Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics www.atmos-chem-phys.net 1680-7316 1680-7324 10 1 2010 10.5194/acp-10-83-2010 http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/83/2010/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/83/2010/acp-10-83-2010.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/83/2010/acp-10-83-2010.pdf 83 94 2010-01-07 High resolution modeling of CO₂ over Europe: implications for representation errors of satellite retrievals D. Pillai kdhanya@bgc-jena.mpg.de C. Gerbig J. Marshall R. Ahmadov R. Kretschmer T. Koch U. Karstens Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, P.O. Box 100164, 07701 Jena, Germany NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA also at: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA Satellite retrievals for column CO₂ with better spatial and temporal sampling are expected to improve the current surface flux estimates of CO₂ via inverse techniques. However, the spatial scale mismatch between remotely sensed CO₂ and current generation inverse models can induce representation errors, which can cause systematic biases in flux estimates. This study is focused on estimating these representation errors associated with utilization of satellite measurements in global models with a horizontal resolution of about 1 degree or less. For this we used simulated CO₂ from the high resolution modeling framework WRF-VPRM, which links CO₂ fluxes from a diagnostic biosphere model to a weather forecasting model at 10×10 km² horizontal resolution. Sub-grid variability of column averaged CO₂, i.e. the variability not resolved by global models, reached up to 1.2 ppm with a median value of 0.4 ppm. Statistical analysis of the simulation results indicate that orography plays an important role. 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