taken over the ocean) tell us about the broadscale distribution of CO2 flux? Here we estimate surface CO2 fluxes with a variational data assimilation
system based on the PCTM global off-line atmospheric transport model. Retrievals calculated over landand ocean with the old and new OCO-2 retrieval schemes (v7 & v8) are assimilated in separate
experiments, with a set of four different ocean fluxes used as priors. The v7 and v8 land data give
similar flux results for the large-scale seasonal and inter-annual variability. Both attribute the release of
CO2 seen globally across the 2015/2016 El Nino to the tropical land biosphere, as does the new v8 ocean
glint data with the positive bias in the south corrected. However, the v8 ocean glint data also drive ashift in the annual mean fluxes towards a much stronger global ocean uptake, balanced by less land
uptake, particularly in the tropics and south. The magnitude of the ocean uptake (~6 PgC/yr) as well as
its location (much of it in the tropics) is implausible -- it is likely that substantial biases remain in theocean glint data that must still be removed. One feature of the v8 ocean glint results that is intriguing,
however, is an increase in the magnitude of the seasonal cycle of flux for the Southern Ocean, withgreater uptake in the SH summer that agrees well with vertical gradients in the atmosphere found by the
ORCAS campaign in early 2016. This greater SH summer uptake may be balanced by greater SH
winter release of CO2 there, as suggested by analysis of ocean data from the SOCCOM floats -- the little
OCO-2 data at those latitudes in the SH winter cannot disprove this possibility when tested in the
inversions. This balancing out-gassing, if it is real, would prevent the annual mean Southern Ocean
uptake from growing much larger, which would in turn agree better with APO and ocean heat flux data,
which suggest that there should be less CO2 uptake by the SH oceans and more in the NH (Resplandy, etal, Climate Dynamics, 2016).

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B5.2 A Comparison of Eddy Decompositions of TM5 and GEOS-Chem in CO2
Andrew Schuh*, Andy Jacobson*Colorado State University"Eddy decompositions of meridional tracer transport flow are useful tools to investigate the global
mixing mechanisms at play in chemical transport model (CTMs). We compare two well-used CTMs,
GEOS-Chem and TM5 by deriving the strength of meridional transport due to stationary and transient
eddies, as well as mean meridional flux. A recently submitted paper documents large differences incolumn average CO2 between the two transport models and we use these eddy decomposition
derivations to help illuminate the mechanisms at play which result in those column differences.
B5.3 On what scales can GOSAT flux inversions constrain inter-annual variability in terrestrial
ecosystems?
Brendan Byrne*, Dylan B. A. Jones, Kimberly Strong, Saroja Polavarapu, Anna Harper, Joanna Joiner*University of Toronto
We investigate the spatial scales over which inter-annual variability (IAV) in the terrestrial carbon cycle
can be constrained using atmospheric CO2 observations from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite(GOSAT). We estimate net ecosystem exchange (NEE) anomalies by performing a series of flux
inversions assimilating GOSAT observations. We compare monthly NEE anomalies to "proxies",
variables which are associated with IAV in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Strong correlations (P<0.05) arefound between the flux inversions and proxies in the tropics on continental and larger scales, suggestingthat GOSAT flux inversions can isolate IAV in NEE on these scales. We also find good agreement
between the inversions and proxies in northern extratropics on sub-continental scales during the summer(R2>0.6). However, in both the tropics and northern extratropics, we find that agreement between the
inversions and proxies is sensitive to the flux inversion set-up. In particular, we find that IAV in theprior fluxes significantly degrades agreement with the proxies.
B5.4 On the consistency of OCO-2 XCO2 data from different observing modes and theirapplication to atmospheric inversion analyses
Feng Deng*, Dylan B. A. Jones*University of Toronto
Satellite remote sensing of column-average concentrations of carbon dioxide (XCO2) have been
increasingly used to infer surface CO2 fluxes through atmospheric inverse modeling. The accuracy of
the XCO2 data and the consistency between the different satellite observation modes are critical indetermining the quality of the surface flux estimates inferred from the satellite measurements. Here,using the GEOS-Chem model we investigated the consistency in Version 8 XCO2 between the different

64observation modes from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2). We then conducted a series ofatmospheric inversions using various combinations OCO-2 XCO2 data. We evaluated our inversion
results using independent atmospheric CO2 observations and assessed the impact of the consistency
between the different subsets of the OCO-2 data on the inferred fluxes. We also examined the spatiotemporal distribution of the a posteriori fluxes with corresponding data that capture changing climaticconditions to further evaluate the added value of the different combinations of the OCO-2 data in the
inversion analyses.
B5.5 The Impact of Accounting for 3-D CO2 Production on Inversion for Natural Fluxes Using
GOSAT and In Situ Observations
James S. Wang*, Tomohiro Oda, S. Randolph Kawa, Steven Pawson*Universities Space Research Association / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Most atmospheric inversions for estimating natural carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes have placed CO2 releasefrom fossil fuel combustion and other sources entirely at the surface. However, a portion of fossil fueland biospheric carbon emissions (~1 Pg C y-1) actually occurs in the form of reduced carbon species
including carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are eventually
oxidized to CO2 downwind of the emissions. As pointed out by a few previous studies, the typicalassumption can result in a significant shift in the distribution of the posterior fluxes, e.g. a shift in the
global sink from tropical land to the northern extratropics and from ocean to land. In this study, we
estimate the effect of accounting for 3-D atmospheric CO2 production on posterior natural fluxes during
2009-2010 using a global batch Bayesian synthesis inversion system based on the PCTM transportmodel, which has been applied previously to in situ and NASA ACOS GOSAT observations. We use
the ODIAC high-resolution fossil fuel emission dataset as the baseline. We then apply period-specific
3-D CO loss rates archived from a state-of-the-art GEOS-5 chemistry and climate model simulation in a
forward PCTM run to simulate the distribution of CO2 originating from oxidation. To avoid doublecounting, we subtract an amount from surface emissions equal to the CO2 produced aloft. Inversions arethen carried out using either the baseline atmospheric CO2 distribution or the distribution that accounts
for 3-D CO2 production. We examine the differing regional impacts in the GOSAT and in situ
inversions due to differences in the horizontal and vertical sampling of the two observation types.
B5.6 Opportunities and challenges of posterior CO2 flux validation with aircraft CO2 observations
Junjie Liu*, Annmarie Eldering, Colm Sweeney, Andy Jacobson, Kevin Bowman, David Schimel, Paul
Wennberg, ATOM team, and CONTRAIL team*Jet Propulsion Lab, Caltech
Validating posterior CO2 fluxes from atmospheric inversion is challenging, since there are no direct flux
observations that have comparable spatiotemporal resolution. Comparing CO2 concentrations before andafter atmospheric flux inversion against independent aircraft observations has been a standard practice tovalidate posterior fluxes. The utility of aircraft CO2 observations to validate posterior fluxes has several

65

challenges, including representation errors in simulating aircraft observations with global transportmodel, and sparse aircraft CO2 observations over most of the land region. In this study, we will validate
posterior CO2 fluxes constrained by OCO-2 with all the available aircraft observations in ObsPack. We
will investigate the following questions: 1) What can the accuracy differences between posterior andprior CO2 concentrations tell us about the accuracy of regional fluxes, and where? 2) What can thevalidation against aircraft observations tell us about the quality of assimilated satellite observations andwhich observations? 3) What are the observation gaps to validate fluxes over critical regions? In the end,
we will discuss possible pathway forward.
B5.7 Satellite bias estimation by independent CO2 inversion analysis
Takashi Maki*, Tsuyoshi Thomas Sekiyama, Yosuke Niwa, Takashi Nakamura, Kazuyuki Miyazaki
and Toshiki Iwasaki*Meteorological Research InstituteIn recent years, many greenhouse gas observation satellites have been launched and operated. The
satellite observation has advantages such as its wide observable area and spatial representation close to
the model horizontal resolution. On the other hand, satellite observation has a critical issue of bias. Thisbias varies spatiotemporally. We need to properly evaluate and correct this bias in carbon cycle analysis.
Many researchers have attempted to verify the bias of satellite observation data by direct observations.
However, ground observation sites are limited and it is insufficient to evaluate the bias of satellite
observation with a vast observable area in detail. We tried a method to evaluate bias of satellite
observation data with independent inverse analysis data (JMA CO2 distributions) without using satellite
observation data. With regard to this satellite, since we can obtain long-term observation data from 2010
to 2016, we calculated average bias data of satellite observation data by averaging differences frommonthly satellite observation data and independent analysis values in order to extract signal and remove
noise. The global average bias of GOSAT observation data (NIES L2 Ver. 2.X) throughout the whole
period was -1.2 ppm, almost consistent with verification results by ground observation. Looking at thegeographical distribution, the bias of the GOSAT observation data showed relatively large seasonal
fluctuation at the land area. By using this satellite observation data after this bias correction method forinverse analysis, we can obtain CO2 flux analysis consistent with the conventional inverse analysis.
B5.8 Implications of Overestimated Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions on East Asian and Global
Land CO2 Flux Inversions
Tazu Saeki*, Prabir K. Patra*Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies
Measurement and modelling of regional or country-level carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes are critical forverification of the greenhouse gases emission control. One of the commonly adopted approaches isinverse modelling, where CO2 fluxes from the terrestrial ecosystems are estimated by combining
atmospheric CO2 measurements with atmospheric transport models. The inverse models assume66

