The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) Mission: An Overview

Abstract:

For the OCO-3 mission, NASA has approved a proposal to install the OCO-2 flight spare instrument on the International Space Station (ISS). The OCO-3 mission on ISS will have a key role in delivering sustained, global, scientifically-based, spaceborne measurements of atmospheric CO₂to monitor natural sources and sinks as part of NASA’s proposed OCO-2/OCO-3/ASCENDS mission sequence and NASA’s Climate Architecture.

The OCO-3 mission will contribute to understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle through enabling flux estimates at smaller spatial scales and through fluorescence measurements that will reduce the uncertainty in terrestrial carbon flux measurements and drive bottom-up land surface models through constraining GPP.

The combined nominal missions of both OCO-2 and OCO-3 will likely span a complete El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, a key indicator of ocean variability. In addition, OCO-3 may allow investigation of the high-frequency and wavenumber structures suggested by eddying ocean circulation and ecosystem dynamics models.

Finally, significant growth of urban agglomerations is underway and projected to continue in the coming decades. With the city mode sampling of the OCO-3 instrument on ISS we can evaluate different sampling strategies aimed at studying anthropogenic sources and demonstrate elements of a Greenhouse Gas Information system, as well as providing a gap-filler for tracking trends in the fastest-changing anthropogenic signals during the coming decade.

In this presentation, we will describe our science objectives, the characteristics of measurements from the ISS for OCO-3, and the unique features of XCO2 measurements from ISS.