Vertical Profiles of Greenhouse Gases Collected over Land and Water in the Western US in Support of Partial Column Validation Efforts
Abstract
NASA's Ames Research Center, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, maintains an airborne trace gas measurement program, collecting vertical profiles of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ozone and water vapor mixing ratios over several locations in California, Nevada, and coastal regions of the western Pacific Ocean. Whenever possible, flights are coincident with overpasses of satellites such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) and GOSAT-2.
Since 2011, these measurements have been executed by the Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX), with 62 flights under GOSAT and several flights under OCO-2. AJAX profiles from 8 km to the surface and can collect multiple profiles within 90 minutes. Since October 2018, profile data have been collected on 10 flights of a Mooney aircraft in collaboration with Scientific Aviation; this implementation adds the capability to measure carbon monoxide but limits the top altitude and reduces the frequency of calibrations. We report here the data collected in 2018 and 2019, with particular emphasis on two projects. Measurements over the glint track of OCO-2 off the west coast of California support the validation of the Lower Tropospheric (LT) partial column of CO2from vertical information in NASA's OCO-2 retrievals of the CO2profile. Profiles collected over the high desert playa of Railroad Valley (RRV), NV during the annual Vicarious Calibration campaign will be used to validate the 2 layer partial-column density products of GOSAT and GOSAT-2, as well as the surface-based EM27-sun column measurements. In-situ vertical profiles of ozone, CO2, CH4, H2O, HCHO, and CO are also available for satellite validation of trace gas data products obtained from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and other sensors.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.A43R3147I
- Keywords:
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- 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES