Articles | Volume 9, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-9-5227-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-9-5227-2016
Research article
 | 
27 Oct 2016
Research article |  | 27 Oct 2016

Quantification of uncertainties in OCO-2 measurements of XCO2: simulations and linear error analysis

Brian Connor, Hartmut Bösch, James McDuffie, Tommy Taylor, Dejian Fu, Christian Frankenberg, Chris O'Dell, Vivienne H. Payne, Michael Gunson, Randy Pollock, Jonathan Hobbs, Fabiano Oyafuso, and Yibo Jiang

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Cited articles

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Short summary
We present an analysis of uncertainties in global measurements of the column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of CO2 (XCO2) by the satellite OCO-2. The analysis is based on our best estimates for uncertainties in the OCO-2 operational algorithm and its inputs. From these results we estimate the "variable error", which differs between soundings, to infer the error in the difference of XCO2 between any two soundings. Variable errors are usually < 1 ppm over ocean and ~ 0.5–2 ppm over land.
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