The Copernicus CO2M mission for monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from space

Sierk, B.; Fernandez, Valérie; Bézy, Jean‐Loup; Meijer, Yasjka; Durand, Yannig; Courrèges-Lacoste, G. Bazalgette; Pachot, Charlotte; Löscher, Armin; Nett, H.; Minoglou, K.; Boucher, Luc; Windpassinger, Roman; Pasquet, Arnaud; Serre, Denis; Hennepe, F. te

doi:10.1117/12.2599613

Cited by 36 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The observations are generated by reducing the resolution of the output to 2 km x 2 km (through averaging over multiple output grid cells) and adding Gaussian random noise corresponding to a low (0.5 ppm) and a high noise (1.0 ppm) instrument scenario of CO2M (Sierk et al, 2021). Assuming a depth of the atmosphere of 950 hPa, this corresponds to a noise of 1.67x10 −5 mol cm −2 and 3.34x10 −5 mol cm −2 in total column CO 2 , respectively.…”

Section: Emission Quantification With a Co2m Like Satellitementioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of simulated CO₂ power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Brunner

Kuhlmann²,

Henne³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Global anthropogenic CO2 sources are dominated by power plants and large industrial facilities. Quantifying the emissions of these point sources is therefore one of the main goals of the planned constellation of anthropogenic CO2 monitoring satellites (CO2M) of the European Copernicus program. Atmospheric transport models may be used to study the capabilities of such satellites through observing system simulation experiments and to quantify emissions in an inverse modelling framework. How realistically the CO2 plumes of power plants can be simulated and how strongly the results may depend on model type and resolution, however, is not well known due to a lack of observations available for benchmarking. Here, we use the unique data set of aircraft in-situ and remote sensing observations collected during the CoMet measurement campaign down-wind of the coal-fired power plants at Bełchatów in Poland and Jänschwalde in Germany in 2018 to evaluate the simulations of six different atmospheric transport models. The models include three Large-Eddy-Simulation (LES) models, two mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, and one Lagrangian particle dispersion model (LPDM) and cover a wide range of model resolutions from 200 m to 2 km horizontal grid spacing. At the time of the aircraft measurements between late morning and early afternoon, the simulated plumes were slightly (at Jänschwalde) to highly (at Bełchatów) turbulent, consistent with the observations, and extended over the whole depth of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL, up to 1800 m a.s.l. in the case of Bełchatów). The stochastic nature of turbulent plumes puts fundamental limitations to a point-by-point comparison between simulations and observations. Therefore, the evaluation focused on statistical properties such as plume amplitude and width as a function of distance from the source. LES and NWP models showed similar performance and sometimes remarkable agreement with the observations when operated at comparable resolution. A resolution of 1 km or better, however, appears to be necessary to realistically capture turbulent plume structures. At coarser resolution, the plumes disperse too quickly especially in the near field (0–8 km from the source) and turbulent structures are increasingly smoothed out. Total vertical columns are easier to simulate accurately than the vertical distribution of CO2, since the latter is critically affected by profiles of vertical stability, especially near the top of the ABL. Cross-sectional flux and integrated mass enhancement methods applied to synthetic CO2M data generated from the model simulations with a random noise of 0.5 ppm–1.0 ppm suggest that emissions from a power plant like Bełchatów can be estimated with an accuracy of about 20 % from single overpasses. Estimates of the effective wind speed are a critical input for these methods. Wind speeds in the middle of the ABL appear to be a good approximation for plumes in a well-mixed ABL as encountered during CoMet.

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Section: Emission Quantification With a Co2m Like Satellitementioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of simulated CO₂ power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Brunner

Kuhlmann²,

Henne³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Finally, the critical technologies are identified and the results of the pre-development activities reviewed. More details on the CO2M observation principles and requirements can be found in [17]…”

Section: Co2m Mission Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Copernicus CO2M mission for monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from space: payload status

Durand¹,

Courrèges-Lacoste²,

Pachot³

et al. 2022

Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XXVI

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The European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with the European Commission (EC) and EUMETSAT, is developing as part of the EC's Copernicus programme, a space-borne observing system for quantification of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The anthropogenic CO2 monitoring (CO2M) mission will be implemented as a constellation of identical Low Earth Orbit satellites, to be operated over a period of more than 7 years. Each satellite will continuously measure CO2 concentration in terms of column-averaged dry air mole fraction (denoted XCO2) along the satellite track on the sun-illuminated part of the orbit, with a swath width of 250 km. Observations will be provided at a spatial resolution < 4 km 2 , with high precision (< 0.7 ppm) and accuracy (bias < 0.5 ppm), which are required to resolve the small atmospheric gradients in XCO2 originating from anthropogenic activities. The demanding requirements necessitate a payload composed of three instruments, which simultaneously perform co-located measurements: a push-broom imaging spectrometer in the Near Infrared (NIR) and Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) for retrieving XCO2 and in the Visible spectral range (VIS) for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a Multi Angle Polarimeter (MAP) and a three-band Cloud Imager (CLIM).Following the kick-off Mid 2020, the industrial activities have now passed the Satellite PDR allowing to enter the phase C/D. The paper summarises the payload activities performed during the phase B2 culminating with the PDR of the instruments and of the payload. The preliminary design of the CO2M mission's instruments, the progress of the technological activities and the first results of the development models are presented.

