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Title: Improved retrievals of carbon dioxide from Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 with the version 8 ACOS algorithm

Journal Article · · Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (Online)
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  1. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
  2. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  3. Finnish Meteorological Inst., Helsinki (Finland)
  4. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
  5. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)
  6. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  7. CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  8. Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States)
  9. Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland (United Kingdom)
  10. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  11. Meteorological State Agency of Spain (AEMet), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain)
  12. Univ. of Wollongong, NSW (Australia)
  13. Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology (Germany)
  14. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA (United States)
  15. Finnish Meteorological Institute, Sodankylä (Finland)
  16. National Inst. for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba (Japan)
  17. Univ. of Bremen (Germany)
  18. Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels (Belgium)
  19. Sorbonne Université, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Paris (France)

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 CO2( X CO 2 ) for the roughly 100000 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 CO2 data record continues to expand.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC). Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1557767
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-19-22771
Journal Information:
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (Online), Vol. 11, Issue 12; ISSN 1867-8548
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 152 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Estimating power plant CO 2 emission using OCO-2 XCO 2 and high resolution WRF-Chem simulations journal July 2019
A Theoretical Analysis for Improving Aerosol-Induced CO2 Retrieval Uncertainties Over Land Based on TanSat Nadir Observations Under Clear Sky Conditions journal May 2019
The 2015–2016 carbon cycle as seen from OCO-2 and the global in situ network journal January 2019
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Evaluation of MOPITT Version 7 joint TIR–NIR XCO retrievals with TCCON journal January 2019
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