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.
OT: Arctic ROOS seems to show an uptick in ice area as of 12sep
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Wow, they measure Methane with a sensitivity of 0.05 ppm from space, very impressing.
I would like to see an entire year of data that includes our entire planet including our oceans.
This data could be animated to we could see what is happening with the CO2.
The high levels and vast area’s with high CO2 levels covering deserts like the Middle East, North Africa, South Africa, South America and Australia, could be explained by the fact that there is no or not sufficient plant life available to absorb it.
I also wonder why:
1. Italy is blank.
The Northern part of Italy is industrialized but the entire country is emitting CO2 due to it’s geological structure and volcanic activity.
2. Spain is blank with a single concentration in Galicia which has NO INDUSTRY or a huge urban center?
3. The spots that appear in Alaska and the spot that appears in the Pacific Ocean for the coast of Columbia (could be Haiti)
tallbloke (23:42:02) :
I don’t understand the map. What do the enormous areas of white represent?
REPLY: no data
What kind of satellite gets no data over the equator? Does this near uniform white for the equatorial belt indicate no data or no CO2, i.e., all absorbed by the jungles? cloud cover?
Where’s all the methane that’s supposedly being released from the permafrost?
No satellite coverage? I note blue dots for Hudson’s Bay (Churchill?) and S.W. Alaska (Anchorage?).
I am a little skeptical that a satellite is sensitive enough to make an accurate 30 ppm differentiation.
Hmm. Except for the addition of a few more red dots on the CO2 map, both maps are the same.
Two more remarks:
I forgot to mention the Southern Island of New Sealand.
If this map is going to be used in Copenhagen,
There won’t be a Climate Treaty
I doubt corn and soybeans had very much impact in April. Especially in the US breadbasket. Even tree leaves and most weeds would not be present in the northern states.
Why is CO2 showing up in Africa? Hasn’t anyone here heard of Lake Kivu?
CO2 really DOES kill (when it’s caused by vulcanism).
Isn’t it a bit misleading to refer to them as ‘hotspots’. This implies temperature whereas the report seems to indicate concentration.
Too bad they have ‘no data’ from the areas in Siberia/ Northern Russia that have been showing temperature increases.
I love it. Lots of ‘no data’. Let’s build a religion out of it.
So the trace gas CO2, necessary for all life on earth, varies by a few 10s of parts per million? That’s an insignificant +-5% (rough estimate). Anybody know what the errors are in the system? Point to point, day to day? I would guess the error of direct measurement would fall in the same range as the results … +-5%, but it’s just my guess — The PDF didn’t say, or I missed it.
I don’t see anything that could be called real ‘hotspots’. Using red colors to show +-5% variation, doesn’t convince me. If measurements showed concentrations above the global average of say triple global averages, then to me that would be ‘hotspots’. But since many scientists put CO2 concentrations as high as 4,000-10,000 ppm over geologic time, and nothing bad happened to earth, seems like we have a ways to go.
I also note that the GCMs say there should be a massive ‘hotspot’, Al Gore’s blanket if you will, surrounding the earth between +-15 degrees latitude, it’s still missing.
Sometimes you have instruments that are too good to make real world use of the very fine grained data. it’s like the “tiny tim” effect for CO2 concentration. Technologically interesting but probably not useful in the end.
Finally — What did people expect? Don’t you know the concentration of CO coming out of a tailpipe exhaust can be lethal, so don’t stick that in your mouth. Heck, even your Alka Seltzer fizz can gag you if you don’t first blow off the CO2 concentration.
It is interesting though.
Looking at the maps, I have to say I don’t trust it at all. Atlanta and Charlotte, not major cities but big ones nonetheless, have more CO2 than LA. The last time I had to fly to Los Angeles the smog was visible 30 minutes before we landed. Yet somehow LA has less CO2 PPM than Atlanta, Charlotte, and New York. I don’t believe it. Something is amiss.
[Bad joke alert] Atlanta is a Delta hub, CNN, Coca-Cola plant, and not much else. All that hot air from CNN and the Weather Channel may be causing these problems. Then Charlotte and New York are big banking cities. All the heat Congress has been putting on banks may be causing that too.
This is stunning?!
Galapagos: 370 ppm, in the Pacific near equator. New zealand the same, 370 ppm approx,
Variations of the yearly season does not explain this:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CO2%20MaunaLoa%20MonthlySince1958.gif
Mauna loa will not go under 384-5 ppm this year.
To get Pacific CO2 content down to 370 ppm we must go back to year 2000.
Only 2-3 percent of the globe (?) seems to have 385ppm or higher?
I expect som explantion, or just sadly a change of data as normal. And the change happends to be up.
Non the less, the process of the biosphereeating up CO2 from the humans does appear sound, definetely not out of the question:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
As our good Anthony says: “Indeed we live in exciting times ” 🙂
Thinking it more seriously, thus not taking it as a joke, it seems what they have measured is DUST and SOOT. They should consider that CO2 is invisible, it is not black.
