Seminar Ozean, Eis, Atmosphäre

Date: 10.06.2003

Speaker: Brian Connor
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research New Zealand

Brian Connor, Stephen Wood, Geoff Toon, Zhiming Kuang, and Chris Barnet

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) is a planned NASA instrument designed to make very high precision global observations of column-averaged CO2 mixing ratio, XCO2. These observations will be used to derive CO2 sources and sinks, and will provide important new constraints on the global carbon cycle. Calibration of the results by a combination of ground-based solar absorption FTS measurements and in situ measurements is critical to OCO's success. Here we focus on design of the ground-based FTS network. Plans for the OCO instrument are briefly described. The choice of sites for FTS observations is discussed. Averaging kernels for OCO, FTS, and the AIRS satellite instrument are calculated and compared. Smoothing error in the XCO2 measurements by the three instruments is estimated. The role smoothing error plays in comparison to the FTS measurements, and how it can be minimized, is evaluated.