A comparison of satellite observations with the XCO2 surface obtained by fusing TCCON measurements and GEOS-Chem model outputs

Abstract

Ground observations can capture CO2 concentrations accurately but the number of available TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network) sites is too small to support a comprehensive analysis (i.e. validation) of satellite observations. Atmospheric transport models can provide continuous atmospheric CO2 concentrations in space and time, but some information is difficult to generate with model simulations. The HASM platform can model continuous column-averaged CO2 dry air mole fraction (XCO2) surface taking TCCON observations as its optimum control constraints and an atmospheric transport model as its driving field. This article presents a comparison of the satellite observations with a HASM XCO2 surface obtained by fusing TCCON measurements with GEOS-Chem model results. We first verified the accuracy of the HASM XCO2 surface using six years (2010–2015) of TCCON observations and the GEOS-Chem model XCO2 results. The validation results show that the largest MAE of bias between the HASM results and observations was 0.85ppm and the smallest MAE was only 0.39ppm. Next, we modeled the HASM XCO2 surface by fusing the TCCON measurements and GEOS-Chem XCO2 model results for the period 9/1/14 to 8/31/15. Finally, we compared the GOSAT and OCO-2 observations with the HASM XCO2 surface and found that the global OCO-2 XCO2 estimates more closely resembled the HASM XCO2 surface than the GOSAT XCO2 estimates.