convener:kurosu thomas p(Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology), Annmarie Eldering(Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Akihiko Kuze(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Tsuneo Matsunaga(Center for Global Environmental Research and Satellite Observation Center, National Institute for Environmental Studies)

In a circulation letter of their Position Statement on Climate, the AGU writes

"Human-caused climate change is one of the most serious issues of our time. It will cause increasing health, economic, security, and ecological risks, from heat-related deaths and illnesses, hazards such as flooding, water scarcity, wildfire, and extreme weather and impacts to coastal infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, and global migration."

With the constantly growing threat anthropogenically-induced climate change, global to local monitoring of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations becomes increasingly important. Over the past decade, space-based GHG sensors have contributed substantially to our understanding of CO2 and CH4 emission sources and natural sinks on global and regional scales. Recent advances in these sensors have now extended these capabilities for studies of more compact sources, including large urban areas. NASAs OCO-3 on the ISS and Japans TANSO-FTS-2 on GOSAT-2 include target mapping modes that continue and extend the observation records of their precursors, and the Canadian commercial GHGSat provides high spatial resolution observations of CO2 and CH4 over selectable locations on the Earth. Sentinel 5P/TROPOMI measures CH4 with a wide swath instrument with daily near-global coverage. Future GHG observing systems are expected to further improve on the bridging of global and local scales, to provide optimized data records as basis for climate change mitigation policies.

We propose a session that focuses on the following aspects of space-based GHG monitoring: (1) capabilities of currently operating sensors measuring greenhouse gases on global to local scales, including OCO-2&3, TANSO-FTS/2, GHGsat, TROPOMI, and TANSAT; (2) identification and quantification of shortfalls in current data records, and requirements for future observation strategies; and (3) future observing systems and how these will address current gaps in GHG monitoring.