Lower-tropospheric CO2 from near-infrared ACOS-GOSAT observations

We compare these new products to aircraft profiles and remote surface flask measurements and find that the seasonal and year-to-year variations in the new partial column mixing ratios significantly improve upon the Atmospheric CO2 Observations from Space (ACOS) and GOSAT (ACOS-GOSAT) initial guess and/or a priori, with distinct patterns in the LMT and U seasonal cycles that match validation data.

For land monthly averages, we find errors of 1.9, 0.7, and 0.8 ppm for retrieved GOSAT LMT, U, and X CO2; for ocean monthly averages, we find errors of 0.7, 0.5, and 0.5 ppm for retrieved GOSAT LMT, U, and X CO2. In the southern hemispheric biomass burning season, the new partial columns show similar patterns to MODIS fire maps and MOPITT multispectral CO for both vertical levels, despite a flat ACOS-GOSAT prior, and a CO-CO2 emission factor comparable to published values.