Departmental Seminar: Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Carbonyl sulfide and Methane for Understanding of Carbon Cycle, Climate Change, And Sustainability by Dr. Le Kuai

Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Carbonyl sulfide and

Methane for Understanding of Carbon Cycle,

Climate Change, And Sustainability

by Dr. Le Kuai

Assistant Researcher, UCLA

Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science Engineering

Understanding the processes controlling greenhouse gases is essential for designing appropriate policies to help mitigate climate change. With advanced technology, important carbon-containing anthropogenic greenhouses gases such as CO₂, CH₄ and carbonyl sulfide (OCS) have been monitored daily and globally by satellite instruments, including NASA OCO-2 (for CO₂), JAXA GOSAT (for CO₂ and CH₄), and NASA Aura TES (for CO₂ and OCS).

Terrestrial photosynthesis is the primary CO₂ sink over land and is important for understanding the fate of atmospheric CO₂. Previous attempts measuring CO₂ alone cannot accurately characterize photosynthetic intake because of the simultaneous, CO₂-releasing process of respiration. OCS, which is involved in photosynthesis only, has therefore been introduced as a new tracer of photosynthesis. I will discuss my work on the retrieval algorithm of free tropospheric OCS and the inverse modeling of OCS surface flux, using TES thermal infrared observations at the top of atmosphere. This work presents the first evidence of the tropical oceanic missing source over the Indo-Pacific region.

CH₄, being the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, impacts on both climate and air quality but our knowledge about the CH₄ cycle is far from complete. CH₄ emissions from fugitive sources such as from livestock feeding lots, oil tanks, and natural gas facilities are believed to be underestimated. These small-scale sources are hard to be detected from space. The NASA JPL’s airborne Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES) has recently been proposed to survey fugitive CH₄ emissions over city-scale regions. I will show the quantitative retrieval of HyTES detected CH₄ plumes from the Kern River Oil Field (KROF) near Bakersfield and the recent Aliso Canyon gas leaking, California.

Thursday, March 16, 2017 | 3:30 p.m. | Burnside Hall | Room 934

Coffee will be available.  We hope you will be able to attend!