anthropogenic emissions are known, and thus an uncertainty in the emissions would introduce
systematic bias in estimated terrestrial (residual) fluxes by inverse modelling. Here we show that theCO2 sink increase, estimated by inverse modellings, over East Asia (China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia)
is likely an artifact of the a priori anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The residual CO2 sink increase by about
0.26 PgC yr-1 (1 Pg = 10^15 g) during 2001-2010 is calculated as the fossil fuel (anthropogenic)
emissions increased too quickly in China by 1.41 PgC yr-1. Independent results from methane (CH4)
inversion suggested about 41% lower rate of East Asian CH4 emission increase during 2002-2012. We
thus apply a scaling factor of 0.59, based on CH4 inversion, to the rate of anthropogenic CO2 emission
increase. By doing that we find no systematic increase in land CO2 uptake over East Asia during 19932010 or 2000-2009. High bias in anthropogenic CO2 emissions also leads to stronger land sinks in global
land-ocean flux partitioning in our inverse model. The corrected anthropogenic CO2 emissions by CH4
inversion results also produce measurable reductions in the rate of global land CO2 sink increase post2002, leading to a better agreement with the terrestrial biospheric model simulations that include CO2fertilization and climate effects.
B5.9 Radiance offset correction for observing SIF from GOSAT and inter-satellite comparison of
the derived SIF
Haruki Oshio*, Yukio Yoshida, Tsuneo Matsunaga*National Institute for Environmental Studies
In recent years, satellite observation of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) has attracted
attention as a method for estimating the photosynthetic capacity of plant canopies. Several studies
retrieved SIF from high-resolution spectra in far-red domain obtained by the Greenhouse gases
Observing SATellite (GOSAT). The retrieval principle was based on the filling-in of Fraunhofer line by
SIF. Non-linearity of the analog circuit in GOSAT spectrometer adds zero-level offset to its spectra,
having the same effect on the observed Fraunhofer line depth as SIF (retrieved signal = SIF + zero-level
offset). Therefore, the zero-level offset correction becomes important to obtain the SIF accurately. We
are planning to provide SIF as a new product for GOSAT-2. Although it is currently unknown that suchcorrection is required for GOSAT-2 SIF retrieval, zero-level offset correction was tested using GOSAT
data.
The zero-level offset can be evaluated from the retrieved signal over the areas where the value of SIF is
expected to be zero. The filling-in signal was retrieved separately for P and S polarized components
using the same method as the previous studies from GOSAT short-wavelength infrared spectra of L1B
V201.202 product. We investigated the retrieved signal for clouds and bare soils and confirmed its
applicability to evaluating the zero-level offset. The value and temporal-changing pattern of the zerolevel offset differed between P and S polarized components. Therefore, zero-level offset correction was
conducted separately for each component while considering offset’s temporal change and dependence
on the observed radiance. Evaluating the quality of satellite-derived SIF through comparison with SIF
derived from ground observation, airborne observation, and other satellites is important to its usage interrestrial carbon cycle study. Such evaluation is currently addressed by many research groups. We
compared the derived SIF with Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) SIF product for local scale and67

global scale. For some specific locations, influence of difference in viewing angle between GOSAT and
OCO-2 on the comparison was assessed using three-dimensional radiative transfer model of vegetation.
B5.10 Seasonal changes in SIF in a warm-temperate evergreen coniferous forest in Japan
Hibiki M. Noda*, Yoshiko Kosugi, Katsuto Tsujimoto, Kouki Hikosaka, Tsuneo Matsunaga*National Institute of Environemtnal Studies, Japan
Chlorophyll fluorescence is weak radiation that emitted by chlorophyll in the photosynthetic process torelease the extra energy, and the fluorescence under artificial light condition has been utilized tounderstand the status of photosynthetic systems in a laboratory. Advances in remote sensing haveenabled us to observe the chlorophyll fluorescence under solar radiation in the field by using
overlapping part of the fluorescence and the Fraunhofer lines (Meroni et al. 2009). In recent years, thesolar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) has been observed by GHG observation satellite such as
GOSAT, OCO-2 and GOME-2 on MetOp-A and B. GOSAT-2, the successor of GOSAT, which will belaunched in fiscal year 2018 will also provide SIF as one of standard products. Several studies haveshown that SIF is strongly correlated with vegetation gross primary production (GPP) but therelationship is influenced by season, vegetation types, etc. To utilize SIF as an index to evaluate GPP, it
is necessary to deeply understand the consequence between SIF and photosynthetic function of thevegetation.
We have conducted in-situ SIF measurement at the forest in Kiryu Experiment Watershed ("Kiryu site"),near Kyoto, Japan from the end of March 2017. The forest is a warm-temperate evergreen coniferous
forest dominated by Japanese cypress, Hinoki (Chamaecyparis obtusa). Kiryu site belongs to AsiaFlux
network and CO2 flux has been measured from 2001. The SIF measurement system automaticallyobserves the spectral irradiance of the sky and forest canopy by two optical fibers connected to fiber
switch and HR 4000 spectralradiometer (Ocean Optics, Dunedin, Florida, USA). In this presentation wewill show the seasonal changes in SIF in Kiryu site.
C5.2 Monitoring Global OH Abundances using Satellite Observations of Atmospheric Methane
Yuzhong Zhang*, Daniel J. Jacob, Joannes D. Maasakkers, Melissa P. Sulprizio, Jianxiong Sheng, John
Worden, Ritesh Gautam, Daniel Zavala-Araiza*Harvard University
The hydroxyl radical (OH) is the main tropospheric oxidant and serves as the largest sink foratmospheric methane. The global abundance of OH has been monitored for the past several decades withthe methyl chloroform (CH3CCl3) proxy. However, this approach is becoming ineffective asatmospheric CH3CCl3 concentrations decline exponentially. Here we propose that satellite observationsof atmospheric methane in the shortwave infrared (SWIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) spectra canprovide an effective replacement method to infer global OH abundances. The central premise is that theatmospheric signatures of methane sink from OH oxidation and methane source from surface emissions

68

are distinct. We evaluate this method with an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE)
framework using synthetic TROPOMI (SWIR) and CrIS (TIR) methane retrievals, interpreted with a
Bayesian inverse analysis optimizing both gridded methane emissions and global OH concentrations
with full error characterization. The OSSE simulations use different meteorological fields, global OH
distributions, and methane emission rates for the “true” atmosphere and for the inversion. The results
show little aliasing in the inversion between corrections to methane emissions and corrections to OH
concentrations. The satellite observations can constrain the global OH concentration (as measured by theatmospheric lifetime of methane) with a precision better than 1% and an accuracy of about 3% for
SWIR and 6% for TIR. The main source of error limiting the accuracy is the spatial and seasonal OH
distribution. We also show that the satellite methane observations can provide constraints on thehemispheric OH distribution.
C5.3 Development of ECCC’s regional transport model to simulate high spatial and temporalvariability of atmospheric greenhouse gases
Jinwoong Kim*, Saroja Polavarapu, Douglas Chan, Michael Neish*Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto, Canada
With the advent of space-based observations of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as CO2 and CH4, which
provides greater coverage than surface networks of GHG measurements, it may now be possible toconstrain surface GHG fluxes at regional scale by atmospheric inverse modelling. However, thisrequires the transport model to be able to accurately simulate GHG variability on synoptic andmesoscales that may be captured in the measurements. Also, high resolution anthropogenic andbiosphere prior fluxes are required to provide detailed information associated with high-resolution
topography. Prior to the development of a regional-scale inverse modelling framework, a high-resolution
regional transport model is needed in order to capture the observed variability of atmospheric GHG
concentrations at small scales not possible with coarse resolution of global transport model.
Here we present the development of a regional transport model for GHG, aiming at understanding highspatio-temporal resolution of surface GHG fluxes, mainly focusing on Canada and most of the UnitedStates. This is carried out as a part of the development of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s(ECCC) Carbon Assimilation System (EC-CAS) that is based on a global version of operational ECCC
weather and environmental prediction model for GHG forecast. Our regional model is run at a 10 km
horizontal grid spacing with 80 vertical levels spanning the ground to 0.1 hPa. The added benefit of theregional model over our low resolution global model (0.9° horizontal grid spacing) is assessed in termsof modelled tracer concentration and meteorological forecast quality. We find that our regional modelhas the capability to simulate high spatial and temporal scales of atmospheric GHG concentrations bothhorizontally and vertically based on comparisons to observations from various GHG observing systems
including surface network, aircraft and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite. In addition,
several sensitivity tests are conducted to investigate the impact of different lateral boundary conditions
on modelled concentrations.

69

C5.4 Tropical wetland methane emissions inferred from GOSAT XCH4 retrievalsMark Lunt*, Paul Palmer, Hartmut Bösch*University of Edinburgh
Wetlands represent the largest individual contribution to natural methane emissions. Consequently, theyplay an important role in determining global-scale variations in atmospheric methane. Variability intropical wetland emissions, in particular, may be linked to the El-Niño Southern Oscillation. Past work
has shown the value of using satellite observations of column methane to infer tropical methane fluxes.
We develop a simple model of wetland fluxes based on water table depth and temperature to explore theseasonal cycle and inter-annual variability of regional tropical wetland emissions. Using GOSAT XCH4
retrievals and a Bayesian inversion approach we infer flux model parameters that describe the temporaland spatial variability of tropical wetland fluxes. We use the resulting model to evaluate the contributionof regional patterns in wetland fluxes to global trends of methane.
C5.5 Global CO emission estimates inferred from assimilation of MOPITT CO data, together withobservations of O3, NO2, HNO3, and HCHO
Xuesong Zhang*, Dylan B. A. Jones, Martin Keller, Zhe Jiang, Adam E Bourassa, D A Degenstein,
Cathy Clerbaux*University of Toronto
Atmospheric carbon monoxide (CO) emissions estimated from inverse modeling analyses exhibit large
uncertainties, due, in part, to discrepancies in the tropospheric chemistry in atmospheric models. We
attempt to reduce the uncertainties in CO emission estimates by constraining the modeled abundance ofozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitric acid (HNO3), and formaldehyde (HCHO), which areconstituents that play a key role in tropospheric chemistry. Using the GEOS-Chem four-dimensionalvariational (4D-Var) data assimilation system, we estimate CO emissions by assimilating observationsof CO from the Measurement of Pollution In the Troposphere (MOPITT), together with observations ofO3 from the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System (OSIRIS) and IASI, NO2 and HCHOfrom the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), and HNO3 from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS).
Although our focus is on quantifying CO emission estimates, we also infer surface emissions of nitrogenoxides (NOx = NO + NO2) and isoprene. Our results reveal that this multiple species chemical data
assimilation produces a chemical consistent state that effectively adjusts the CO-O3-OH coupling in themodel. The O3-induced changes in OH are particularly large in the tropics. We show that the analysis
results in a tropospheric chemical state that is better constrained. Our experiments also evaluate theinferred CO emission estimates from major anthropogenic, biomass burning and biogenic sources.
C5.6 How well do surface observations constrain the CO state? Assimilation experiments with ECCAS in an OSSE framework
Vikram Khade*, Saroja Polavarapu, Michael Neish, Pieter Houtekamer, Dylan Jones70

*University of Toronto
The ECCC Carbon Assimilation System (EC-CAS) is being developed to study the global carbon cycle
and to monitor greenhouse gas emissions over Canada. By assimilating atmospheric measurements ofgreenhouse gases, exchanges of carbon (CO2, CH4 and CO) between the surface and the atmosphere canbe estimated. While the traditional approach to flux estimation is through inverse modelling using
analysis winds, EC-CAS uses a coupled state-flux estimation with the low resolution configuration of
our operational Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) (Houtekamer et al. 2014) and our operational weather
forecast model (GEM). GEM was adapted to simulate greenhouse gases and is run on a global 400x200
grid with 81 vertical levels (Polavarapu et al. 2016). In the EnKF approach the uncertainty in winds
contributes to the uncertainty in the tracer field. In this work, we test and tune the EnKF for CO state
estimation using OSSEs (Observation System Simulation Experiment). An ensemble of size 64 is used
to represent the uncertainty in the meteorological and CO state. An IAU (Incremental Analysis Update)is used within the EnKF to supress high frequency oscillations. Simulated observations are assimilated
every 6 hours and consist of radiosonde, scatterometer, satellite winds, gps, aircraft and surface
observations of CO. Variable localization (Kang et al. 2011) is implemented which results in the CO
observations updating the CO state only. Similarly the meteorological observations update themeteorological state only. The analysis RMSE for meteorological variables averaged over the 3d model
domain tends to saturate in about 15 days. At saturation, the spread is under-dispersive (by 5%) for all
the variables owing to the moderate ensemble size. Interestingly, without assimilating any CO
observations, the RMSE in CO averaged over the bottom 3 km nevertheless decreases from about 6 ppb
to about 3 ppb in 4 days simply due to the concurrent improvement in the wind fields. Results from the
OSSEs used to tune the localization radius for the assimilation of surface observations of CO will bereported. We demonstrate that the surface CO observations are able to impact the CO state in theboundary layer. This impact is seen only in areas (North America and Europe) which has surface
observation stations. The system will also be tested for the assimilation of MOPITT satellite retrieval
data.
Houtekamer, P., B. He, and H. Mitchell, 2014 : Parallel Implementation of an Ensemble Kalman Filter.
Mon. Wea. Rev., 142, 11631182, doi: 10.1175/MWR-D-13-00011.1.
Kang, J.-S., E. Kalnay, J. Liu, I. Fung, T. Miyoshi, and K. Ide (2011) : Variable localization in an
ensemble Kalman filter: Application to the carbon cycle data assimilation, J. Geophys. Res., 116,
D09110, doi:10.1029/2010JD014673.
Polavarapu, S. M., Neish, M., Tanguay, M., Girard, C., de Grandpr, J., Semeniuk, K., Gravel, S., Ren,
S., Roche, S., Chan, D., and Strong, K.: Greenhouse gas simulations with a coupled meteorological andtransport model: the predictability of CO2. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 12005-12038, doi:10.5194/acp-16
12005-2

71

C5.7 Towards global and regional methane budgets estimated by high spatial resolution
atmospheric inverse model with GOSAT retrievals
Aki Tsuruta*, Shamil Maksyutov, Rajesh Janardanan, Tuula Aalto, Janne Hakkarainen, Leif Backman,
Akihiko Ito, Johannes Kaiser, Greet Janssens-Maenhout, Ed Dlugokencky, Motoki Sasakawa,Toshinobu Machida, Yukio Yoshida, Tsuneo Matsunaga*National Institute for Environmental Sciences
Atmospheric methane (CH4) started to increase again since 2007, after a period with near-zero growthfrom 1999-2006. Various reasons for the increase have been discussed, but large uncertainty still
remains, especially on regional scales. In this study, we estimate global and regional CH4 fluxes for the
21st century by a high resolution variational inverse model, based on a Lagrangian-Eulerian coupled
tracer transport model, constrained by in situ and GOSAT retrievals of column-averaged atmosphericCH4. The high spatial resolution Lagrangian model FLEXPART, coupled with a global atmospheric
tracer transport model (NIES-TM), will be run at 0.1°x0.1° horizontal resolution. For the prioremissions, the inventory and process model based estimates are used; EDGAR for anthropogenic
sources, GFAS for biomass burning, VISIT for wetlands. The emissions from anthropogenic sources andwetlands will be optimized at bi-weekly resolution. The atmospheric burden estimated from a simulation
assimilating only in situ observations will be compared to the GOSAT retrievals. Possible large scalebiases between GOSAT retrievals and the model simulation will be considered when assimilating the
GOSAT retrievals. The model simulated methane concentrations will be evaluated against surface insitu and aircraft CH4 observations. The model simulated methane concentration will be evaluated against
surface in-situ and aircraft CH4 observations. The flux estimates will be compared with those from a
global ensemble filter based inverse model (CTDAS-CH4).
C5.8 Impact of coarse model resolution on chemical transport modelling of methane
Ilya Stanevich*, Dylan B. Jones, Kimberly Strong, Kevin J. Wecht*University of Toronto
Systematic errors in chemical transport models (CTMs) significantly impact CH4 surface emission
estimation due to relatively weak signature of emissions in the atmosphere. Numerical errors related to
the CTM horizontal resolution are one of the major types of errors. We evaluated biases in the GEOSChem CTM CH4 fields caused by coarsening the model resolution. The origin of resolution-induced
errors was investigated in the experiments using 222Rn, 7Be and CH4 tracers. Results of the experiments
showed that a majority of the biases are caused by increased numerical diffusion at coarse resolution,
which acts to smear tracer concentration gradients and weaken transport barriers in regions such as thetropopause layer, the tropical pipe, and the polar vortex in the stratosphere. This leads to enhanced
stratosphere-troposphere exchange and enhanced mixing in the stratosphere. Results suggested that the 4x 5 resolution model cannot maintain adequate mixing barriers. The tracer experiments also pointed to a
weakening of the vertical transport at coarser resolution, mainly, in mid- to high latitudes. This waspartly related to the specific implementation of the advection scheme in GEOS-Chem and was caused by
the loss of the air mass fluxes at the grid box interfaces after remapping horizontal winds to coarse

72resolution. The rest of the difference in the vertical transport was explained by the loss of the tracer eddy
mass flux due to averaging of sub-grid model variability at coarse resolution. Doubling the model
resolution from 4 x 5 to 2 x 2.5 significantly improved the simulation, however did not eliminate biases
completely. Generally, the results showed that GEOS-Chem at 4 x 5 should not be used for CH4 surface
emissions estimation due to significant numerical errors.

