Publication Date:
2013-02-13
Description:
[1] Statistical modelling is at the root of CO 2 atmospheric inversion systems, but few studies have focused on the quality of theirassigned probability distributions. In this paper, we assess the reliability of the error models that are in input and in output of aspecific CO 2 atmospheric inversion system, when it assimilates surface air sample measurements. We confront these error models with the mismatch between 4D simulations of CO 2 and independent satellite retrievals of the total CO 2 column.Taking all sources of uncertainties into account, it is shown that both prior and posterior errorsare consistent with the actual departures, to the point that the theoretical error reduction brought by the surface measurements on the simulation of the GOSAT total column measurements(15%)corresponds to the actual reduction seen over the mid-latitude and Tropical lands and over the Tropical oceans.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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