WUWT reader Anna V. alerts us to the preliminary report from the JAXA GOSAT Project. According to the project website:
The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) Project is a joint effort promoted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and the Ministry of the Environment (MOE).
NIES organized the research team dedicated to the GOSAT project within its organization in April 2004, and since then has been working for the research and development with respect to GOSAT “IBUKI”.
For a complete description of how GOSAT works, please read their summary here (PDF)
First let’s have a look at Global Methane (CH4):
Note that the areas with the most concentration of methane are in China, Middle East, Southern Europe, and Africa.
The real surprise comes from the GOSAT CO2 data analysis. This first global CO2 map released from GOSAT is shown below:
While this is just a short data set comprising a few days from April 20-28th 2009, it does show some surprising features for hotspots of CO2 in the atmosphere over many of the same areas methane had higher concentrations. One difference is that some spots in the Eastern USA, presumably the larger cities, show CO2 hotspots also. From looking at the large CO2 map, it appears Atlanta, Charlotte, and NYC are the three cities in the USA with higher CO2 concentrations.
However, China, India, Southern Europe, the Mideast and Africa have the majority of the CO2 hotspots.
Here’s what JAXA has to say about their CO2 analysis:
Carbon dioxide column averaged dry air mole fractions (XCO2) for clear-sky scenes analyzed using observations at shortwave infrared bands (radiance spectrum uncalibrated data) from the IBUKI greenhouse gas observation sensor (TANSO-FTS). Clear-sky scenes at individual TANSO-FTS observation points are determined using measurements from the cloud/aerosol sensor (TANSO-CAI). Data are excluded where the associated radiance spectra are saturated, and where noise is relatively large due to weak ground surface reflection.
In the initial analysis, the late April observation data shows a hemispheric gradient, with larger values over the Northern Hemisphere (Note 1), consistent with other measurements. Derived XCO2 values are generally lower than model predictions (Note 2). This is thought to be due to the analysis involving uncalibrated radiance spectrum data and due to the parameter adjustment for the analysis method not being finalized. High concentrations are observed over continental China and Central Africa, which may be caused by measurement interference due to the presence of atmospheric dust. Asian dust (yellow sands) were observed over continental China during the observation period, and the existence of dust storm-like and smoke-like phenomena were observed in the relevant locations in Africa. Future investigation is required to understand these errors. Data calibration, processing parameter adjustment, and product validation required for quantitative discussion of the analysis results, will be carried out in the future.
(Note 1) The analysis showed Northern Hemisphere results to be on average around 10 ppm higher than Southern Hemisphere results. An atmospheric transport model calculation predicts the difference between north and south at this time to be 2-4 ppm.
(Note 2) Southern Hemisphere values were on average approximately 17 ppm lower than the model calculation, while Northern Hemisphere latitude band average values were approximately 7-12 ppm lower.
It will be very interesting to see if the hotspot CO2 distribution holds with more data from GOSAT. If it does we’ll be asking the question of why the USA seems to have less CO2 concentrations than other parts of the world. I’m sure it will fuel some political and policy debate.
We’ll be watching for releases of more complete data with better coverage.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Also, if they are satellite measurements, why there is no ocean data?
I though Siberia should be releasing huge amounts of CH4 trapped in ice due to global warming.
Sorry for the double post.
Reading the summary, which I found very interesting, only 10% of the globe is suitable for calculating co2 concentrations. That is why so much is white due to cloud cover and I guess low sun angles at high lattitudes. That map was from late April 2009 with the Nth hemisphere in the full bloom of spring. It would probably be the dry season in sub Saharan Africa, savanna fires may be the cause of the high co2 levels there?
As for Manfred’s sense of climate justice, if we assume that those red areas in china represent millions of american jobs exported in ‘globalization’ then chinese carbon credits need to be paid to the US.
It is interesting to correlate this with historical pollution tracking and jetstream patterns http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/pjr/pubs/2000JD900842.pdf which imply a dumpout between Hong Kong (lat. 22N) and Hawaii (lat. 21N). Although an early reach, it is possible to speculate that the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements are biased by the huge CO2 emissions from China and the Middle East. Anyone tried a correlation between ramp up of fossil fuel use in China and the Mauna Loa http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html measurements?
Why does this satellite only measure CO2 concentrations over land? Surely it would be interesting to compare this with what is going on over the other 70% of the Earth’s surface. You know, oceanic outgassing, undersea volcanoes and the like. It would be interesting to see how we stack up against nature.
If white truly represent no data than about 90% of the needed data is missing. I find this chart rather useless.
India and China are obvious; but what about equatorial Africa? The jungle can’t be giving off that much.
And no data at all for Brazil makes this entire concept pretty questionable.
The white is no data? Interesting that there is a lot of white around the red dot hot spots. I would have thought that the red spot areas would have abundant data around them.
