Validation of methane and carbon monoxide from Sentinel-5 Precursor using TCCON and NDACC-IRWG stations
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
The Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) mission with the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board has been measuring solar radiation backscattered by the Earth's atmosphere and surface since its launch on 13 October 2017. In this paper, we present for the first time the S5P operational methane (CH 4 ) and carbon monoxide (CO) products' validation results covering a period of about 3 years using global Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) and Infrared Working Group of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC-IRWG) network data, accounting for a priori alignment and smoothing uncertainties in the validation, and testing the sensitivity of validation results towards the application of advanced co-location criteria. We found that the S5P standard and bias-corrected CH 4 data over land surface for the recommended quality filtering fulfil the mission requirements. The systematic difference of the bias-corrected total column-averaged dry air mole fraction of methane (XCH 4 ) data with respect to TCCON data is -0.26±0.56 % in comparison to -0.68±0.74 % for the standard XCH 4 data, with a correlation of 0.6 for most stations. The bias shows a seasonal dependence. We found that the S5P CO data over all surfaces for the recommended quality filtering generally fulfil the missions requirements, with a few exceptions, which are mostly due to co-location mismatches and limited availability of data. The systematic difference between the S5P total column-averaged dry air mole fraction of carbon monoxide (XCO) and the TCCON data is on average 9.22±3.45 % (standard TCCON XCO) and 2.45±3.38 % (unscaled TCCON XCO). We found that the systematic difference between the S5P CO column and NDACC CO column (excluding two outlier stations) is on average 6.5±3.54 %. We found a correlation of above 0.9 for most TCCON and NDACC stations. The study shows the high quality of S5P CH 4 and CO data by validating the products against reference global TCCON and NDACC stations covering a wide range of latitudinal bands, atmospheric conditions and surface conditions.
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The mean relative difference of 9.7 ± 1.3 % found in this study is similar to the systematic difference of 9.22 ± 3.45 % between TROPOMI and all TCCON stations.
“The mean relative difference found in this study of 9.7 ± 1.3 % is similar to the systematic difference of 9.22 ± 3.45 % between TROPOMI and all TC-CON stations (Sha et al., 2021).”
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Frausto-Vicencio, I., Heerah, S., Meyer, A. G., Parker, H. A., Dubey, M., & Hopkins, F. M. (2023) · Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics · doi:10.5194/acp-23-4521-2023 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
“We follow the a priori substitution method described in Jacobs (2021) and Sha et al. (2021) to calculate an additive factor for the EM27/SUN.”
- Authors
- Sha, M. K., Langerock, B., Blavier, J.-F. L., Blumenstock, T., Borsdorff, T., Buschmann, M., Dehn, A., De Mazière, M., Deutscher, N. M., Feist, D. G., García, O. E., Griffith, D. W. T., Grutter, M., Hannigan, J. W., Hase, F., Heikkinen, P., Hermans, C., Iraci, L. T., Jeseck, P., Jones, N., Kivi, R., Kumps, N., Landgraf, J., Lorente, A., Mahieu, E., Makarova, M. V., Mellqvist, J., Metzger, J.-M., Morino, I., Nagahama, T., Notholt, J., Ohyama, H., Ortega, I., Palm, M., Petri, C., Pollard, D. F., Rettinger, M., Robinson, J., Roche, S., Roehl, C. M., Röhling, A. N., Rousogenous, C., Schneider, M., Shiomi, K., Smale, D., Stremme, W., Strong, K., Sussmann, R., Té, Y., Uchino, O., Velazco, V. A., Vigouroux, C., Vrekoussis, M., Wang, P., Warneke, T., Wizenberg, T., Wunch, D., Yamanouchi, S., Yang, Y., & Zhou, M.
- Affiliations
- Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BE)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE)
- Space Research Organisation Netherlands (NL)
- University of Bremen (DE)
- European Space Research Institute (IT)
- University of Wollongong (AU)
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE)
- Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (ES)
- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX)
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- Finnish Meteorological Institute (FI)
- Ames Research Center (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- University of Liège (BE)
- St Petersburg University (RU)
- Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
- University of Reunion Island (RE)
- National Institute for Environmental Studies (JP)
- Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University (JP)
- National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NZ)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Cyprus Institute (CY)
- Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JP)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Sha, Mahesh Kumar
- Blumenstock, Thomas
- Borsdorff, Tobias
- Buschmann, Matthias
- Deutscher, Nicholas M.
- Feist, Dietrich G.
- Griffith, David W. T.
- Grutter, Michel
- Hannigan, James W.
- Iraci, Laura T.
- Kivi, Rigel
- Lorente, Alba
- Mahieu, Emmanuel
- Makarova, Maria V.
- Morino, Isamu
- Nagahama, Tomoo
- Ohyama, Hirofumi
- Palm, Mathias
- Petri, Christof
- Pollard, David F.
- Roche, Sébastien
- Roehl, Coleen M.
- Rousogenous, Constantina
- Schneider, Matthias
- Shiomi, Kei
- Smale, Dan
- Stremme, Wolfgang
- Strong, Kimberly
- Velazco, Voltaire A.
- Vrekoussis, Mihalis
- Wizenberg, Tyler
- Wunch, Debra
- Zhou, Minqiang
- ORCID
- Sha, Mahesh Kumar
- Langerock, Bavo
- Blumenstock, Thomas
- Borsdorff, Tobias
- Buschmann, Matthias
- Deutscher, Nicholas M.
- Feist, Dietrich G.
- García, Omaira E.
- Griffith, David W. T.
- Grutter, Michel
- Hannigan, James W.
- Heikkinen, Pauli
- Hermans, Christian
- Iraci, Laura T.
- Jeseck, Pascal
- Jones, Nicholas
- Kivi, Rigel
- Kumps, Nicolas
- Landgraf, Jochen
- Lorente, Alba
- Mahieu, Emmanuel
- Makarova, Maria V.
- Mellqvist, Johan
- Metzger, Jean-Marc
- Morino, Isamu
- Nagahama, Tomoo
- Notholt, Justus
- Ohyama, Hirofumi
- Ortega, Ivan
- Palm, Mathias
- Petri, Christof
- Pollard, David F.
- Robinson, John
- Roche, Sébastien
- Roehl, Coleen M.
- Röhling, Amelie N.
- Rousogenous, Constantina
- Schneider, Matthias
- Shiomi, Kei
- Smale, Dan
- Stremme, Wolfgang
- Strong, Kimberly
- Sussmann, Ralf
- Té, Yao
- Velazco, Voltaire A.
- Vrekoussis, Mihalis
- Wang, Pucai
- Warneke, Thorsten
- Wizenberg, Tyler
- Wunch, Debra
- Yamanouchi, Shoma
- Yang, Yang
- Zhou, Minqiang
- Venue
- Atmospheric Measurement Techniques
- Publisher
- Copernicus GmbH
- Published
- 2021-09-28
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 6249-6304
- ISSN
- 1867-1381 (ISSN-L)
- 1867-8548
- OpenAlex
- W3152954348
- Cited by
- 200
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 21
- FWCI
- 15.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Atmospheric measurement techniques (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- elib (German Aerospace Center) (acceptedVersion)
- Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Repository KITopen (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Online (University of Wollongong) (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion)
- Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Open Repository and Bibliography (University of Liège) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Arcimis (State Meteorological Agency) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- KITopen (cc-by)
- Funders
- European Space Agency (4000117151/16/ILG)
- Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (PEA 4000116692)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
- Keywords
- TROPOMI, methane, carbon monoxide, satellite validation, TCCON, XCH4, Xcos, co-location, bias correction, seasonal bias
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