Sampling of Space-Based Observations of XCO2 Associated With Biomass Burning Events

- The OCO-2 Level 3 assimilation product fills in gaps where OCO-2 does not have observations.
- Although the Level 3 clearly shows the increased CO2 over the Amazon associated with the September 2017 biomass burning event, the total amount of CO2 may be underestimated because of a sampling bias.
- The TCCON observations match fairly well with the OCO-2 observations and can be used to estimate the accuracy of the OCO observations and the temporal sampling bias. However, since it is a remotely sensed product, it may suffer the same sampling biases associated with biomass burning events as OCO-2.
- Although aircraft data show that there is a significant variation in xCO2 with altitude, they suggest the OCO-2 fused products created by kriging may be better than the assimilated product at detecting large deviations from the average state on daily and regional scales.