Accuracy comparison of monthly AIRS, GOSAT and SCIAMACHY data in monitoring atmospheric CH4 concentration

AIRS, GOSAT and SCIAMACHY are all very important remote sensors in observing atmospheric CH₄ concentrations, and produce different observation data which have their own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is important to decide which atmospheric CH₄ production is more agreeable to the surface monitor of CH₄ concentrations. Taking the WALIGUAN (China) site for example, correlation analysis on time series between ground-based observation data and the three remotely sensed data showed that CH₄ concentrations from the AIRS data had the highest correlation with the WLG ground-based observation data, with the correlation coefficient of 0.503, 0.565, and 0.559 for the CH₄ concentration at 160hPa, 260hPa and 360hPa, respectively. The CH₄ concentrations from SCIAMACHY and GOSAT had a relatively lower coefficient values with the measured data at WLG, at 0.355 and 0.279, respectively.