Seasonal cycle of emissions of CO inferred from MOPITT profiles of CO: Sensitivity to pyroconvection and profile retrieval assumptions

Abstract

[1] We estimate monthly continental-scale CO emissions for 2006 by optimally fitting prior emissions used by the GEOS-Chem chemistry transport model to retrieved profile measurements of CO from the Measurement Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) satellite instrument. We focus on the range of emission estimates obtained by using different versions of the MOPITT profile data, and by better describing enhanced vertical mixing of emissions from wildfires. We find that annual posterior CO emissions estimates for 2006 range from 1003 to 1180 Tg CO, within the range of prior estimates (1243 ± 617 Tg CO). We generally find larger differences in posterior CO emissions from using different versions of the MOPITT data than from improving the description of wildfires, with the exception of fires over Indonesia. Posterior emissions over regions with wildfires have a large seasonal cycle, as expected, which can be substantially different from prior emission estimates. We find GFEDv2 prior emissions underestimate the duration of the biomass burning season for North Africa by as much as 1 month. We also find posterior emissions over Indonesia are a factor of 2 higher than prior emissions (83 ± 42 Tg CO) in 2006 due to widespread fires during July–December. Posterior emissions over Canada during 2006 are a factor of 2–3 higher than prior emissions (9 ± 4.6 Tg CO). We also find a seasonal cycle of CO emissions over North America and Europe, in agreement with previous studies, which is not described by prior emissions.