Using Satellite Data to Estimate Atmospheric CO2 Growth Rates

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: AGU Advances

Accurately estimating the rate of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere is crucial for measuring and understanding climate change. Growth rate estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), based on ocean-surface-air observations, are the standard in science and policy. However, the NOAA method does not provide fine temporal scale estimates, and the atmospheric sampling error of their annual estimates is unknown.

A new method, outlined in Pandey et al. [2024], called Growth Rate from Satellite Observations (GRESO) improves growth rate estimates. Satellites cover more of the atmosphere and can enhance NOAA estimates. Satellite estimates have lower sampling errors and can provide an advantage for fine temporal scale growth rate estimation. On annual and five-year scales, NOAA estimates are very reliable due to the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Together, the NOAA and satellite-based growth rate methods can better inform us about the global carbon cycle.

Citation: Pandey, S., Miller, J. B., Basu, S., Liu, J., Weir, B., Byrne, B., et al. (2024). Toward low-latency estimation of atmospheric CO2 growth rates using satellite observations: Evaluating sampling errors of satellite and in situ observing approaches. AGU Advances, 5, e2023AV001145. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023AV001145

—Don Wuebbles, Editor, AGU Advances

Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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