Airborne Trace Gas Mapping During the GOSAT-COMEX Experiment

The GOSAT-COMEX-IASI (Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite - CO2 and Methane EXperiment - Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) experiment acquired data on 24-27 April 2015 with two aircraft, a mobile ground-based sampling suite, and the GOSAT and IASI platforms. Collections comprised the Kern Front and Kern River oil fields north of Bakersfield, Calif. and the Chino stockyard complex in the eastern Los Angeles Basin. The nested-grid experiment examined the convergence of multiple approaches to total trace gas flux estimation from the experimental area on multiple length-scales, which entailed the integrated analysis of ground-based, airborne, and space-based measurements. Airborne remote sensing was employed to map the spatial distribution of discrete emission sites - crucial information to understanding their relative aggregate contribution to the overall flux estimation. This contribution discusses the methodology in the context of the airborne GHG source mapping component of the GOSAT-COMEX experiment and its application to satellite validation.