C5.9 A city to national scale atmospheric inverse modeling system to assess the potential of new
space borne measurement concepts for the monitoring of CO2 anthropogenic emissions in Western
Europe: a case study focused on Paris
Diego Santaren*, G. Broquet, F.M. Bréon, F. Chevallier, C. Crevoisier, R. Armante, V. Casse, P. Ciais*Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement
Comprehensive information about anthropogenic CO2 emissions at the scale of power plants, cities, andcountries up to the globe is essential for decision makers to track the effectiveness of emission reduction
policies in the context of the Paris Agreement on Climate and other voluntary emission reduction efforts.
To answer that need, the TRAcking Carbon Emissions (TRACE) research project aims to develop
simulations of new observing systems for the monitoring of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fromspace based on atmospheric inversion methods. The TRACE project deals with abroad range of spatial
scales across which GHG emissions are distributed: scales ranging from local intense point sources likeindustrial sites to regional and national scales.
In particular, TRACE studies the potential of new satellite measurements of atmospheric CO2 to monitor
anthropogenic emissions with an end-to-end performance simulation platform which will combine anadvanced radiative transfer inverse modeling with an atmospheric inversion system based on a highresolution atmospheric transport model. This atmospheric inversion system uses a zoomed configurationof the regional transport model CHIMERE which covers most of western Europe and with a 2km to 1km
resolution grid over Northern France, Western Germany and Benelux. The inversion will control at hightemporal resolution the emissions of 100-200 cities and power plants in this area and regional budgets inthe lower resolution part of the domain. This will enable the analysis of results at the city to national
scales, accounting in both cases for the more or less important overlapping of the plumes from thedifferent point sources.
As a preliminary study, the inversion system is used to study the potential of CO2 spaceborne spectroimagers to constrain the hourly emissions of the Paris urban area. Extending the study of Broquet et al.
(2018) for the ESA-Logoflux I and II projects, and using the 1 km zoom of the model configuration in
the Paris area, this provides the analysis of the sensitivity of the results as a function of a wider and moredetailed range of specifications on the spatial resolution, precision and swath of the satellite XCO2
images. The curves of sensitivity appear to be smooth except when considering that to the swath when
the wind blows across the satellite track. When targeting a large and isolated city such as Paris,increasing the spatial resolution of the imager by 2 does not appear to provide better results than if
decreasing the measurement noise by 2. This indicates that the system does not really take advantage ofthe information on the fine scale patterns of the plume for such a city.

73Session 6: Future missions and observing strategies
6.1 NASA's Carbon Cycle OSSE Initiative - Informing future space-based observing strategies
through advanced modeling and data assimilation
Lesley Ott*, David Schimel, Christopher O'Dell, Berrien Moore III, Sean Crowell, David Baker, Ian
Baker, Kevin Bowman, Abhishek Chatterjee, Scott Denning, Kathy Haynes, Stephan Kawa, Charles
Miller, Denis O'Brien, Steven Pawson, Benjamin Poulter, Andrew Schuh, Thomas Taylor*NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Satellite observations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) are critically needed to improveunderstanding of the contemporary carbon budget and carbon-climate feedbacks. New space-based
observations have provided valuable data in regions not covered by traditional surface in situ
measurements, showing examples of the coupling between carbon and climate, and of the ability toobserve human emissions under certain circumstances. Next generation satellites will improve coveragein data sparse regions, either through use of active remote sensing, a geostationary vantage point, or a
combination of increased swath width and revisit frequency. Observing system simulation experiments(OSSEs) can be used to quantify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the current observing system,
identify key gaps, and evaluate the impact that next generation satellites may have. As such, OSSEs are
essential tools to guide cost effective implementation of future carbon-observing satellite missions.
To address these needs, a significant subset of the US carbon modeling community has come together
with support from NASA to conduct a series of coordinated OSSEs, with close collaboration in framing
the experiments and in analyzing the results. Here, we report on advances in the creation of realistic,
model-based synthetic CO2 and CH4 datasets for use in inversion and signal detection experiments.
Datasets have been created using NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) at global
resolutions ranging from 3 to 50 km. These simulations represent the current state of atmospheric carbon
as well as best available estimates of expected flux changes. The library of 50-km simulations represents
dozens of scenarios that include changes in urban emissions, release of permafrost soil carbon, changes
in carbon uptake in tropical and mid-latitude forests, changes in the Southern Ocean sink, and changes inboth anthropogenic and natural methane emissions. Global mesoscale CO2 simulations provide an
exciting new tool for mission planning, allowing the complex influence of clouds and aerosols on CO2
observations to be examined in greater detail than ever before. Statistical analyses of these synthetic
datasets provide a simple, objective method for evaluating mission design choices. These datasets will
be made publicly available for use by the international carbon modeling community and in mission
planning activities. We will also outline model developments that are needed to advance future carbon
cycle OSSE efforts.
6.2 Assessing the potential of satellite spectro-imagery to monitor fossil fuel CO2 emissions acrossthe globe from the city and daily scales to the national and annual scales
Yilong Wang*, Philippe Ciais, François-Marie Bréon, Grégoire Broquet, Franck Lespinas, Michael
Buchwitz, Yasjka Meijer, Maximilian Reuter, Greet Janssens-Maenhout, Bo Zheng

74

*Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ,Université Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Cities and large industrial sites account for about 70% of the total CO2 emission from fossil fuel. A
growing number of cities and regions being engaged in climate change mitigation have disclosed theirplans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Atmospheric inversions can use CO2 measurements toprovide an independent way of monitoring the fossil fuel CO2 emissions and to evaluate effectiveness ofthe emission reduction pledges. Measurements of vertically integrated columns of dry air mole fractionsof CO2 (XCO2) from satellites offer the advantage of a dense set of observations with global spatial
coverage to monitor the fossil fuel CO2 emissions at the scales of large cities, industrial sites, regions
and countries that are relevant to the carbon policy. In this study, we first identified 8245 targets ofemitting clumps (defined as clusters of adjacent emitting area) covering major cities and large point
sources all over the globe and representing about 75% of total CO2 emissions. These clumps weredelineated from a high-resolution emission map and administrative information, and may cause
atmospheric XCO2 plumes detectable from space. This study assesses the potential of the XCO2 imagery
from one to multiple low earth orbiting satellites for monitoring the fossil fuel CO2 emissions from theseclumps. Such imagery could be provided by future space borne passive spectral-imagers in the shortwave infrared spectrum, at a high spatial resolution of 2 km x 2 km with a swath width of 300
kilometers and with individual sounding precision of less than 1 ppm. This assessment was based on
Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) with an atmospheric inversion approach. The
inversion system solved for the average emissions before a given satellite overpass, using a Gaussian
plume model to link the average emissions and the XCO2. The inversion framework accounted for the
existence of some prior knowledge about the average emissions before the satellite overpasses with
100% uncertainty. These OSSEs indicated that when assimilating the observations from one such XCO2
imager, 1391 emission clumps, representing 13% of the global total emissions, can have more than 12days when the uncertainty was reduced by more than 50%, assuming no correlations in the prioruncertainty. Some preliminary results showed that a constellation of such imagers could significantly
increase the potential of such an inversion system to constrain fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Whenaggregating the emissions at national and annual scales, the decrease of uncertainties largely relies on
the spatial and temporal correlations in the prior uncertainty in the emissions. Tests were conducted for
different simulations of these error structures.
6.3 An updated status of MicroCarb ProjectFrancois Buisson*, Didier PRADINES, Arnaud VARINOIS, Véronique PASCAL, Pascal PRIEUR,
Denis JOUGLET*Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales
MicroCarb program was decided at the end of 2015 and is presently in its development phase andtargeting a launch in 2021. MicroCarb takes its name from its capacity to perform accurate- that is inline with the requirements of the community- measurements of the atmospheric CO2 concentration witha micro satellite weighing less than 200 kg. The project is conducted by the CNES in partnership with
the UK Space Agency, and involves the scientific community from both France and UK. Aperture toother European organizations in order to re inforce the international participation to the program is under75

way. The presentation will recall the main characteristics of the mission, give an highlight on theoriginal features and present the technical challenges being addressed; it will introduce the organizationand provide an update of the progress of the development.
6.4 State of play of the European Anthropogenic CO2 Monitoring Mission
Yasjka Meijer*, Y.J. Meijer1, M.R. Drinkwater2, J.-L. Bezy2, A. Loescher2, B. Sierk2, B. Pinty3, H.
Zunker3, with contributions from many experts 4
1

RHEA Group for ESA, Noordwijk, The Netherlands;
ESA_ÑêESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands;
3EC, DGGROW, Brussels, Belgium;
4
Major international institutions and national research laboratories
2