This is interesting:
Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in three narrow bands of frequencies, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM). This means that most of the heat producing radiation escapes it. About 8% of the available black body radiation is picked up by these “fingerprint” frequencies of CO2.
http://www.nov55.com/ntyg.html
The whole range for the CO2 data is +/-4%, wonder what sigma for the measurement is? In reviewing the AIRS animation, I noticed the highest concentration in the western hemisphere is in April, in Alaska/Canada. This sparse data seems to disagree with that. What is going on in northern Alaska and Canada in April? As far as I can tell the snow there is thinking about melting in a few weeks, and that’s about it.
No need for any Cap & Trade, except for Australia 🙂
It would be interesting to see what this satellite data would look like from the time period when the California wild fires or the Australian wild fires were burning. I suppose it is just a matter of time before such a “calibration” event occurs now that they system is operational to determine if the system can see a CO2 plume from such an event. The central African areas that show high column CO2 could be explained by slash and burn agriculture and as mentioned above volcanic activity along the rift.
I find it interesting that the satellite has no problem determining CO2 concentrations over unpopulated regions of Australia, but is blind to CO2 concentrations from equally unpopulated areas of the American west, it is not even showing any concentrations from the southern California areas around Los Angeles and San Diego, but sees CO2 in unpopulated areas of Northern Mexico.
That leads me to suspect that a lot of the white areas are off scale low, not “no data” areas. Given the following statement in their PDF:
I think it likely that no useful conclusion can be made about what is going on in the white areas, because we have no way of knowing if they represent areas where the data was dropped for the above reasons, or the the calculated concentrations were off scale low or high. They need to add additional color codes to their map that shows areas where it was off scale or dropped in processing.
Larry
hotrod (08:38:13) :
It would be interesting to see what this satellite data would look like from the time period when the California wild fires or the Australian wild fires were burning. I suppose it is just a matter of time before such a “calibration” event occurs now that they system is operational to determine if the system can see a CO2 plume from such an event. The central African areas that show high column CO2 could be explained by slash and burn agriculture and as mentioned above volcanic activity along the rift.
they measured the CO from the fires in Greece with AIRS but I cannot find it now. I found one for the California fires:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2303
the difference is that AIRS measures from 5000 meters up
whereas this new satellite is supposed to measure from ground up. ( to tax polluters?)
Patience, maybe in a year we will get graphs corresponding to the AIRS graphs but close to the ground where the sources are.
Bacteria and soil life will be the big emitters and consumers and will far outweight human production.
Just a back of the envelope calculation of respiration rates per square inch of soil is stunning when magnified across the landmass of the US.
The rates will change by season, humidity, and solar input as well. Many plants make sugar that the soil life uses…
Anyway to use the same type if AIRS instrumentation to get readings from the ground or to use a balloon to do a CO2 sounding?
All both maps appear to me to show is that both gases are found in bands around the earth at appox. 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south. Until we know why that is happening, all else, like the little ‘hot spots’ are meaningless.
So we have extensive “blue spots” (which, according to the graphic bar) mean “low” – or below average – methane-CO2) over:
Isolated dry Pacific islands
Australia’s extremely dry central deserts
Brasil’s extremely wet southern wetlands
China’s extremely ??? humanized and dirty and ecologically dirty northern region
China’s not-quite-so-extremely dirty southern hills
Africa’s not-developed at all central area
We have extremely dense red dots over particular areas i north china – could be human influence
Africa – ?
Newfoundland ?
the hills and mountains of West Virginia – but not the east coast where the mined coal is burned! – and not the open pit lignite mines of South Dakota and the far west and east Texas
Central Iraq and Iran – oil flares or leaks? Not that much.
The “only places” where “average CO2 or methane is present worldwide is the Sahara Desert!
—
So, how do they “fix” (or “adjust” or “correct” or “corrupt”) this data? What scheme will they use to show the results their models’ want?
austin (09:27:23) :
Bacteria and soil life will be the big emitters and consumers and will far outweight human production.
Just a back of the envelope calculation of respiration rates per square inch of soil is stunning when magnified across the landmass of the US.
The rates will change by season, humidity, and solar input as well. Many plants make sugar that the soil life uses…
====
If so, then explain why “average” CO2 and methane are only present in the near-tropical deserts. And the near-tropical jungles.
Bill Marsh (07:44:13) :
“Too bad they have ‘no data’ from the areas in Siberia/ Northern Russia that have been showing temperature increases.”
I don’t see what a temp increase in Siberia (small) would have to do with CO2. Btw, I was told by a Russian diplomat at a cocktail party that Russia is anxious for N. America to sign Kyoto. They hope to be able to sell abundant carbon credits since their industry had collapsed making them one of the big “cleaner-uppers”. I would be wary of reported temperature increases in Siberia coming from a nation of chess players.
If it’s true that only 10% of the earth is suited for CO2/Methane observation from space, I think it’s a wasted project.