On the influence of underlying elevation data on Sentinel-5 Precursor TROPOMI satellite methane retrievals over Greenland

Hachmeister, Jonas; Schneising, Oliver; Buchwitz, Michael; Lorente, Alba; Borsdorff, Tobias; Burrows, John P.; Notholt, Justus; Buschmann, Matthias

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-4063-2022

Articles | Volume 15, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-4063-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-4063-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 13

Research article

|

08 Jul 2022

Research article |

| 08 Jul 2022

On the influence of underlying elevation data on Sentinel-5 Precursor TROPOMI satellite methane retrievals over Greenland

Jonas Hachmeister, Oliver Schneising, Michael Buchwitz, Alba Lorente, Tobias Borsdorff, John P. Burrows, Justus Notholt, and Matthias Buschmann

Data sets

A scientific algorithm to simultaneously retrieve carbon monoxide and methane from TROPOMI onboard Sentinel-5 Precursor (https://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/carbon_ghg/ products/tropomi_wfmd/) Oliver Schneising, Michael Buchwitz, Maximilian Reuter, Heinrich Bovensmann, John P. Burrows, Tobias Borsdorff, Nicholas M. Deutscher, Dietrich G. Feist, David W. T. Griffith, Frank Hase, Christian Hermans, Laura T. Iraci, Rigel Kivi, Jochen Landgraf, Isamu Morino, Justus Notholt, Christof Petri, David F. Pollard, Sébastien Roche, Kei Shiomi, Kimberly Strong, Ralf Sussmann, Voltaire A. Velazco, Thorsten Warneke, and Debra Wunch https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-6771-2019

Copernicus Sentinel-5P, TROPOMI Level 2 Methane Total Column products European Space Agency (ESA) https://doi.org/10.5270/S5P-3p6lnwd

Global multi-resolution ter- rain elevation data 2010 (GMTED2010) [30-arc-second mean; 50° N, 90° W, 90° N, 0° W] J. J. Danielson and D. B. Gesch https://doi.org/10.5066/F7J38R2N

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Annual Land Ice Height, Version 4 [59° N,75° W,84° N,10° W] B. Smith, S. Dickinson, B. P. Jelley, T. A. Neumann, D. Hancock, J. Lee, and K. Harbeck https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL11.004

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Short summary

Sentinel-5P trace gas retrievals rely on elevation data in their calculations. Outdated or inaccurate data can lead to significant errors in e.g. dry-air mole fractions of methane (XCH₄). We show that the use of inadequate elevation data leads to strong XCH₄ anomalies in Greenland. Similar problems can be expected for other regions with inaccurate elevation data. However, we expect these to be more localized. We show that updating elevation data used in the retrieval solves this issue.