Constraining Sector-specific CO2 Fluxes using Space-based XCO2
Observations over the Los Angeles Basin
Abstract
The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere is
increasing due to human activities and the resulting effects on the
global climate system have initiated sev- eral policy-driven approaches
to reduce emissions of this greenhouse gas. Quantifying the
effectiveness of such policies requires both bottom-up and top-down
approaches to estimate CO2 emissions. This work investigates, for the
first time, the potential of using SAM observations from NASA’s OCO-3
instrument to disaggregate sector-specific emissions from instrument
observations. Optimized sector-specific timeseries were produced using
Bayesian inversion techniques and compared to proxy activity data from
the transportation, commercial maritime, and industrial sectors. Results
demonstrate that dense space-based observations of atmospheric CO2 are
capable of disentangling sector-specific CO2 fluxes, paving the way for
accurate monitoring of the effects of carbon-reduction policies and
operational carbon monitoring systems.