Linking Space-Borne and Aircraft Measurements over the Amazon Basin
Gonzi, Siegfried1; Palmer, Paul. I.1; Boesch, Hartmut2; Parker, Robert2; Gloor, Emanuel3; Freitas, Saulo R.4; Gatti, Luciana V.5; Crevoisier, Cyril6; Warneke, Thorsten7; Miller, John B.8; Ribeiro de Rocha, Humberto9; Shimabukuro, Yosio E.10
1University of Edinburgh, UNITED KINGDOM; 2University of Leicester, UNITED KINGDOM; 3University of Leeds, UNITED KINGDOM; 4Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais - INPE, BRAZIL; 5Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares IPEN, BRAZIL; 6Laboratoire de Meteorologie dynamique, CNRS, FRANCE; 7Universitaet Bremen, GERMANY; 8NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, UNITED STATES; 9University of Sao Paulo, BRAZIL; 10Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais – INPE, BRAZIL

We have an incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle, reflecting largely the expense and difficulty in sustaining a regular ground-based or airborne measurement campaign particularly over remote ecosystems such as tropical rainforests. Spaceborne measurements of CO2 and CH4 offer new data to study the carbon cycle over these regions, but we need to characterize any systematic errors if these data are to be used to infer accurate surface fluxes. We use CO2 and CH4 column data from the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT). Here, we describe the objectives and early results from the Amazonian Carbon Observatory (ACO,
http://www.leos.le.ac.uk/GHG/ACO/index.html) collaborative project between UK and Brazilian scientists. The principal objective of ACO is to combine in-situ and spaceborne measurements of CO2 and CH4 over the Amazon basin to characterize errors associated with GOSAT CO2 and CH4 column data in order to improve uncertainties associated with regional carbon flux estimates inferred from these data. As part of ACO, we are making monthly aircraft profile measurements of CO2 and CH4 over selected sites in Brazil (Salinopolis and Rio Branco) that will help us identify the contribution of free tropospheric CO2 to the total CO2 column and to help evaluate space-borne columns. We report model and data analyses associated with the space-borne and airborne measurements of CO2 and CH4.