[A-CG49] Greenhouse Gas Monitoring from Space: Current Capabilities, Challenges, and Future Needs

[ACG49-05] Early Comparison of OCO-3 XCO2 Measurements with TCCON

*Matthäus Kiel¹, Joshua Laughner², Annmarie Eldering¹, Brendan M. Fisher¹, thomas p kurosu¹, Ryan P. Pavlick¹, Gregory B. Osterman¹, Robert R. Nelson¹, Christopher W. O'Dell³, Peter Somkuti³, Thomas E. Taylor³, Coleen M. Roehl², TCCON Team (1.NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2.Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (USA), 3.Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO (USA))

Keywords:CO2, International Space Station, Greenhouse Gas

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) was successfully launched on May 4, 2019 from Kennedy Space Center via a Space-X Falcon 9. One week later, the instrument was installed as an external payload on the International Space Station (ISS). OCO-3 extends NASA's study of carbon and measures the dry-air mole fraction of column carbon dioxide (XCO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere from space. These space-based measurements are compared to ground-based observations from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). TCCON is a global network of high-resolution ground-based Fourier Transform Spectrometers that records spectra of the sun in the near-infrared spectral region. From these spectra, accurate and precise column-averaged abundances of atmospheric constituents including CO2 are retrieved. TCCON data are tied to the WMO scale and serve as the link between calibrated surface in situ measurements and OCO-3 measurements. OCO-3’s agile 2-D pointing mirror assembly (PMA) allows the instrument to stare at a TCCON station as it passes overhead - providing information about the quality, biases, and errors in the OCO-3 data. Here, we show early comparisons between the OCO-3 XCO2 dataset collected during target mode observations and coincident TCCON measurements. Finally, we discuss site-dependent biases and its potential origins.