Abstract

Limiting increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is critical for slowing climate change. This will require an effective way to estimate and monitor emissions across a range of scales, from that of power plants to urban, regional, and country scales. It will also require a better understanding of the natural sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2, such as changes in carbon uptake in tropical and boreal forests. This talk will describe recent progress and challenges in using existing satellite observations to estimate CO2 fluxes, natural and anthropogenic, from the global scale down to point sources. I will also discuss the potential of future satellite missions for continued monitoring of CO2 fluxes to inform climate policy.