Using high temporal frequency data for CO2 inversions

Abstract

Almost all previous inversions for CO2 sources and sinks from atmospheric measurements have used monthly or annual mean data. Here, we assess the potential benefits and challenges of using higher time resolution CO2 concentration data. Inversions are performed with synthetic data since there are currently only limited continuous CO2 measurements available. The use of synthetic data also enables the inversion quality to be evaluated in terms of both systematic biases in the estimated sources and the magnitude of the source uncertainties. When estimating sources for 22 large regions, we find that using high time resolution data gives large reductions in uncertainty compared to using monthly me..