What is the Resolution of the North American CO2 Observing Network?

The CarbonTracker modeling system was designed in part to evaluate the predictions of prognostic, or forward, carbon models. In order for inversions to provide useful constraints to guide the development of forward models, robust confidence intervals on their inverse flux estimates will be required. Unfortunately, assessing the uncertainty on an inverse flux estimate is quite difficult, and new approaches are needed. To meet this goal, we present here results of an observational system simulation experiment (OSSE) meant to assess the ability of CO2 measurement networks to detect flux anomalies in North America during the growing season. We evaluate the power of both the current observational network and a planned larger network comprising 12 tall towers and 24 weekly aircraft profiles in North America.