The ozzie MP whose been asking for data of CO2 and warming to be shown will be delighted to know that the air over Australia is close to pristine! Was there a bit of political correctness in the interpretation over Asia? China would have looked horible with all the associated orange that most likely wraps around the red dots.
I’d say that its pretty obvious that all of the massive amounts of CO2 produced in the USA is being blown over to the third world countries. We should be ashamed of doing that to them.
Northern hemisphere winter compared to NH summer ought to be interesting. Supposedly the plants will be inactive and draw less co2 from the atmosphere. Since this is uncalibrated data I am curious what the maps will look like afterwards. Methane itself breaks down into co2 after about 10 years. So we go to a green house gas afterwards that is another 100 years minimum in the atmosphere (co2) after the breakdown of methane.
Methane over Texas and Argentina is explainable because of cattle farting, but over Sahara?.
There is one CO2 point over Galapagos volcanic island…but the rest frankly unexplained.
Evidently CO2 it is a trace gas.
Crosspatch asked “Does this mean that the data are to be adjusted to fit the model predictions”. According to what I read the data already is adjusted to the models..”three-dimensional CO2 concentration distribution on a global scale are estimated using an atmospheric transport model.”
I did not see an estimate for Hawaii, would we not calibrate against known observations? I gather from reading that while clouds are eliminated as much as possible the overlapping absorbtion bands of water vapor are difficult to process.
No conclusions can be drawn from this yet if they’re still trying to calibrate and understand the effect of “dust storm-like and smoke-like phenomena.”
Wow! Here in Sweden we are totally innocent from the looks of it! 😀
Seriously; The average, from just glancing at those colored dots really shouldn’t be higher than ~370 ppm, a bit from the ~390 so often mentioned. Or?
The money used in this project would have been much better employed in helping third world starving children to produce more CO2 (EATING!).
Nevertheless it demonstrates how foolish the concept of greenhouse gases is.
crosspatch (23:52:14) :
Perhaps it means they’re looking at data never seen before and have a lot to learb about signal, contamination, and noise. From the .pdf they’re looking at light that has reflected off ground, not clouds, so I’m sure there is a lot to learn about the data they’re seeing. It’s not clear to me just what the resolution is in the four IR bands they’re looking at, so it may well be a challenge to remove the color of the reflected light to extract the signal.
OTOH, the opening of the .pdf makes it clear they have some expectations of what they’ll see.
The satellite has a cloud and aerosol imager, no word in the .pdf as to whether it can be used for looking at long-term cloud cover, I suspect it can, it would be nice to know if there are plans to do that.
As Greece’s hard industry is tourism, and April is a time of the year when neither air conditioning nor heating is needed, I am hard put to explain the red dot over it.
I do remember thought that prof Plimer had said that the island of Milos, from the CO2 vents emits about 2% of the world CO2. This would explain it. This summer I went on an exploration with my young grandsons just 70 km out of Athens in the remains of another extinct volcano that is still spewing sulphur, in Sussaki. It is part of the same volcanic arc.
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page38?oid=49496&sn=Detail
He has written a book on Milos: Milos: Geologic History by Ian Plimer, so probably the original numbers are there.
As for the IBUKI results, I hope there is little massaging. Already the units, averaged ppm in a column, raise questions. I would really like to see the near surface numbers to compare with the compilation by Beck.
Isn’t it interesting that the first reaction to data that differs from model predictions is that “the data needs adjustment”? Although that may well turn out to be true, the reflected mind-set is revealing. Speaking of data, take a look at the current ASMU-A satellite record for 14,000 feet (the one Spencer likes to track). The September anomaly is going to be just huge in the positive direction. Watts up with that?
Claude Harvey
We have frequenly been told that CO2 id “well mixed” worldwide and that measuring at an active volcano (Mauna Loa) is as good a location as any for checking worldwide concentrations.
This limited data set shows variations of ±5%, with a mean of about 370 ppm.
Comments, anyone?
Re: Allan M R MacRae (23:27:37) :
Wow, that movie was very well crafted in a way to elicit maxim danger.
Are the white areas actually no data, or are they areas where the data falls below the 360 ppm threshold? I note there are some colored spots in the oceans, so it seems the satellite was taking data.
Jeff Green (05:42:34) :
[Northern hemisphere winter compared to NH summer ought to be interesting. Supposedly the plants will be inactive and draw less co2]
Yes, shoud be really interesting. Especially as the yearly variation detected at Moana Loa is more pronounced towards the higher northern latitudes. For those complaining about the lack of data in equatorial Africa and the Amazon it’s the ITCZ, (basically a swathe of cloud, rain, storms and monsoon i.e. the wet tropics)
” What is that red dot in the Canadian Arctic?”
A cluster of polar bears in need of thinning?
[The ozzie MP whose been asking for data of CO2 and warming to be shown will be delighted to know that the air over Australia is close to pristine!]
May be a bit different for the next two months as the savanna in the top end catches fire.
When things are warming bio-mass rules. When things are cooling ice rules.
Where is the mystery? I prefer bio-mass governance because I am one.