As part Europe’s Copernicus Programme, the European Commission (EC) and the European Space
Agency (ESA), together with the support of Eumetsat and the European Centre for Medium-range
Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), are considering to expand the capabilities of the first generation Sentinel
satellites for measurements of anthropogenic CO2 emission as part of the Copernicus Space Component
monitoring capabilities. The atmospheric measurements made by a combination of satellites and in-situ
networks would be assimilated in the ECMWF operational system and combined with inventories.
Inverse modelling techniques would then allow the transparent and consistent quantitative assessment of
CO2 emissions and their trends at the scale of megacities, regions, countries, and the globe. Such acapacity would provide the European Union with a unique and independent source of information,
which can be used to inform on the effect of policy measures, and to track their impact en-route towards
decarbonising Europe and meeting national emission reduction targets.
The space system activities have recently entered their feasibility phase and will study the
implementation of a multiple (LEO) satellite constellation providing a 3-day revisit at mid-latitudes, at 4km2 sampling and a precision better than 0.7 ppm in XCO2. In order to limit the systematic error, thesystem activities consider inclusion of a multi-angle polarimeter enabling the CO2 retrieval process tobetter account for cloud and aerosol scattering effects. In addition, the inclusion of measuring NO2 isconsidered as proxy for anthropogenic CO2 plumes from power plants and cities, which could
significantly increase the accuracy of the emission estimates. This presentation focuses on the state ofplay of the space component development providing an overview of the scientific and technicalactivities.
6.5 The European Anthropogenic CO2 Monitoring Mission: Instrument spectral sizing and the
supporting aerosol instrument
Jochen Landgraf1, Joost aan de Brugh1, Lianghai Wu1, Stephanie Rusli1, Hein van Heck1, Rob Detmers1,
Haili Hu1, Otto Hasekamp1, Andre Butz2, Michael Buchwitz3, Heinrich Bovensmann3, Hartmut Bösch4,
Yasjka Meijer5, Armin Löscher5, Bernd Sierk5
1

SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, The Netherlands762

University of Heidelberg, Germany
Institute for Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, Germany
4
University of Leicester, UK5
ESA_ÑêESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
3

The European Space Agency is investigating the implementation of a future CO2 mission to monitor
anthropogenic CO2 emission from space as part of the Copernicus programme of the European
Commission. The mission scopes the relevance of policy-science questions, like localizing hot spots orhigh emitting areas to identify and monitor the impact of local measures for emission reduction.
Therefore, a careful trade-off has to be made between feasible instrumentation, measurement
requirements and heritage from CO2 measuring instruments in space, like OCO-2 and GOSAT. In thiscontribution, we discuss the selected spectral sizing, i.e. the choice of spectral coverage, spectral
resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, of current and planned space-borne instruments measuring XCO2. In
addition, we investigate the need of a facilitating multi-angle polarimeter reducing aerosol induced
XCO2 errors on one hand and achieving global coverage on the other hand.
To this end, we reduced the spectral resolution and coverage of OCO-2 and GOSAT measurements byan additional spectral smoothing of the measurements and performed a validation of the derived XCO2
product with ground-based measurements at 18 TCCON sites. Moreover, the study is complemented
with an extensive sensitivity study using simulated measurement ensembles on regional and global
scales and considering key instrument and aerosol induced errors. To mitigate the aerosol induced XCO2
errors as one of the key uncertainties of current CO2 emissions, we discuss in detail the importance of a
supporting multi-angle polarimeter. We conclude that this state-off-the-art sensing concept is well-suited
to monitor aerosol properties from space and will be of great benefit to achieve the challenging mission
objectives of the European future CO2 monitoring mission.
6.6 The next generation of Chinese greenhouse gas monitoring satellite mission: TanSat-2
Dongxu Yang1,2, Yi Liu, Maohua Wang, Zengshan Yin, Zhaonan Cai, Lin Qiu, Longfei Tian, TanSat-2
team
1
2

Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The next generation of Chinese greenhouse gas monitoring satellite - TanSat-2, which continued thename of Chinese global carbon dioxide monitoring satellite (TanSat), is initiative the by Shanghai
Advanced Research Institute Chinese Academy of Sciences (SARI), Shanghai Engineering Center for
Microsatellites Chinese Academy of Sciences (MicroSat), ShanghaiTech University and TanSat team.
The TanSat-2 mission will cover much wider swath and improve signal-to-noise and calibration. The
tansat-2 mission, as a constellation, is consisted by six satellites that fly on sun-synchronous orbit,
including three morning satellite and three afternoon satellites, in order to improve the measurement
coverage and repeat. Each satellite observe earth in a 100 km width across track, and hence themeasurement covers the global in 3-4 days. The NIR/SWIR hyperspectral measurement on
backscattered sunlight from spectrometer onboard TanSat-2 includes 0.76 µm (O2A), 1.61 µm (CO2),
2.06 µm (CO2) and 2.3 µm (CH4 and CO) band. TanSat-2 aims to measured atmospheric CO2, as well as77

CH4 and CO, twice per day, which will be helpful to investigate the daily variation of greenhouse gas
and the emission that related to anthropogenic activities.
6.7 IASI-New Generation: program status, system overview and scientific objectives
Adrien DESCHAMPS*, François Bermudo, Eric Jurado, Frederic Bernard, Sarah Guibert*CNES
The IASI instrument (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) has been flying on Europe’s
MetOp satellites since 2006, in the frame of the EPS program of EUMETSAT. As well as acquiring
temperature and humidity data, IASI also measures more than 25 other atmospheric components with ahigh degree of precision. To ensure continuity of service, CNES is working on the IASI-NG nextgeneration instrument. The IASI-NG system aims at observing and measuring twice a day the spectrumof infrared radiation emitted by the Earth, in the 645-2750cm-1 spectral region at the resolution of 0.125
cm-1, from a low altitude sun-synchronous orbit, over a swath of 2,000 km. IASI-NG is designed toprovide invaluable information for numerical weather prediction as well as for climate monitoring andatmospheric chemistry.
Like its predecessor, IASI-NG will use a passive infrared sensor to determine temperature and water
vapour profiles in the atmosphere, record ocean surface and land temperatures and monitor a vast rangeof chemical compounds and other key variables for climate research, including greenhouse gases, desert
dust and cloud cover. With its innovative optical configuration, IASI-NG’s spectral resolution andsignal-to-noise ratio will be improved by a factor of two. Measurement precision will also be improved(1 K for temperature and 10% for humidity). More than just a continuation of IASI, the IASI-NG
instrument will be a real asset for atmosphere sciences and a key element of Europe’s three MetOp-SGA series weather satellites, scheduled to launch in 2021, 2028 and 2035.
In this talk, we present the status of the IASI-NG program and the IASI-NG instrument, which is an
Fourier Transform Spectrometer based on the Mertz concept. We will give also an overview of theLevel 1 processing that aims at calibrating the spectrum, both radiometriccaly and spectrally, andpresent some examples of the estimated added-value of IASI-NG, compared to IASI, in terms ofamtospheric components retrievals.
6.8 The GeoCarb Mission
Berrien Moore*, Sean Crowell, Chris O'Dell, David Crisp, David Schimel, Annmarie Eldering, Susan
Kulawik, Bob Chatfield, Xiangming Xiao, Eric Burgh, Jim Lemen, and the GeoCarb Team
*University of Oklahoma
GeoCarb was selected in December 2016 by NASA as the next Earth Venture Mission. Starting in 2022,
GeoCarb will make observations of CO2, CO, CH4 and solar induced fluorescence from geostationary
orbit over the Americas. The orbit will allow for daily observations of the land mass between 50°S and78

50°N at high spatial resolution (5-10 km). In this presentation, we will present an overview of the
GeoCarb mission as well as provide a description of the instrument and expected impact on important
carbon cycle process level understanding.
6.9 ARRHENIUS: Exploring Carbon Regional Flux Dynamics in Africa, Europe and the Middle
East from Geostationary Orbit
André Butz*, Paul Palmer, Hartmut Bösch, Philippe Bousquet, Heinrich Bovensmann, Dominik
Brunner, Luca Bugliaro, David Crisp, Sean Crowell, Juan Cuesta, Bart Dils, Emanuel Gloor, Sander
Houweling, Jochen Landgraf, Julia Marshall, Charles Miller, Ray Nassar, Johannes Orphal, Guido vander Werf*Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Tropical and subtropical ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon cycle. The African
tropics and subtropics is the most dynamic region of the world with respect to terrestrial carbon flux
variability and population growth, which imposes direct carbon emissions and perturbations to thenatural ecosystems. The underlying mechanisms such as photosynthesis, respiration, natural and manmade biomass burning, as well as fossil fuel related emissions vary on sub-daily timescales. The forcing
by meteorological and climatic factors imposes a fingerprint being variable on the seasonal and interannual time-scale. Event-wise emissions such as caused by agricultural burning blend with episodicchange in land-use practices and permanent ecosystem degradation. Thus, gaining insights into thefunctioning of African tropical and subtropical carbon cycling and into its sensitivity to environmental
variability and perturbations needs observations from the sub-daily to the seasonal to the year-to-yeartime-scale. However, the African continent is poorly sampled by current and planned atmosphericobservation systems. Establishing a dense and robust ground-based network is logistically challenging.
Satellite observations from low-Earth-orbit (LEO) are limited to a single local overpass time per day
and, they are frequently cloudy.
The Middle East and Europe are major global players in fossil fuel extraction and usage, respectively.
Leakage of carbon gases has been reported throughout the extracting-processing-transportationconsumption chain. Satellite observations from LEO will become progressively available as part ofenvisioned surveillance concepts. These LEO sensors, however, do not capture characteristic diurnal
variations of fluxes, potentially resulting in biased emission estimates and lacking the ability todiscriminate between man-made and biospheric flux signals.
The AbsoRption spectRometric patHfindEr for carboN regIonal flUx dynamicS (ARRHENIUS) is a
proposed mission concept that will overcome the sampling gaps in Africa, Europe and the Middle Eastand on the sub-daily time scale by adopting a process-focused sampling strategy from geostationary
orbit (GEO). For selectable focus regions, ARRHENIUS will deliver quasi-contiguous maps of
atmospheric carbon species concentrations (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide(CO)) and a photosynthesis process marker (solar induced plant fluorescence (SIF)) with sub-daily,
seasonal, and year-to-year coverage. These observations will be used by top-down inverse atmosphericmodels and by bottom-up biosphere and land-surface models to inform on regional carbon cycle
processes. Being process focused instead of surveillance driven, ARRHENIUS will pioneer a flexible