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“…Therefore, the European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with the EC and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), will implement the CO 2 Monitoring (CO2M) satellite mission as part of the Copernicus program. In order to monitor trends and the effectiveness of the efforts to reduce CO 2 emissions, the mission aims to provide observations of column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of CO 2 (XCO 2 ), at high spatial resolution (2 × 2 km 2 ) with high precision ( < 0.7 ppm) and low systematic bias ( < 0.5 ppm) (Meijer et al, 2020;Sierk et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simultaneous Retrieval of Trace Gases, Aerosols, and Cirrus Using RemoTAP—The Global Orbit Ensemble Study for the CO2M Mission

Sha

Landgraf

et al. 2022

Front. Remote Sens.

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In support of the Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring (CO2M) mission, this study evaluates the performance of the Remote sensing of Trace gas and Aerosol Product (RemoTAP) algorithm based on synthetic orbit measurements of realistic atmospheric and geophysical scenes over land. To make use of the added value of the multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) aboard the CO2M mission, the RemoTAP algorithm is developed to perform simultaneous retrieval of trace gas and aerosol properties from both MAP and CO2 imager (CO2I) measurements. At the same time, it has the capability to perform the retrieval of trace gas from only CO2I measurements. To set up the baseline tests, we apply a simple filter based on non-scattering retrievals in different CO2I bands which is able to filter out 80% of the cirrus-contaminated pixels, and after posterior filtering based on goodness of fit, 95% of the cirrus-contaminated cases are screened out. The MAP-CO2I retrieval method is able to reduce the aerosol-induced retrieval error in column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of CO2 (XCO2) in terms of RMSE and bias by more than a factor of 2, compared to CO2I-only retrievals on the filtered pixels. A strong correlation between XCO2 error and surface albedo in CO2I-only retrievals is significantly reduced for MAP-CO2I retrievals. Moreover, XCO2 biases in CO2I-only retrievals exhibit a significant spatiotemporal variability caused by a strong dependence on aerosol load. The biases can be up to 2 ppm over some regions, which are much larger than for the global case. It shows that only by the inclusion of MAP measurements, the large aerosol-induced biases can be mitigated, resulting in the retrievals that meet the mission requirement (precision <0.7 ppm and bias <0.5 ppm). The error estimates for XCO2 retrievals cover the uncertainties related to the instrument, aerosol, and cirrus, although other error sources, for example, in temperature and pressure profiles, may increase the overall error somewhat. The impact of cirrus on the retrieval, which can be significant, is also investigated. When not accounted for in the retrieval, the presence of a thin layer of cirrus with an optical thickness at 550 nm smaller than 0.3 can increase XCO2 errors by a factor of about 3 for MAP-CO2I retrievals, leading to an RMSE of 2.3 ppm for cirrus-contaminated scenes. When fitting cirrus properties, this can be reduced to 1.27 ppm for cirrus-contaminated cases. For CO2 retrievals using the proxy method, in a highly idealized situation where it is assumed that a perfect CH4 prior is available, an RMSE of 0.93 ppm and a bias of 0.3 ppm are achieved. These retrievals are hardly influenced by cirrus but depend linearly on the accuracy of the CH4 prior.

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The Copernicus CO2M mission for monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from space

Cited by 36 publications

References 31 publications

Evaluation of simulated CO₂ power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Evaluation of simulated CO₂ power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Copernicus CO2M mission for monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from space: payload status

Simultaneous Retrieval of Trace Gases, Aerosols, and Cirrus Using RemoTAP—The Global Orbit Ensemble Study for the CO2M Mission

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The Copernicus CO2M mission for monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from space

Cited by 36 publications

References 31 publications

Evaluation of simulated CO2 power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Evaluation of simulated CO2 power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Copernicus CO2M mission for monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from space: payload status

Simultaneous Retrieval of Trace Gases, Aerosols, and Cirrus Using RemoTAP—The Global Orbit Ensemble Study for the CO2M Mission

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Product

Resources

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Evaluation of simulated CO₂ power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models

Evaluation of simulated CO₂ power plant plumes from six high-resolution atmospheric transport models