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European Geosciences Union, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 4(10), p. 1481-1493, 2017

DOI: 10.5194/amt-10-1481-2017

European Geosciences Union, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions, p. 1-30

DOI: 10.5194/amt-2016-279

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Intercomparability of X<sub>CO<sub>2</sub></sub> and X<sub>CH<sub>4</sub></sub> from the United States TCCON sites

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Abstract. The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) has become the standard for long-term column-averaged measurements of CO2 and CH4. Here, we use a pair of portable spectrometers to test for intra-network bias among the four currently operating TCCON sites in the United States (US). A previous analytical error analysis has suggested that the maximum 2σ site-to-site relative (absolute) bias of TCCON should be less than 0.2 % (0.8 ppm) in XCO2 and 0.4 % (7 ppb) in XCH4. We find here experimentally that the 95 % confidence intervals for maximum pairwise site-to-site bias among the four US TCCON sites are 0.05–0.14 % for XCO2 and 0.08–0.24 % for XCH4. This is close to the limit of the bias we can detect using this methodology.