Improved retrievals of carbon dioxide from Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 with the version 8 ACOS algorithm
2018
Abstract. Since September 2014, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)
satellite has been taking measurements of reflected solar spectra and using
them to infer atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This work provides details
of the OCO-2 retrieval algorithm, versions 7 and 8, used to derive the
column-averaged dry air mole fraction of atmospheric CO 2
( X CO 2 ) for the roughly 100 000 cloud-free measurements recorded
by OCO-2 each day. The algorithm is based on the Atmospheric Carbon
Observations from Space (ACOS) algorithm which has been applied to
observations from the Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) since
2009, with modifications necessary for OCO-2. Because high accuracy,
better than 0.25 %, is required in order to accurately infer carbon
sources and sinks from X CO 2 , significant errors and regional-scale
biases in the measurements must be minimized. We discuss efforts to filter
out poor-quality measurements, and correct the remaining good-quality
measurements to minimize regional-scale biases. Updates to the radiance
calibration and retrieval forward model in version 8 have improved many
aspects of the retrieved data products. The version 8 data appear to have
reduced regional-scale biases overall, and demonstrate a clear improvement
over the version 7 data. In particular, error variance with respect to TCCON
was reduced by 20 % over land and 40 % over ocean between versions 7
and 8, and nadir and glint observations over land are now more consistent.
While this paper documents the significant improvements in the ACOS
algorithm, it will continue to evolve and improve as the CO 2 data
record continues to expand.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
109
References
104
Citations
NaN
KQI