A41H-3165:
Validation of GOSAT/TANSO-FTS TIR V01.00 CO2 and CH4 products

Thursday, 18 December 2014
Naoko Saitoh1, Shuhei Kimoto1, Ryo Sugimura1, Ryoichi Imasu2, Shuji Kawakami3, Kei Shiomi3, Toshinobu Machida4, Yousuke Sawa5 and Hidekazu Matsueda5, (1)CEReS, Chiba, Japan, (2)University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Japan, (3)Earth Obs. Res. Cntr. / JAXA, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, (4)NIES National Institute of Environmental Studies, Ibaraki, Japan, (5)Meteorological Research Institute, Ibaraki, Japan
Abstract:
Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) has been making observations continuously for more than five years since its launch on 23 January 2009. Thermal and Near-infrared Sensor for Carbon Observation Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) on board the GOSAT simultaneously observes column abundances and profiles of CO2 and CH4 in the same field of view, from the shortwave infrared (SWIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) bands, respectively. We have just released the latest TIR CO2 and CH4 products, V01.00, to registered researchers. To validate the data quality of the V01.00 TIR CO2 product, we compared the TIR data with CO2 data obtained by Continuous CO2 Measuring Equipment (CME) on board JAL aircraft in Comprehensive Observation Network for Trace gases by Airliner (CONTRAIL) project. The aircraft CO2 data obtained during the level flights were compared with the V01.00 TIR upper tropospheric CO2 data. The CONTRAIL CO2 “profile” data obtained during the ascending and descending flights over several airports were compared with the TIR CO2 profiles. In the profile comparisons, we applied the TIR averaging kernel functions to the coincident CONTRAIL CO2 profiles. The V01.00 upper atmospheric CO2 data agreed to the CONTRAIL level flight CO2 data on average within 0.5-1%. Some TIR CO2 data showed relatively large differences from the nearest aircraft data, which suggests the existence of several problems such as L1B spectral calibration and nighttime cloud detection issues. The TIR V01.00 CO2 profile data from 9 to 13 km showed better agreement to CONTRAIL CO2 data than the a priori. However, the TIR CO2 data at around and below 5 km had low bias of 1-1.5%. The TIR V01.00 CH4 data generally showed reasonable latitudinal distributions as the previous version. In the Antarctic, unexpected high amounts of CH4 were seen in upper troposphere and lower stratosphere in autumn. This is probably because of the problem of simultaneously retrieved ozone concentration.