[CarbonTracker] CarbonTracker update

[CarbonTracker announcements]

Dear Colleagues,

The latest revision of CarbonTracker Near-Real Time (CT-NRT) is now available at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/CT-NRT/.  This is an extension of the CT-NRT v2015-2 product to run through the end of November, 2015. Surface fluxes and 3-D mole fraction fields are available for download at ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/carbontracker/co2/CT-NRT/.

CT-NRT is made possible by advance availability of provisional CO2 measurements.  Data providers from the NOAA observatory, flask, tall tower, and aircraft programs have agreed to release these near-real time observations, even though the data have not been fully quality-controlled and screened.  This is a major step forward, and on behalf of the CO2 community, I'd like to recognize and thank these researchers for their commitment to advancing carbon cycle science.  If you would like to use these NRT observations in your research, please contact me.  The fully-screened and quality-controlled versions of these datasets (and many others) will be available in late summer when GLOBALVIEW+ 2016 is released.

Our next standard CarbonTracker update, CT2015, is currently scheduled for release in March.  It will extend through the end of 2014, and will provide the basis for upcoming revisions to the CT-NRT product.  With CT2015, we will introduce a host of improvements, but the most significant change involves observational constraints.  With the new GLOBALVIEW+ product, we now have hourly averages from continuous instruments.  Previously, we were presented with one constraint per day from such instruments.  This not only increases the number of data we need to process by more than an order of magnitude, but it also requires us to change the weights assigned to observations.  We have developed a new weighting scheme designed to fit each dataset and to account for the pronounced seasonal variability of CarbonTracker performance in matching observations.  While this schme markedly improves CarbonTracker's statistical performance, its implementation has required extra development time. We apologize for the resulting delay in releasing CT2015.

Best Regards,

Andy Jacobson and Ken Schuldt,
for the CarbonTracker team

-- 
Andy Jacobson
andy.jacobson at noaa.gov

NOAA Earth System Research Lab
Global Monitoring Division
325 Broadway R/GMD1
Boulder, Colorado 80305

303/578-2237
-- 
Andy Jacobson
andy.jacobson at noaa.gov

NOAA Earth System Research Lab
Global Monitoring Division
325 Broadway R/GMD1
Boulder, Colorado 80305

303/578-2237