It is currently very difficult to develop policies for global climate change because of unresolved scientific uncertainties especially the sources and sinks of important anthropogenic radiatively active gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).  In particular, vegetation fires emit substantial amounts of CO2, and other greenhouse gases (GHG’s) to the atmosphere. To improve the determination of regional carbon fluxes, it is important to understand CO2 spatial variability from disturbance events such as vegetation fires. Emissions from vegetation fires exhibit great variation in time and space and have different properties (e.g. emission rate, chemistry, injection height) in different biomes.   Satellite remote sensing offers a unique way for quantifying fires at a global scale.  

The primary goal of this project is to quantify CO2 spatial variability from biomass burning at a global scale integrating multiple datasets including satellite, airborne, emission inventories and ground based measurements (where available) . Fusion of atmospheric CO2 retrievals from GOSAT with multi-satellite fire products will provide a novel means to assess CO2 emissions from fires. In this project, we are testing the potential of GOSAT Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for Carbon Observations (TANSO)-Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) data for biomass burning studies.