The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) leads NASA’s development of modeling tools aimed at integrating diverse information provided by Earth observations during the satellite era. These include the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), which includes a general circulation model and data assimilation system, and is used to plan future satellite missions, advance prediction on weather and seasonal timescales, and provide widely used climate data records to track multi-decadal changes. Across all timescales and products, GMAO seeks to represent the Earth as a system by incorporating processes that influence atmospheric composition and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.  

This seminar is intended to provide a broad overview of GHG capabilities in GEOS as well as future directions and challenges. First, we highlight the development of a concentration-based GHG monitoring system, which leverages state estimation techniques originally developed for weather and ozone, and its application to detect recent changes in carbon dioxide sources and sinks. We discuss progress toward inclusion of this capability in GMAO’s upcoming Reanalysis of the 21st Century and the GEOS Composition Forecasting (GEOS-CF) system, developed in collaboration with Harvard University and used to predict changes in atmospheric trace gases with daily 5-day forecasts. We also briefly demonstrate the potential of seasonal predictions to skillfully predict some aspects of ecosystem-atmosphere carbon exchange several months in advance. Finally, we conclude by introducing how GMAO’s GHG capabilities support several new NASA-wide initiatives, including the Earth Information System (EIS), which aims to support open science and applications by leveraging emerging cloud storage and computing capabilities.