79and intelligent sampling approach with short lead times for pointing adjustments. Sampling will be
flexible with regard to focus region selection, region extent (typically 1300x2400 km2), dwell times(typically 1h) and the number of revisits per day (up to 5 times per day), per season and per year.
Sampling will be intelligent by actively avoiding regions which are expected cloudy based on
observations of meteorological sounders (such as Meteosat Third Generation) from adjacent orbits.
Small footprint sizes (2x2 km2 at sub-satellite) and flexible day-time observation hours will further
support cloud avoidance.
6.10 AIM-North: The Atmospheric Imaging Mission for Northern Regions
Ray Nassar*, Chris McLinden, Chris Sioris, Joseph Mendonca, Tom McElroy, Louis Garand, Marko
Adamovic, Cristen Adams, Céline Boisvenue, Guillaume Drolet, Frederic Grandmont, Markey Johnson,
Dylan B.A. Jones, Felicia Kolonjari, Stephane M. Lantagne, Randall V. Martin, Charles E. Miller, Louis
Moreau, Norm O’Neill, Saroja Polavarapu, Yves Rochon, William R. Simpson, Kim Strong, JohannaTamminen, Alexander Trishchenko, Zahra Vaziri, Kaley A. Walker, Debra Wunch*Environment and Climate Change Canada
Canada has studied Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) satellite mission possibilities for atmosphericcomposition for many years, since the HEO vantage point enables quasi-geostationary observations ofnorthern regions like the Arctic. Early concepts for atmospheric composition assumed a microsatellitescale instrument suite hosted on a larger weather and communications satellite. Here we present AIMNorth (www.aim-north.ca), a new HEO mission concept under consideration by the Canadian Space
Agency (CSA), that would provide observations of unprecedented frequency, density and quality formonitoring greenhouse gases (GHGs), air quality (AQ) and solar induced fluorescence (SIF) fromvegetation in northern regions. AIM-North would use an imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer(IFTS) to record spectra of reflected near infrared (NIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) solar radiation
to image XCO2, XCH4, XCO and SIF, along with a dispersive ultraviolet-visible spectrometer (UVS) to
image numerous other trace gas species, spanning ~40-80°N with 3x3 km2 pixels. IFTS scanning
patterns and methods times are being studies with potential revisit rates of ~60-90 minutes during
daylight, giving multiple points in the diurnal cycle to assist in process understanding and source
attribution. Precision and accuracy targets for GHGs are aligned with upcoming and proposedinternational GEO missions. We will present an overview of the proposed mission, instruments, spectral
band selection, strategies for cloud avoidance, validation and outline synergies/complementarity withinternational missions.
6.11 CARBO: The Carbon Balance Observatory
Charles E. Miller1, Christian Frankenberg1,2, James K. Wallace1, Shannon Zareh1, Amy Mainzer1, Andre
Wong1, Annmarie Eldering1, Dejian Fu1, Mayer Rud1, Daniel W. Wilson1, Cynthia Brooks3, Daniel T.
Jaffe3
1

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA,
USA 91109-8099

802

Division of Geology and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California
Blvd., Pasadena, CA USA 91125
3
Department of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712
The 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey highlighted the need for a wide-swath (mapping) low earth
orbit (LEO) instrument delivering carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide (CO)measurements with global coverage. OCO-2 pioneered space-based CO2 remote sensing, but lacks theCH4, CO and mapping capabilities required for an improved understanding of the global carbon cycle.
The Carbon Balance Observatory (CARBO) advances key technologies to enable high-performance,
cost-effective solutions for a space-based carbon-climate observing system. CARBO is a compact,
modular, 15-30° field of view spectrometer that delivers high-precision CO2, CH4, CO and solar induced
chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) data with weekly global coverage from LEO. CARBO employs
innovative immersion grating technologies to achieve diffraction-limited performance with OCO-likespatial (2x2 km2) and spectral (l/Dl ≈ 20,000) resolution in a package that is smaller, lighter and morecost-effective, opening diverse new space-based platform opportunities.

6.12 Pulsed Lidar Measurements of CO2 Column Concentrations in the 2017 ASCENDS Airborne
Campaign, and beyond
James B. Abshire*, Haris Riris, Graham R. Allan, Jianping Mao, William E. Hasselbrack, Kenji
Numata, Jeffrey Chen, Randy Kawa, Joshua Digangi, Mark Stephen*NASA Goddard
NASA Goddard’s CO2 Sounder is a pulsed, multiple-wavelength IPDA lidar that measures XCO2 in anadir path from the aircraft. The lidar measures the range resolved shape of the 1572.33 nm CO2
absorption line to the ground and cloud tops. The airborne lidar used 30 fixed-wavelength samples
distributed across the line. Analysis estimates the lidar range and pulse energies. For each second theretrievals solve for the CO2 absorption line shape and the column average CO2 concentrations by using
radiative transfer calculations, the aircraft altitude and range to the surface, and atmospheric conditions.
The CO2 Sounder team participated in the 2017 ASCENDS airborne campaign, that was flown on theNASA DC-8 in late July and early August. The campaign objectives were to assess the accuracy ofairborne IPDA lidar measurements of CO2 column concentrations (XCO2), and to extend these lidar
measurements to the ABoVE study area in the Arctic. Eight flights were conducted with XCO2
measurements from the CO2 Sounder and the NASA Langley ACES lidar along with in-situ CO2
measurements made at the aircraft with the AVOCET and Picarro instruments. Forty-seven spiral-down
maneuvers were conducted over locations in California, Northwest Territories Canada and over Alaska,
along with the transit flights from California to Alaska and return. Since each spiral maneuver allows
comparing the retrievals of XCO2 from the lidar against those computed from in-situ measured CO2, thiscampaign allowed an unprecedented opportunity to assess the lidar measurements of XCO2 over adiverse set of conditions, including in the Arctic.

81

The presentation will describe the flight, and will present the results from analyzing the retrieved XCO2
from the CO2 Sounder lidar over some of the campaign’s regions. It will also discuss the approach andtechnology for a space lidar mission and its estimated measurement performance.
C6.1 GOSAT score map toward optimizing sampling pattern for global and regional flux
estimation
Fumie Kataoka*, Akihiko Kuze, Kei Shiomi, Hiroshi Suto
*Remote Sensing Technology Center of JapanThe Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) was launched on January 23 2009 and continues
its measurement of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) for more than 9 years. GOSAT-2 isscheduled to be launched in 2018.
Although the number of sampling points is smaller than other GHG observing satellites such as OCO-2,
TanSat, and Sentinel-5P, the advantage of GOSAT and GOSAT-2 is their 2-axis agile pointing system
to target area by uploading pointing command every day from the ground. The optimization of sampling
pattern for global and regional flux estimation is challenging. At first, we have prepared global maps
related to the satellite observation planning: (1) long term GOSAT observation results such as successful
retrieval ratio and surface albedo, (2) related parameters acquired from other satellites such as carbon
monoxide (CO), solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), ODIAC database, population density, and
EDGAR CO2 and CH4 emission inventories from their source sectors. These are monthly database withlatitudinal and longitudinal grid of 0.1 deg.
We have released the “GOSAT Score Map for Sampling Optimization” tool from the JAXA EORCGOSAT website (http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/GOSAT/GOSAT_Optimization/index.html). Users canweigh the above-mentioned parameters and calculate the weighted score global distribution. The tool
also includes orbit information of GOSAT, GOSAT-2 and other GHG satellites. We are also planning to
add the function to integrate the scores from selected target points in order to maximize the GOSAT and
GOSAT-2 performance.
C6.2 The next generation of TanSat and space-air-ground monitoring system
Lin Qiu*, Maohua Wang, Lin Qiu, Qianrong Gu*Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences
In December 22, 2016, China successfully launched the global CO2 monitoring experiment satellite(TanSat) to monitor greenhouse gases through its own carbon satellite. The designed service life of
TanSat is three years, in order to continue providing the world with abundant CO2 monitoring data, itneeds to start the next generation of TanSat programs as soon as possible. The next generation of TanSat
will be a constellation, which consists of six sun-synchronous orbit micro-satellites distributed in two
orbital planes with swath of 100 km. As a result, the constellation is capable to revisit any location in the82

