Towards TCCON Tropics: Assessment and Measurements of Carbon and its Climate Impacts in Southeast Asia (T3AM C2lImA)

Abstract:

TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network) measurements of CO₂ and CH₄ have been and are currently used extensively and globally for satellite validation, for comparison with atmospheric chemistry models and to study atmosphere-biosphere exchanges of carbon.
With the global effort to cap greenhouse gas emissions, TCCON has become vital for validating satellite-based greenhouse gas data from past, current and future missions like Japanese GOSAT (Greenhouse Gas Observing SATellite) and GOSAT-2, NASA's OCO-2 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2) and OCO-3, ESA's Carbon Monitoring Satellite (CarbonSat), Chinese TanSat, and others. The lack of reliable validation data for the satellite-based greenhouse gas observing missions in the tropical regions is a common limitation in global carbon-cycle modeling studies that have a tropical component. The international CO₂ modeling community have specified a requirement for "expansion of the CO₂ observation network within the tropics" to reduce uncertainties in regional estimates of CO₂ sources and sinks using atmospheric transport models.
A TCCON site in the western tropical Pacific is a logical next step in obtaining additional knowledge that would greatly contribute to the understanding of the Earth's atmosphere and better constraining a major tropical region experiencing tremendous economic and population growth. Here, we present a complete site assessment for a possible TCCON site in the Philippines and our decision on the site where a new TCCON FTS will be installed. This site assessment was conducted in cooperation with the Energy Development Corporation (EDC, Philippines), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES, Japan), University of Wollongong (UoW, Australia), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the University of the Philippines (UP-IESM), the TCCON science team, and the GOSAT-2 science team.