Data Drought in the Humid Tropics: How to Overcome the Cloud Barrier in Greenhouse Gas Remote Sensing

Autor: C. Frankenberg, Y. M. Bar‐On, Y. Yin, P. O. Wennberg, D. J. Jacob, A. M. Michalak
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 51, Iss 8, Pp n/a-n/a (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1944-8007
0094-8276
DOI: 10.1029/2024GL108791
Popis: Abstract Diagnosing land‐atmosphere fluxes of carbon‐dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) is essential for evaluating carbon‐climate feedbacks. Greenhouse gas satellite missions aim to fill data gaps in regions like the humid tropics but obtain very few valid measurements due to cloud contamination. We examined data yields from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory alongside Sentinel‐2 cloud statistics. We find that the main contribution to low data yields are frequent shallow cumulus clouds. In the Amazon, the success rate in obtaining valid measurements vary from 0.1% to 1.0%. By far the lowest yields occur in the wet season, consistent with Sentinel‐2 cloud patterns. We find that increasing the spatial resolution of observations to ∼200 m would increase yields by 2–3 orders of magnitude and allow regular measurements in the wet season. Thus, the key to effective tropical greenhouse gas observations lies in regularly acquiring high‐spatial resolution data.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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