Evaluating the Ability of the Pre-Launch TanSat-2 Satellite to Quantify Urban CO 2 Emissions.

Wu, Kai; Yang, Dongxu; Liu, Yi; Cai, Zhaonan; Zhou, Minqiang; Feng, Liang; Palmer, Paul I.

TanSat-2, the next-generation Chinese greenhouse gas monitoring satellite for measuring carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), has a new city-scale observing mode. We assess the theoretical capability of TanSat-2 to quantify integrated urban CO 2 emissions over the cities of Beijing, Jinan, Los Angeles, and Paris. A high-resolution emission inventory and a column-averaged CO 2 ( X CO 2 ) transport model are used to build an urban CO 2 inversion system. We design a series of numerical experiments describing this observing system to evaluate the impacts of sampling patterns and X CO 2 measurement errors on inferring urban CO 2 emissions. We find that the correction in systematic and random flux errors is correlated with the signal-to-noise ratio of satellite measurements. The reduction in systematic flux errors for the four cities are sizable, but are subject to unbiased satellite sampling and favorable meteorological conditions (i.e., less cloud cover and lower wind speed). The corresponding correction to the random flux error is 19–28%. Even though clear-sky satellite data from TanSat-2 have the potential to reduce flux errors for cities with high CO 2 emissions, quantifying urban emissions by satellite-based measurements is subject to additional limitations and uncertainties.

LOS Angeles (Calif.); BEIJING (China); PARIS (France); CARBON emissions; CARBON dioxide; CITIES & towns; MEASUREMENT errors; ATMOSPHERIC carbon dioxide

Remote Sensing, 2023, Vol 15, Issue 20, p4904

2072-4292

Academic Journal

10.3390/rs15204904