Potential of Observations From the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer to Constrain Regional Sources of Carbon Monoxide
Abstract
We have conducted an observing system simulation experiment for the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) satellite instrument to determine the potential of nadir retrievals of carbon monoxide (CO) from this instrument to constrain estimates of regional sources of CO. We use the GEOS-CHEM global chemical transport model to produce a pseudo-atmosphere in which the relationship between sources and concentrations of CO is known. Linear profile retrievals of CO are calculated by sampling this pseudo atmosphere along the orbit of TES. These retrievals are used as pseudo-observations with a maximum a posteriori inverse algorithm to estimate regional CO sources. This algorithm accounts for the vertical resolution of the retrieval, instrument errors, and representation and transport errors in the GEOS-CHEM simulation of CO. We show that, with proper characterization of observation errors observations from TES have the potential to significantly reduce uncertainty in estimates of regional sources of CO. We also examine the sensitivity of the a posteriori source estimates to possible sources of error such as regional biases in the CO chemistry or errors in the sub-regional source distribution.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003AGUFM.A12E..01J
- Keywords:
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- 0322 Constituent sources and sinks;
- 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry