Study of satellite retrieved CO2 and CH4 concentration over India

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2014年07月02日1 Get rights and content

Highlights

  • •
    SCIAMACHY and GOSAT data used to study variation of greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4.
  • •
    Comparison with ground data confirms that CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere.
  • •
    Variation of CH4 depends on the surface and altitudinal location.
  • •
    Variation in CH4 over India correlates with regional vegetation cycles.

Abstract

This paper reports a study of spatial and temporal variations of columnar averaged concentration of CO2 and CH4 over India using SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY) and Greenhouse gas Observing SATellite (GOSAT) data. Comparison of these data with the global view National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) land data and also location specific flask data is made. The temporal variation in column averaged global CO2 is similar to that over India and it is also similar to the NOAA surface flask data and global view. The variation in NOAA surface CH4 is location dependent and its global view appears to vary seasonally in opposite phase with the column averaged CH4 values from satellites, reflecting the limited comparability of surface and column averaged data. Over India the CO2 maximum is in May and minimum in August/September while for CH4 the maximum is in September and minimum in February/March. The seasonal variation of CH4 over India is correlated with the eastern coastal rice cultivation.

Introduction

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fourth report (IPCC, 2007) point out that warming of the climate is unequivocal and is mainly due to the increase in concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). CO2 and CH4 are the two most important GHGs responsible for radiative forcing of the climate (Raupach et al., 2007). While use of fossil fuel and land use change is mainly responsible for the sharp increase in CO2 concentration in the last hundred years, CH4 increase is due to wetlands, agriculture and fossil fuel. The reliable estimation and prediction of future atmospheric CO2 and CH4 values for understanding the associated global climate change is an essential requirement (IPCC, 2007). There are several networks such as the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) carbon cycle greenhouse gas cooperative air sampling network2 (Conway et al., 2012, Dlugokencky et al., 2012), which provide measurements from observatories scattered over the globe. The fixed measurements are complemented with ship and aircraft observations. A majority of these observatories are over the US and European land surfaces and very few in the southern hemisphere (Reuter et al., 2010). Inter-annual variability of CO2 and CH4 at a global scale can be studied only through continuous spatial and temporal observations that are possible only through satellite measurements.
The important satellites/instruments recording global trace gases are (i) SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY) onboard ENVISAT (Bovensmann et al., 1999), launched in 2002 and (ii) GOSAT (Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite) (Kuze et al., 2009), launched in January 2009 by Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
SCIAMACHY is a grating spectrometer with eight channels that measures spectra of the scattered, reflected and transmitted solar radiations at 0.22 to 1.48 nm resolution in the 214 to 2386 nm range (Burrows and Chance, 1991, Burrows et al., 1995, Bovensmann et al., 1999). The absorption in the solar backscattered spectrum is used to obtain CO2 and CH4 vertical columns with sensitivity down to the earth’s surface (Buchwitz et al., 2005). SCIAMACHY provided trace gas data for almost a decade (http://www.sciamachy.org).
GOSAT is the current space mission dedicated to the measurement of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 (http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp). It has two instruments, TANSO-FTS (Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observation – Fourier Transform Spectrometer) and TANSO-CIA (TANSO – cloud and aerosol imager). TANSO-FTS is an interferometer having four bands, three spectral channels with 0.27 cm−1 resolution at 0.76, 1.6 and 2.0 μm, and one Thermal IR channel from 5.5 to 14.3 μm (0.5 cm−1 resolution) (Kuze et al., 2009).
The retrieval of data and their validation has been extensively done for SCIAMACHY (Buchwitz et al., 2005, Schneising et al., 2008, Schneising et al., 2012) and GOSAT (Butz et al., 2011, Morino et al., 2011, Wunch et al., 2011, Parker et al., 2011, Frankenberg et al., 2013). The satellite observations rely on the detection of near-IR vibrational overtone – combination bands for concentration retrieval. The region around 1.6 μm is suitable for both CO2 and CH4 (Prasad et al., 2014). Understanding global as well as regional variation in concentration of these gases is useful in identifying local sources and sinks, which may in turn be practical inputs for policy management for the GHGs.
The present work reports analysis of SCIAMACHY and GOSAT L3 data for both CO2 and CH4. The complete data period ranges from 2003–2011. The annual and seasonal variation in the gas concentrations globally as well as over India is studied, and comparison is made with ground based NOAA global view and with observations from Mauna Loa and Assekrem. Variation of the trace gases with season and other local effects are discussed.

Section snippets

Data analysis

The GOSAT provides global distribution of column-integrated dry air mole fractions of CO2 and CH4. The GOSAT L3 product (https://data.gosat.nies.go.jp), which is retrieved from the information in the L2 product, is used in the present paper. The L3 product provides a monthly average of CO2 and CH4 column abundances over a 2.5° ×ばつ 2.5° grid in HDF5 format. The public access data is available from June 2009 to November 2011. The obtained data is suitably converted and analysed using ENVI-4.4 image

Results and discussion

The global distribution obtained from GOSAT in Fig. 1a shows that there is a marked annual increase in CO2 dry air mole fraction. The seasonal variations over a year are also apparent with a minimum in September and high concentration around March. For CH4 in Fig. 1b, the annual increment is not significant but the seasonal variation is apparent. CH4 maximum occurs around September, and its concentration is low around June.
The SCIAMACHY and GOSAT global cumulative variation in CO2 is very well

Conclusions

The column averaged concentration of the two important GHGs, CO2 and CH4, obtained from the two remote sensing instruments, SCIAMACHY and GOSAT, are used to study global seasonal variations and variations over the Indian land boundary. The information from both the instruments shows similar variations except that the values from GOSAT are about 1–2% smaller compared to the SCIAMACHY values. This is probably due to their different observing sensitivities and retrieval algorithms.
Over India the CO

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out under the PRACRITI project on "Sensor system studies for monitoring greenhouse gases." The authors are grateful to the Director, Space Application Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad, Dr(s). J.S. Parihar and S. Panigrahy for encouragement and support. PP and SR acknowledge the use of computational and library facilities of IUCAA, Pune. The authors are also grateful to IUP, Bremen, WFM-DOAS team (http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/sciamachy/NIR_NADIR_WFM_DOAS/) for providing access to

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