Supervisor : Dr Hartmut Boesch (hb100@le.ac.uk)

Details of Project

In 2009, the Japanese space agency JAXA launched the first dedicated satellite sensor GOSAT to globally map the distribution of greenhouses gases CO₂ and CH₄ which provides a unique view on the exchange of CO₂ and CH₄ between the atmosphere and surface. This dataset will provide new insights into the natural and anthropogenic processes that are responsible for the observed increase in the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

A strong focus of our group is to generate highly-accurate CO₂ and CH₄ datasets from GOSAT and to prepare upcoming missions such as the NASA OCO-2 mission or the ESA Carbonsat mission.

The PhD student will exploit the CO₂ and CH₄ datasets from GOSAT to challenge land surface models and to study key emission regions. One focus will be on developing a direct method to infer surface-to-atmosphere fluxes from GOSAT observations based on mass balance. The student will also investigate the expected capabilities of upcoming satellite missions which will provide much larger and denser datasets.