Quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) sources and sinks is needed both for climate management and for improving climate predictions.  Atmospheric measurements have the potential to provide this quantification, but atmospheric transport uncertainty has limited our ability to infer GHG fluxes from the existing, though sparse, measurement network.  Atmospheric measurements are increasing in density, but relatively little has been done to improve the atmospheric transport fields needed to infer GHG fluxes.

The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America (ACT-America) mission aims to enable and demonstrate a new generation of the atmospheric analysis systems used to quantify CO₂ and CH₄ sources and sinks at regional scales. The mission will be the first to focus primarily on improving the representation of atmospheric transport in these analytic systems. 

I will describe the plans for this NASA Earth Venture mission.  The five-year research plan includes five, 6-week flight campaigns utilizing two instrumented research aircraft, an ensemble of carbon cycle and atmospheric models, and comparisons to the newly launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2.  Opportunities for collaborative research are abundant.