Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

The GEOCARB instrument has been proposed to measure column-integrated concentrations of CO2, CO and CH4 from geostationary orbit. This talk will outline the instrument's capabilities and focus on a series of synthetic studies of its use in constraining sources of greenhouse gases at high resolution. We will show that the instrument is, indeed, capable of mapping CO2 sources at sub-urban scales (3x3km). The key measurement is the CO concentration which plays the dominant role in the constraint even when uncertainties in emission factors are accounted for. The case for methane is not quite as strong. Agricultural emissions can only be reasonably constrained at larger scales but strong industrial point sources can be quantified quite precisely.