Natural and anthropogenic emissions and uptake at regional scales is currently limited by a sparse observational network. Measurements alone are insufficient to realize the societal benefits. There exist only ~100 monitoring stations worldwide, a small number compared with the heterogeneity of the terrestrial or oceanic carbon sources. With enough observations, it will become possible to keep track of regional emissions, over long periods of time. Ultimately, satellites will be involved in evaluating GHG emission reduction efforts and changes in global emissions. These data, although not as precise and accurate as surface measurements, will fill the spatial gaps the surface networks.
We will have a plan to apply a combination of satellite and ground - based measurement data to CarbonTracker in order to reduce uncertainty in regional carbon flux estimations and improve the temporal and spatial resolution of fluxes. Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) will provide retrievals of GHG columns from 2010. CarbonTracker outputs and satellite retrievals have to be validated with ground-base FT-IR, in-situ measurement of flask air sampling by an aircraft and tower measurements. Validation will allow to quantify uncertainties of CarbonTracker and satellite, and give a feedback for the improvement of CabonTracker procedures and retrieval algorithm of satellite data. And also, obtaining the minimum level of uncertainty requires the improved modeling effort.