Using a portable FTIR spectrometer to evaluate the consistency of TCCON measurements on a global scale: The COCCON Travel Standard.

To fight climate change it is crucial to have a precise knowledge of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere and to monitor sources and sinks of GHGs. On global scales, satellites are an appropriate monitoring tool. For the validation of the satellite measurements, and to tie them to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) trace gas scale, ground based Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) networks are used, which provide reference data. To ensure the highest quality validation data, the network must be scaled to the WMO trace gas scale and have a very small site-to-site bias. Currently, the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is the de-facto standard FTIR network for providing reference data. To ensure a small site-to-site bias is a major challenge for the TCCON. In this work we describe the development and application of a new method to evaluate the site-to-site bias by using a remotely controlled portable FTIR spectrometer as a Travel Standard (TS) for evaluating the consistency of columnar GHG measurements performed at different TCCON stations and we describe campaign results for the TCCON sites in Tsukuba (Japan), East Trout Lake (Canada) and Wollongong (Australia). The TS is based on a characterized portable EM27/SUN FTIR spectrometer equipped with an accurate pressure sensor which is operated in an automated enclosure. The EM27/SUN is the standard instrument of the Collaborative Carbon Column Observing Network (COCCON). The COCCON is designed such that all spectrometers are referenced to a common reference unit located in Karlsruhe, Germany. To evaluate the long-term stability of the TS instrument, it is placed side-by-side with the TCCON instrument in Karlsruhe and the COCCON reference unit (the EM27/SUN spectrometer SN37, which is operated permanently next to the TCCON-KA site) between deployments to collect comparing measurements. At each of the visited TCCON sites, the TCCON spectrometers collected low-resolution (LR) (0.5 cm^-1) and high-resolution (HR) (0.02 cm^-1) measurements in an alternating manner. In East Trout Lake (ETL), the TCCON spectrometer broke down while the TS was en route to the station. Hence, no side-by-side comparison was possible there. For Tsukuba and Wollongong the agreement found for XCO₂ is on the 0.1 % level. For XCH₄ the agreement is at the 0.2 % level, with the low-resolution measurements showing a low bias at both sites and for both gases. For XCO the deviations are up to 7 %. The reason for this is likely to be an known issue with the CO a priori profiles used by TCCON over source regions. The pressure analysis reveals excellent agreement (0.027 hPa, 0.135 hPa, and 0.094 hPa) for the Tsukuba, ETL, and Wollongong sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]