A Concept for a Gas-Filter Correlation Radiometer to Remotely Sense the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Column from Space

Concern about the climatic effects of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 has resulted in a growing need, both scientifically and politically, to monitor atmospheric CO2. The development of a satellite instrument that could measure the global distribution of atmospheric CO2 would greatly improve our understanding of the global carbon cycle and provide a means of monitoring regional sources and sinks. In this paper, the potential of a proposed nadir-viewing, satellite-based remote sounding instrument consisting of gas-filter correlation radiometers (GFCRs) tuned to the 6300-(1.6 (mu)m) and 5000-cm^-1 (2 (mu)m) regions to globally measure the atmospheric CO2 column is analyzed. Although the design of such an instrument would present some engineering challenges, the proposed instrument has significant potential. Such an instrument should be able to measure the atmospheric CO2 column to a precision better than 1 ppmv.