world at two different local time in less than three days. Moreover, those six satellites will be equippedwith three different types of payloads in order to observe CO2, CH4, CO, NO2 and other air pollutants.
Based on the next generation of TanSat, a space-air-ground monitoring system will be also build up,
integrating carbon emission data from ground stations, mobile stations, flux towers, 1km-high captive
balloons and 10km-high remote sensing air crafts, to provide robust scientific and technical support foraddressing climate change and air pollution control in covered regions. The preliminary space-airground monitoring system will be build up in the region of the largest city in China, Shanghai, thesystem of which will become a typical model to be promoted to other cities and regions in China toprovide policy makers with independent data to help achieve the global emission reduction goal as earlyas possible.
C6.3 The European Anthropogenic CO2 Monitoring Mission: Instrument requirements for spaceborne measurement of greenhouse gas point sources
Bernd Sierk*, Jochen Landgraf, Joost aan de Brugh, Michael Buchwitz, André Butz, Hartmut Bösch,Yasjka Meijer, Armin Löscher, Jean-Loup Bézy
*European Space Agency (ESA)The European Commission (EC) is targeting the establishment of a global multi-technique observing
system for monitoring anthropogenic CO2 emission [European Commission, 2017]. The European Space
Agency (ESA) will be responsible for the technical definition of the space component, aiming for
implementation in the mid-2020s as part of the Copernicus programme. Current plans foresee a
constellation of LEO satellites in Sun-synchronous orbit, providing complete global land coverage
within five days. The ambitious objectives of this mission call for a definition of dedicated observational
requirements, focusing on the primary goal of detecting and quantifying point-sources of greenhouse gas
emission. In particular, the single-sounding precision has to be optimised in order to ensure thecapability of identifying plumes of elevated CO2 and CH4 concentration from instantaneous image
acquisitions without regional and temporal averaging. This optimisation requires a thorough analysis ofrandom errors in XCO2 and XCH4 retrieval, originating from instrumental, as well as geophysicaleffects. The presentation will address both types of noise-error sources in the context of the future
Copernicus mission. The predominant instrumental figure-of-merit affecting retrieval precision is thesignal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the measured radiance spectra. We present the methodology for deriving
SNR requirements in the Shortwave Infrared spectral bands (centered at 1.6 µm and 2.0 µm), on thebasis of simulated retrievals using the RemoteTec software [Butz et al., 2011]. The method allows forderivation of required SNR for any desired precision in XCO2 and a given geophysical scenario.
Another significant geophysical error source for push-broom imaging spectrometers is the pseudo-noise
generated by radiometric non-uniformity of the ground scene, mainly due to albedo contrast within the
instrument field-of-view. We demonstrate the impact of scene non-uniformity on mapping ofgreenhouse gas concentration, using retrieval simulations and albedo contrast derived from space-borne
hyper-spectral measurements. We conclude with an overview of strategies for mitigating the impact ofscene non-uniformity to enable greenhouse gas plume imaging.

83C6.4 Optical Bench Breadboard Of An Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (IFTS) For
Climate Observations
Gurpreet Singh*, Tom McElroy, Zahra Vaziri, David Barton, Greg Blair, Rehan Siddiqui, and Frederic
Grandmont*York University
The fifth assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states thatthe warming of zonal mean surface temperature at higher latitudes exceeds the global averagetemperature change. This poses a great problem as the warming leads to the thawing of the permafrost in
the Arctic region that acts as an envelope to trap greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop scientific instruments that can be flown in space over theArctic to provide atmospheric information to quantify the evolution and transport of these gases. The
Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sounding from Space (LARSS) at York University is developing
an imaging Fourier transform spectrometer (IFTS) for climate observations by atmospheric sounding.
The spectrometer has two individual channels, one centred at 1650 nm to measure the atmosphericcolumn of carbon dioxide and methane, and another centred at 762 nm to measure the temperaturepressure profile by making measurements of the O2 A band. A Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS)
modulator has been purchased from ABB Inc. of Quebec City. Interferometers are widely used in many
scientific laboratories to measure concentrations of different constituents in a given sample. The
performance of these instruments is highly dependent on environmental effects and various properties of
the input beam such as coherence, polarity, etc. Thus, the use of such instruments to measureatmospheric concentration is complicated and challenging. The immediate goal of this project is todevelop an IFTS system which can measure backscattered radiation in a laboratory environment anddevelop design elements that will make it operable in the space environment. Progress on the project andinformation concerning some of the issues listed above will be discussed.
The developments which flow from this research project will support efforts by Environment andClimate Change Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and ABB, Inc. in developing a satellite
instrument.
C6.5 An Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer for Remote Nadir Atmospheric Measurementsof CO2, CH4 and the O2 A-band
Zahra Vaziri*, Gurpreet Singh, Rehan Siddiqui, David Barton, Greg Blair, Tom McElroy, Frederic
Grandmont*York University
The Arctic multi-year ice cover is disappearing more rapidly than climate models estimate and the arctic
climate is also changing. With declining ice cover, the Arctic Ocean will be subject to increased
shipping traffic and exploration activity for natural resources with a concomitant increase in air
pollution. Thus, there is a multifaceted need to monitor greenhouse gases in the polar region. Thisrequires the development of techniques and instrumentation as well as modelling and validation of the84measurements. Some of the more important atmospheric species that contribute significantly to climatechange are methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour, although the water vapour in theatmosphere is controlled by the radiative impact of the other gases. The effect of the changes in these
species is more prominent in the Arctic region. The Arctic is a sensitive world were small changes ingreenhouse gas amounts can have amplified effects through their impact on surface albedo, humidity,
ocean currents and temperature. Part of this is simply the result of the Stefan-Boltzmann law which
implies that a larger temperature change is needed at lower temperatures to account for a given amountof change in energy input.
This paper will focus on the development of a demonstrator Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer(IFTS) to be flown on a high-altitude balloon to demonstrate the capacity to measure atmosphericmixing ratios of CH4 and CO2 and the O2 A-band in near space conditions. The spectrometer has two
individual channels centered at 762 nm and 1650 nm. The Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote
Sounding from Space (LARSS) at York University is developing the IFTS payload and ABB of Quebec
City developed the core of the interferometer.
C6.6 Determining required signal-to-noise ratios for XCO2 and XCH4 precision targets:
Application to AIM-North
Christopher Sioris*, Ray Nassar, Chris McLinden, Joseph Mendonca, Louis Moreau, Stephane
Lantagne, Marko Adamovic*Environment and Climate Change Canada
AIM-North (The Atmospheric Imaging Mission for Northern Regions) is a mission concept for remotesensing of air quality and greenhouse gases in northern regions, supported by the Canadian Space
Agency. It builds off previous mission development under the PHEOS (Polar Highly Elliptical Orbital
Science) program but sets stricter precision targets. XCO2 and XCH4 are to be measured with precision
goals of 0.25% and 0.5%, respectively. We explore how the signal-to-noise ratio depends on instrument
type (grating spectrometer versus Michelson interferometer), the spectral resolution (0.2 to 0.6 cm-1),
and the choice of absorption band(s). Greenhouse gases will be measured via the shortwave infrared toprovide sensitivity to the entire column. We also compare the A band and singlet Delta band with regard
to the SNR required to measure O2 vertical column density (VCD) to 0.125%. We find a large advantage
in using the strong 2.0 micron band of CO2 relative to the weaker 1.6 micron bands and a similar
conclusion for the stronger methane absorption at 2.3 micron relative to the 1.67 micron region. Muchlarger SNRs are required if using the singlet Delta band to determine the O2 VCD, relative to the Aband.
C6.7 Reevaluating the use of Oxygen band at 1.27 micron in spaceborne remote sensing ofgreenhouse gases
Kang Sun*, Iouli Gordon, Christopher Sioris, Xiong Liu, Kelly Chance, Steven Wofsy*University at Buffalo85

Although the Oxygen "singlet Delta" band at 1.27 micron has long been used in ground-based
greenhouse gas remote sensing to constrain the light path, it is challenging for nadir spaceborne sensors
due to strong mesosphere/stratosphere airglow. Compared to SCIAMACHY limb observations, theairglow spectrum simulated using populations appropriate for the lower state gives relative residuals >5%. Simulations using upper state populations successfully reconstruct the airglow spectra withexcellent agreement with SCIAMACHY. The accurate knowledge of airglow spectrum enables retrievalof singlet Delta Oxygen concentration, volume emission rate, and temperature. At nadir, the airglow
derived from SCIAMACHY observations will lead to a negative bias of ~10% to Oxygen column if notconsidered. However, when airglow is properly included, its spectral feature can be adequately separated
from Oxygen absorption (mean bias < 0.1%) at the spectral resolution of modern spaceborne
spectrometers.
C6.8 The MicroCarb L1 & L2 algorithms and performances
Denis JOUGLET*, Pierre LAFRIQUE, Elodie CANSOT, Christelle PITTET, Charlotte REVEL, Bruno
VIDAL, François-Marie BREON, Didier PRADINES, François BUISSON, Véronique PASCAL*CNES, France
MicroCarb is a European initiative for the monitoring of global CO2 fluxes and a better understandingof the mechanisms that control these fluxes. It will provide atmospheric CO2 column integrated
concentrations data to the scientific community, in the continuation or in parallel to the on-going
operational programs (GOSAT, OCO-2, Tansat). The MicroCarb instrument is a grating spectrometerthat acquires high-resolution spectra in four spectral bands: CO2 at 1.61 and 2.03 µm, O2 at 0.76 and1.27 µm. The aimed random error precision is <1ppm for a regional bias <0.2ppm. After a first talk (F.
Buisson) dedicated to a status of the project, we here focus on mission performances and processing
tools.
We will present our L1 and L2 processing tools. We detail our L2 XCO2 retrieval tool, which is basedon the 4ARTIC optimal estimation and the 4AOP radiative transfer code. We will then present themission performance budget for XCO2, identifying all system, instrument and processing contributors at
level 1 and level 2, including geolocation, spectral resolution, SNR, ISRF knowledge, polarization, nonlinearity, spectroscopic parameters, radiative transfer unknowns, for the main ones. We will finallypresent the interest of the new 1.27 µm O2 band, which should help to retrieve an accurate XCO2 even inaerosol loaded conditions, provided the mesospheric airglow emitting in this band can be accounted for.
C6.9 High resolution methane tracking micro-satellites
Richard L. Lachance* and Yotam Ariel*Bluefield Technologies

