Retrievals of XCO2, XCH4 and XCO from portable, near-infrared Fourier transform spectrometer solar observations in Antarctica

The COllaborative Carbon Column Observing Network (COCCON) uses low-resolution, portable EM27/SUN Fourier transform spectrometers (FTSs) to make retrievals of column-averaged dry-air mole fractions (DMFs, represented as Xgas) of CO2, CH4, CO and H2O from near-infrared solar absorption spectra. The COCCON has developed rapidly over recent years and complements the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). In this work, we provide details of the first seasonal time series of near-infrared XCO2, XCH4 and XCO retrievals from measurements made in Antarctica during the deployment of an EM27/SUN to the Arrival Heights laboratory on Ross Island over the austral summer of 2019–2020 under the auspices of the COCCON. The DMFs of all three species were lower in Antarctica than at mid-latitude, and for XCO2 and XCO, the retrieved values were less variable. For XCH4 however, the variability was significantly greater and it was found that this was strongly correlated to the proximity of the polar vortex. In order to ensure the stability of the instrument and the traceability of the retrievals, side-by-side comparisons to the TCCON station at Lauder, New Zealand and retrievals of the instrument line shape (ILS) were made before and after the measurements in Antarctica. These indicate that, over the course of the deployment, the instrument stability was such that the change in retrieved XCO2 was well below 0.1 %. The value of these data for satellite validation is demonstrated by making comparisons with the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on the Sentinel-5 precursor (S5P) satellite. The dataset is available from the COCCON central facility hosted by the ESA Atmospheric Validation Data Centre (EVDC) https://doi.org/10.48477/coccon.pf10.arrivalheights.R02 (Pollard, 2021).