Improved constraints on northern extratropical CO2 fluxes obtained by
combining surface-based and space-based atmospheric CO2 measurements
Abstract
Top-down estimates of CO2 fluxes are typically constrained by either
surface-based or space-based CO2 observations. Both of these measurement
types have spatial and temporal gaps in observational coverage that can
lead to biases in inferred fluxes. Assimilating both surface-based and
space-based measurements concurrently in a flux inversion framework
improves observational coverage and reduces sampling biases. This study
examines the consistency of flux constraints provided by these different
observations and the potential to combine them by performing a series of
six-year (2010–2015) CO2 flux inversions. Flux inversions are performed
assimilating surface-based measurements from the in situ and flask
network, measurements from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network
(TCCON), and space-based measurements from the Greenhouse Gases
Observing Satellite (GOSAT), or all three datasets combined. Combining
the datasets results in more precise flux estimates for sub-continental
regions relative to any of the datasets alone. Combining the datasets
also improves the accuracy of the posterior fluxes, based on reduced
root-mean-square differences between posterior-flux-simulated CO2 and
aircraft-based CO2 over midlatitude regions
(0.35–0.50~ppm) in comparison to GOSAT
(0.39–0.57~ppm), TCCON
(0.52–0.63~ppm), or in situ and flask measurements
(0.45–0.53~ppm) alone. These results suggest that
surface-based and GOSAT measurements give complementary constraints on
CO2 fluxes in the northern extratropics and can be combined in flux
inversions to improve observational coverage. This stands in contrast
with many earlier attempts to combine these datasets and suggests that
improvements in the NASA Atmospheric CO2 Observations from Space (ACOS)
retrieval algorithm have significantly improved the consistency of
space-based and surface-based flux constraints.