86The accurate measurement of ground-level methane emissions from low-Earth orbit is a challenging but
urgent task for efforts to mitigate climate change. Our solution starts with a remote sensing approachcalled Gas Filter Correlation Radiometry (GFCR), which differences images of the Earth’s surface
measured in a continuous push-frame configuration through a methane spectral filtering gas cell. The
GFCR approach has been developed and improved over the last three decades through research projects
and NASA missions, and demonstrated for methane detection on aircraft flights. The resulting data isthen mastered with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for advanced image processing, enabling theautomatic extraction of minute signals even against a high noise level. This combination creates anaccurate differential image of methane column perturbation in near-real time.
Based on this technology, Bluefield is deploying a constellation of methane tracking microsatellites
capable of locating and quantifying every methane emitting site on Earth at an unprecedented sensitivity
level of 15 kg/hour with a spatial resolution of 20 meters. By using attitude determination and control
subsystems (ADCS) in combination with fast frame image alignment to precisely lock onto specific 25
km by 20 km ground scenes, the noise on any specific 20 meter by 20 meter location in these images canbe reduced by massive oversampling and our AI processing. This results in a modeled sensitivity
corresponding to less than 1% natural abundance.
C6.10 The challenges of measuring Methane from orbit
Haris Riris*, Kenji Numata, Jianping Mao, Stewart Wu, Molly Fahey, Brayler Gonzalez, Michael
Rodriguez, Stan Scott, and Xiaoli Sun*NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The global and regional quantification of methane fluxes and identification of its sources and sinks has
been highlighted as one of the goals of the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey. Detecting methanefrom space with an active (laser) remote sensing instrument presents several unique technology andmeasurement challenges. The instrument must have a single frequency, narrow-linewidth light source,
and photon-sensitive detector at the right spectral region to make continuous measurements from orbit,
day and night, all seasons and at all latitudes. It must have a high signal to noise ratio and must be
relatively immune to biases from aerosol/cloud scattering, spectroscopic and meteorological data
uncertainties, and instrument systematic errors.
The technology needed for a spaceborne mission is currently being developed by NASA and industry.
At Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), we have developed an airborne instrument to measuremethane. Our instrument is a nadir-viewing lidar that uses Integrated Path Differential Absorption(IPDA), to measure a methane vibration-rotational line near 1.65 µm that is relatively free ofinterferences from other trace gases. We sample the absorption line using multiple wavelengths from anarrow linewidth laser source and a sensitive photodetector. This measurement approach provides
maximum information content about the vertical distribution of CH4, minimum bias, and sensitivity toatmospheric temperature uncertainty in XCH4 retrieval.
However, technical and measurement challenges remain. In this paper, we will review our progress todate and discuss the technology challenges, options and tradeoffs to measure methane from space.

87C6.11 A Cost Effective Laser-Based Enhancement of Passive Carbon Monitoring Approaches
form GEO or LEO Orbits
Jeremy Dobler*, James Nagel, Glenn Davis*Harris Corporation
For the past decade significant advancements have been made toward understanding the global carbon
budget using passive remote sensing techniques such as GOSAT and OCO-2. Japan is preparing tolaunch the follow-on instrument GOSAT-2 and NASA is planning a mission with OCO-3 hosted on theISS. Although the advancement provided from these sensors has been game changing, there arelimitations of these approaches in terms of temporal coverage and potential for location and surface
dependent systematic bias from clouds, aerosols, and column-height uncertainties. Recently NASAannounced the selection of the GeoCARB instrument that will enhance the current record by enablinghigh frequency coverage of land, atmosphere and ocean exchange of carbon, including vegetation
health. However, GeoCARB will be affected by similar biases.
In this talk, we present a cost-effective laser based concept aimed at enhancing the GeoCARB mission,or other future passive remote sensing platforms from Leo or Geo. Originally developed by Harris in
2011, the Laser Atmospheric Transmitter and Receiver-Network (LAnTeRN) concept uses a single
space-based laser transmitter to make total column measurements of CO2 from GEO between thesatellite and a network of ground-based receivers. Following initial concept development, wedemonstrated the LAnTeRN feasibility through ground-based horizontal path testing. The horizontal
testing then led to the Greenhouse-gas Laser Imaging Tomography Experiment, or GreenLITE_†¢, thatenables spatial mapping of greenhouse gases including CO2 and CH4 over areas of 1 to 25 km2 andestimates flux from a limited number of dominant sources within the footprint. The LAnTeRN concept
is currently implementable using existing high TRL technologies. We will review the LAnTeRN
concept and how it might be coupled with GeoCARB, or other similar observations in the future, toeliminate the bias uncertainty inherent in passive measurement systems. We will also discuss how asimilar approach might be implemented along with future passive carbon monitoring instruments from
LEO platforms as a calibration and validation tool to minimize potential sources of bias.
6.12 Combining cloud-top and total-column methane retrievals from an active sensor
Julia Marshall*, Amirhossein Abdi, Tonatiuh Nuñez Ramirez, Axel Amediek, Philippe Bousquet,
Gerhard Ehret*Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
Active remote sensing of trace gases from aircraft or satellite brings with it the ability to retrieve
meaningful data even under conditions of broken clouds, since lidars operate with small and defined
footprints. Given sufficient optical thickness, retrieval of partial columns from cloud tops has also beenshown to be possible for carbon dioxide (Ramanathan et al., 2015). The same has been demonstrated for
the CHARM-F measurements from aircraft, using a differential absorption lidar measuring both88

methane and carbon dioxide (Amediek et al, 2017). This study examines the use of these partial columns
for the interpretation of methane measurements, using both measurements from test flights as well as
synthetic measurements to simulate what this would mean for the planned MERLIN mission, which will
be measuring methane from space using the same technique. Cloud heights and optical depths measured
by aerosol lidar CALIPSO provide information about when and where we expect to be able to makesuch measurements, but this has to be adjusted to take into account a different overpass time, given theplanned dawn-dusk orbit of MERLIN. In addition to attempting to isolate the boundary signal frompartial columns going down to low clouds, the possibility of mapping vertical distributions fromdifferent cloud heights is examined. For methane this proves to be particularly interesting, as it may
provide an additional constraint on the vertical distribution brought about by both the distribution of thetropospheric chemical sink as well as the stratospheric component.
6.13 Airborne CO2 Lidar Measurements for the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport - America(ACT-America) Project and the ASCENDS 2017 Field Campaign
Byron Meadows*, Bing Lin, Michael Obland, William Carrion, Jonathan Hicks, Joseph Sparrow, Joel
Campbell, Susan Kooi, Tai-fang Fan, Edward Browell, Jeremy Dobler, Josh DiGangi*NASA Langley Research Center
The Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) CarbonHawk
Experiment Simulator (ACES) is a NASA Langley Research Center instrument funded by NASA’s
Science Mission Directorate that seeks to advance technologies critical to measuring atmosphericcolumn carbon dioxide (CO2) mixing ratios in support of the NASA ASCENDS mission. The ACES
instrument, an Intensity-Modulated Continuous-Wave (IM-CW) lidar, was designed for high-altitude
aircraft operations and can be directly applied to space instrumentation to meet the ASCENDS mission
requirements. The ACES design demonstrates advanced technologies critical for developing an airborne
simulator and spaceborne instrument with lower platform consumption of size, mass, and power, andwith improved performance.
ACES recently flew on the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the 2017 NASA ASCENDS/Arctic-Boreal
Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) airborne measurement campaign to test ASCENDS-related
technologies in the challenging Arctic environment. Data were collected over a wide variety of surface
reflectivities, terrain, and atmospheric conditions during the campaign’s 8 research flights.
The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport - America (ACT-America) is an Earth Venture Suborbital -2(EVS-2) mission sponsored by the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. A
major objective is to enhance knowledge of the sources/sinks and transport of atmospheric CO2 throughthe application of remote and in situ airborne measurements of CO2 and other atmospheric properties on
spatial and temporal scales. ACT-America consists of five campaigns to measure regional carbon andevaluate transport under various meteorological conditions in three regional areas of the Continental
United States. Regional CO2 distributions of lower atmosphere were observed from the C-130 aircraftby the Harris Corp. Multi-Frequency Fiber Laser Lidar (MFLL) and the ACES lidar. The airborne lidars
provide unique data that complement the more traditional in situ sensors. This presentation shows theapplications of CO2 lidars in support of these science needs.

89