Zooming in on localized carbon dioxide emissions from space: the CO2Image demonstrator

Abstract

Monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) from space is one of the key components of the global and national-scale carbon monitoring systems currently being developed to support and verify greenhouse gas emission reduction measures. Current and planned satellite missions such as JAXA's GOSAT and NASA's OCO series and the European Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring (CO2M) mission aim at budgeting national and regional-scale emissions down to scales of large urban agglomerations and large point-sources with typical emissions in excess of 10 MtCO2/year. Here, we report on the continued evaluation of our mission concept "CO2Image" to be flown within the DLR CompactSatellite program. The mission is designed to complement the suite of planned CO2 sensors by zooming in on facility-scale emissions down to source strengths of 1 MtCO2/year. A fleet of CO2Image sensors would enable roughly 80% of the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants to be monitored. The enabling feature of the mission will be a target region approach covering target tiles of ~50x50km2 extent with ground-resolution as fine as 50x50m2. Thereby, CO2Image will allow for exhaust plumes from individual localized sources to be resolved, essentially providing super-resolution nests for survey missions such as CO2M. We outline the mission and sensor concept for a demonstrator mission compatible with launch as early as the year 2025 and we evaluate the prospective performance of the demonstrator in terms of spectral resolution, spectral coverage, noise and systematic errors, and radiometric error sources such as scene heterogeneity.