Characterizing the Effects of Inhomogeneous Scene Illumination on the Retrieval of Greenhouse Gases from a Geostationary Platform

Nivitanont, Jeffrey; Crowell, Sean; O’Dell, Chris; Burgh, Eric B.; McGarragh, Gregory; O’Brien, D. M.; Moore, Berrien

doi:10.1002/essoar.10501288.1

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…Due to GeoCarb's step-and-stare scanning method and high spectral resolution, the instrument is sensitive to across-slit scene inhomogeneity. In the context of greenhouse gas measurements, this has been discussed by several authors (Landgraf et al, 2016;Meister et al, 2017;Nivitanont et al, 2019a). In particular, the effective instrument ILS will vary across an FOV depending on the scene brightness inhomogeneity within the FOV.…”

Section: Geocarb Mission and Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The GeoCarb greenhouse gas retrieval algorithm: Simulations and sensitivity to sources of uncertainty

McGarragh¹,

O’Dell²,

Crowell³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. The Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb) was selected as NASA's second Earth Venture Mission (EVM-2). The scientific objectives of GeoCarb are to advance our knowledge of the carbon cycle, in particular land-atmosphere fluxes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), and the effects on these fluxes on the Earth's radiation budget. GeoCarb will retrieve column integrated amounts of CO2 (XCO2), CH4 (XCH4) and CO (XCO; important for understanding tropospheric chemistry), in addition to Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF), which is proportional to the photosynthetic activity of vegetation, from hyperspectral resolution measurements in the O2 A-band at 0.76 um, the weak CO2 band at 1.6 um, the strong CO2 band at 2.06 um, and a CH4/CO band at 2.32 um. Unlike it's polar orbiting predecessors (OCO-2/3, GOSAT-1/2, TROPOMI), GeoCarb will be in a Geostationary orbit with a sub-satellite point centered over the Americas. This orbital configuration combined with its high spatial resolution imaging capabilities will provide an unprecedented view of these quantities on spatial and temporal scales accurate enough to resolve sources and sinks to improve land-atmosphere CO2 and CH4 flux calculations and reduce the uncertainty of these fluxes. This paper will present a description of the GeoCarb instrument and the level-2 retrieval algorithms which will be followed by simulation experiments to determine a relatively comprehensive error budget for each target gas. Several sources of uncertainty will be explored including that from the instrument calibration parameters for radiometric gain, the instrument line shape (ILS), the polarization, and the geolocation pointing, in addition to, forward model parameters including that from meteorology and spectroscopy. The results indicate that the errors (1σ) are less than the instrument's multi-sounding precision requirements of 1.2 ppm, 10 ppb, and 12 ppb (10 %), for XCO2, XCH4, and XCO, respectively. In particular, when considering the sources of uncertainty separately and in combination (all sources included), we find overall RMS errors of 1.06 ppm for XCO2, 8.2 ppb for XCH4, and 2.5 ppb for XCO, respectively. Additionally, we find that, as expected, errors in XCO2 and XCH4 are dominated by forward model and other systematic errors, while errors in XCO, like SIF, are dominated by measurement noise.

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Section: Geocarb Mission and Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The GeoCarb greenhouse gas retrieval algorithm: Simulations and sensitivity to sources of uncertainty

McGarragh¹,

O’Dell²,

Crowell³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The GeoCarb greenhouse gas retrieval algorithm: simulations and sensitivity to sources of uncertainty

McGarragh,

O'Dell,

Crowell

et al. 2024

Atmos. Meas. Tech.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb) was selected as NASA's second Earth Venture Mission (EVM-2). The scientific objectives of GeoCarb were to advance our knowledge of the carbon cycle, in particular, land–atmosphere fluxes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) and the effects of these fluxes on the Earth's radiation budget. GeoCarb would retrieve column-integrated dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2), CH4 (XCH4) and CO (XCO), important for understanding tropospheric chemistry), in addition to solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), from hyperspectral resolution measurements in the O2 A-band at 0.76 µm, the weak CO2 band at 1.6 µm, the strong CO2 band at 2.06 µm, and a CH4/CO band at 2.32 µm. Unlike its predecessors (OCO-2/3, GOSAT-1/2, TROPOMI), GeoCarb would be in a geostationary orbit with a sub-satellite point centered over the Americas. This orbital configuration combined with its high-spatial-resolution imaging capabilities would provide an unprecedented view of these quantities on spatial and temporal scales accurate enough to resolve sources and sinks to improve land–atmosphere CO2 and CH4 flux calculations and reduce the uncertainty of these fluxes. This paper will present a description of the GeoCarb instrument and the L2 retrieval algorithms which will be followed by simulation experiments to determine an error budget for each target gas. Several sources of uncertainty will be explored, including that from the instrument calibration parameters for radiometric gain, the instrument line shape (ILS), the polarization, and the geolocation pointing, in addition to forward model parameters including meteorology and spectroscopy, although there are some other instrument-related sources of uncertainty that are left out for this study, including that from “smile”, the keystone effect, stray light, detector persistence, and scene inhomogeneity. The results indicate that the errors (1σ) are less than the instrument's multi-sounding precision requirements of 1.2 ppm, 10 ppb, and 12 ppb (10 %), for XCO2, XCH4, and XCO, respectively. In particular, when considering the sources of uncertainty separately and in combination (all sources included), we find overall RMSEs of 1.06 ppm for XCO2, 8.2 ppb for XCH4, and 2.5 ppb for XCO, respectively. Additionally, we find that, as expected, errors in XCO2 and XCH4 are dominated by forward model and other systematic errors, while errors in XCO are dominated by measurement noise. It is important to note that the GeoCarb mission was canceled by NASA; however, the instrument is still in development and will be delivered to NASA, in full, with the hope that it will eventually be adopted in a future mission proposal.

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Characterizing the Effects of Inhomogeneous Scene Illumination on the Retrieval of Greenhouse Gases from a Geostationary Platform

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

The GeoCarb greenhouse gas retrieval algorithm: Simulations and sensitivity to sources of uncertainty

The GeoCarb greenhouse gas retrieval algorithm: Simulations and sensitivity to sources of uncertainty

The GeoCarb greenhouse gas retrieval algorithm: simulations and sensitivity to sources of uncertainty

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