About this Research Topic
The largest contributions to the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration come from emissions due to the combustion of fossil fuels and the production of cement. Reduced uncertainties associated with these anthropogenic emissions at national, regional and local scales will contribute to better-informed policy decisions and help assess the effectiveness of CO2 emission reduction strategies. As part of the Copernicus Programme of the European Commission (EC), the European Space Agency (ESA), Eumetsat and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are jointly developing a CO2 monitoring capacity to address these needs. ESA manages the development of a dedicated mission to provide the measurements required for fossil CO2 emission monitoring as a component of the overall Copernicus Space Component.
Satellite and in-situ measurements of CO2, in addition to bottom-up inventories, will enable transparent and consistent quantitative assessment of CO2 emissions and their trends at the scale of large point sources, megacities, regions, countries, and the globe. The monitoring capacity will include advanced modelling, data assimilation and inversion tools. It will provide the European Union and other countries with a unique and independent source of information, which can be used to assess the effectiveness of policy measures, and to track their impact towards decarbonizing the world and meeting national emission reduction targets. Furthermore, there will be potential synergies at international level with observing systems under development by third parties.
This Research Topic aims to provide an overview of the CO2 monitoring mission, its mission objectives, the observational requirements on CO2 and CH4 and auxiliary measurement capabilities. Operational monitoring of anthropogenic emissions requires high precision (0.5–0.7 ppm) CO2 and CH4 observations with 2–3 days geometrical revisit time at mid latitudes. These observations are supported by (1) multi-angle polarimeter observations, to minimize biases due to incorrect light path corrections, and (2) NO2 observations as tracer for high temperature combustion. Retrieval of CO2 is further facilitated by including a cloud imager to filter out measurements impacted by low clouds and high-altitude cirrus.
The Research Topic welcomes publications of related activities and from dedicated studies for the implementation of the space component of this monitoring system, data exploitation and targeted services addressing CO2 and CH4 emission monitoring from space. We also welcome papers demonstrating capabilities to monitor CO2 and CH4 emissions with data from existing missions at national, regional or local scale and related activities such as validation and calibration studies in support of anthropogenic emission monitoring. We warmly encourage contributions from the international community to this Research Topic.
Keywords: anthropogenic emissions, greenhouse gases, satellite remote sensing, validation, surface flux inversions
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
