Objectives

The Carbon Atmospheric Tracer Research to Improve Numerical schemes and Evaluation (CATRINE) project aims to evaluate and improve the numerical schemes for tracer transport in the new Copernicus anthropogenic CO2 emissions Monitoring and Verification Support capacity (CO2MVS) and more widely in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). 

The combination of observations and modelling in an integrated system approach provides the added value to what we already know from bottom-up inventories and models in terms of emissions and absorptions (sources and sinks) from human activities and natural processes, by consistently monitoring CO2 and CH4 surface fluxes in much more detail, both in space and time.

 

CATRINE has set the following key objectives:

  • Deliver improved methods to simulate resolved transport of tracers by the winds, focusing on the reduction of systematic errors. Emphasis will be given on mass conservation, as this has been identified as a priority research topic in the recommendations given by the CHE project, being a requisite for accurate flux estimation in the CO2MVS.
  • Assessment of the impact of improving tracer transport on the quality of the estimated CO2 and CH4 fluxes in the CO2MVS.
  • Provide protocols for the evaluation of tracer transport models at global and local scales.
  • Develop test beds linked to field campaign case studies and to long-term observations collected at supersites. The case studies will be selected from dedicated field campaigns at various ecosystems covering different types of emissions and natural fluxes. The purpose of these test beds is to attribute transport errors to specific transport processes. These test beds will be designed for global and local transport models.
  • Test developments in parametrizations of unresolved transport processes (turbulent mixing and convection).
  • Develop accurate metrics for tracer transport evaluation using a range of tracers and a wide range of observations at global and local scales. The metrics will be used in the operational CO2MVS to assess the implementation of new transport model developments, to characterise the transport accuracy and representativity in data assimilation with potential blacklisting of observations and to provide a quality control stamp of tracer transport accuracy.
  • Provide clear recommendations to the CO2MVS and the Carbon Cycle Community working with atmospheric inversion models regarding the evaluation and quality assessment of tracer transport models.