Introduction

Space-borne measurements of the composition of Earth's lower atmosphere are relatively new. We, as a community, are just beginning to make full use of these data to learn about Earth's atmosphere. Currenty there are several satellite instruments orbiting the Earth (most of which are in the A-train) that can measure tropospheric O₃ and many of its photochemical precursors (e.g., NO₂, formaldehyde), CO, CO₂, CH₄, and aerosol optical properties. The biggest challenge facing the chemistry-climate community is how to best use these data. Below is a non-exhaustive list of projects we are currently involved with.

General Areas of Current Research

GOME, SCIAMACHY, OMI, GOME-2

In collaboration with a number of retrieval groups around the world, we analyze column observations of formaldehyde, NO₂ and tropospheric O₃ from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME), SCIAMACHY, the Ozone Monitoring Experiment (OMI), and GOME-2 (aboard MetOp). Our collaborative work is the first to fully exploit column observations of formaldehyde as constraints on biogenic VOC emissions, using coincident column measurements of NO₂ to remove scenes influences by biomass burning. This work is led by Michael Barkley. We are also assessing CO₂ and CH₄ column measurements from SCIAMACHY, which is led by Anthony Bloom and Annemarie Fraser.

TES and MLS

The Aura spacecraft, launched in July 2004, is the first mission dedicated to understanding atmospheric composition. The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) are key instruments aboard Aura that observe a range of tropospheric gases. In collaboration with the TES and MLS groups at JPL we are investigating the potential of these data, together with other instruments aboard Aura, to improve understanding of biomass burning emissions (e.g., vertical transport of pollutants) and how they affect tropospheric O₃. Siegfried Gonzi and Qian Li lead the analyses of these data to better understand emissions and subsequent vertical transport of biomass burning emissions of CO and HCN.

GOSAT

The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite, launched in January 2009, is designed to measure column CO₂ to a precision necessary to quantify subcontinental surface sources and sinks of CO₂. Liang Feng has developed an ensemble Kalman filter assimilation framework to use these data for source/sink estimation. Edinburgh is the lead investigator on an accepted GOSAT research announcement proposal and also collaborates with GOSAT science team members at the National Institute for Environment Science (NIES) via a joint British Council grant. Unfortunately, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory failed to reach its orbit after it was launched in February 2009.

MODIS and MISR

The MODIS and MISR instruments provide a wide range of environmental information, including aerosol optical properties, cloud optical properties, ocean color (a proxy for marine biomass), sea-surface temperature, and land cover characteristics. Claire Bulgin has been using the GRAPE aerosol and cloud dataset to investigate the Twomey indirect effect. Win Trivitayanurak is using MODIS and MISR aerosol data to test the GEOS-Chem aerosol simulation. Silvia Caldararu has started to look at MODIS retrievals of land-surface properties to develope a statistical model of phenology.