A51O-04:
Informing urban carbon emissions with atmospheric observations: motivation, methods, and reducing uncertainties.
Friday, 19 December 2014: 8:45 AM
Eric A Kort1, John Ware1, Riley M Duren2, David Schimel3, Charles E Miller4 and Phil Decola5, (1)University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, (2)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, CA, United States, (5)Sigma Space Corporation, Lanham, MD, United States
Abstract:
Urban regions play a dominant role in the anthropogenic perturbation to atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane. With increasing urbanization (notably in developing nations) and increasing emissions, quantitative observational information on emissions of CO2 and CH4 becomes critical for improved understanding of the global carbon cycle and for carbon management/policy decisions. In this presentation, we will discuss the impact uncertainty in anthropogenic emissions has on global carbon-climate understanding, providing broad geophysical motivation for urban studies. We will further discuss observations of urban regions at different scales (satellite vs. in-situ), and investigate the information content of these complementary methods for answering targeted questions on both global carbon fluxes and regional management decisions. Finally, we will present new attempts at reducing uncertainty in high-resolution inversions leveraging remotely sensed aerosol profiles to constrain both mixing depths and vertical distributions of trace gases.
