Abstract
The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT) – America NASA Earth Venture
Suborbital Mission set out to improve regional atmospheric greenhouse
gas (GHG) inversions by exploring the intersection of the strong GHG
fluxes and vigorous atmospheric transport that occurs within the
midlatitudes. Two research aircraft instrumented with remote and in situ
sensors to measure GHG mole fractions, associated trace gases, and
atmospheric state variables collected 1140.7 flight hours of research
data, distributed across 305 individual aircraft sorties, coordinated
within 121 research flight days, and spanning five, six-week seasonal
flight campaigns in the central and eastern United States. Flights
sampled 31 synoptic sequences, including fair weather and frontal
conditions, at altitudes ranging from the atmospheric boundary layer to
the upper free troposphere. The observations were complemented with
global and regional GHG flux and transport model ensembles. We found
that midlatitude weather systems contain large spatial gradients in GHG
mole fractions, in patterns that were consistent as a function of season
and altitude. We attribute these patterns to a combination of regional
terrestrial fluxes and inflow from the continental boundaries. These
observations, when segregated according to altitude and air mass,
provide a variety of quantitative insights into the realism of regional
CO2 and CH4 fluxes and atmospheric GHG transport realizations. The
ACT-America data set and ensemble modeling methods provide benchmarks
for the development of atmospheric inversion systems. As global and
regional atmospheric inversions incorporate ACT-America’s findings and
methods, we anticipate these systems will produce increasingly accurate
and precise sub-continental GHG flux estimates.