Role of space station instruments for improving tropical carbon flux estimates using atmospheric data

Abstract

The tropics is the nexus for many of the remaining gaps in our knowledge of environmental science, including the carbon cycle and atmospheric chemistry, with dire consequences for our ability to describe the Earth system response to a warming world. Difficulties associated with accessibility, coordinated funding models and economic instabilities preclude the establishment of a dense pan-tropical ground-based atmospheric measurement network that would otherwise help to describe the evolving state of tropical ecosystems and the associated biosphere-atmosphere fluxes on decadal timescales. The growing number of relevant sensors aboard sun-synchronous polar orbiters provide invaluable information over the remote tropics, but a large fraction of the data collected along their orbits is from higher latitudes. The International Space Station (ISS), which is in a low-inclination, precessing orbit, has already demonstrated value as a proving ground for Earth observing atmospheric sensors and as a testbed for new technology. Because low-inclination orbits spend more time collecting data over the tropics, we argue that the ISS and its successors, offer key opportunities to host new Earth-observing atmospheric sensors that can lead to a step change in our understanding of tropical carbon fluxes.

Evaluating the consistency between OCO-2 and OCO-3 XCO2 estimates derived from the NASA ACOS version 10 retrieval algorithm

“…As the science community continues work to better constrain the global carbon cycle Friedlingstein et al, 2022), top-down flux and inventory estimates utilizing XCO 2 observations from space have demonstrated promise for answering key questions about the present and future response of the system to continued human activities and climate change (e.g., Byrne et al, 2021Byrne et al, , 2022Kong et al, 2022;. The need for an international fleet of robust, dedicated carbonmonitoring satellites is paramount to this effort (Ciais et al, 2014;Crisp et al, 2018;Janssens-Maenhout et al, 2020;Palmer et al, 2022). The OCO-2 and OCO-3 records, which began in September 2014 and August 2019, respectively, will only gain in significance over time as an early baseline for globally monitoring CO 2 concentrations from space.…”

Evaluating the consistency between OCO-2 and OCO-3 XCO2 estimates derived from the NASA ACOS version 10 retrieval algorithm

“…ing key questions about the present and future response of the system to continued human activities and climate change (e.g., Byrne et al, 2021Byrne et al, , 2022bPhilip et al, 2022;Kong et al, 2022;Chevallier et al, 2022). The need for an international fleet of robust, dedicated carbon monitoring satellites is paramount to this effort (Ciais et al, 2014;Crisp et al, 2018;Janssens-Maenhout et al, 2020;Palmer et al, 2022). The OCO-2 and OCO-3 records, which began in September 2014 and August 2019, respectively, will only gain in significance over time as an early baseline for globally monitoring CO 2 concentrations from space.…”