Ken Davis

(PSU Meteorology)

Atmospheric Carbon and Transport – America: An Earth Venture mission dedicated to improving the accuracy, precision and resolution of atmospheric inverse estimates of CO2 and CH4 sources and sinks

What Homepage GR
When Sep 02, 2015
from 03:30 pm to 04:30 pm
Where 112 Walker
Contact Name Steven Greybush
Contact email
Contact Phone 814-867-4926
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QuKen Davis 2014antification 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.