Retrieval of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) from satellite measurements: comparison of SIF between TanSat and OCO-2

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is emitted during photosynthesis in plant leaves. It constitutes a small additional offset to reflected radiance and can be observed by sensitive instruments with high signal-to-noise ratio and spectral resolution. The Chinese global carbon dioxide monitoring satellite (TanSat) acquires measurements of greenhouse gas column densities. The advanced technical characteristics of the Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide Grating Spectrometer (ACGS) onboard TanSat enable SIF retrievals from observations in the O2-A band. In this study, 1-year of SIF data was retrieved from Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) and TanSat measurements using the Institute of Atmospheric Physics Carbon Dioxide Retrieval Algorithm for Satellite Remote Sensing (IAPCAS)/SIF algorithm. A comparison between the IAPCAS/SIF results retrieved from OCO-2 spectra and the official OCO-2 SIF product (OCO2_Level 2_Lite_SIF.8r) shows a strong linear relationship (R2 > 0.85) and suggests good reliability of the IAPCAS/SIF retrieval algorithm. Comparing global distributions of SIF retrieved by the IAPCAS/SIF from TanSat and OCO-2 shows the same spatial pattern for all seasons with a gridded SIF difference of less than 0.3 W m−2 µm−1 sr−1. The global distributions also agree well with the official OCO-2 SIF product with a difference of less than 0.2 W m−2 µm−1 sr−1. The retrieval uncertainty of seasonally gridded TanSat IAPCAS/SIF is less than 0.03 W m−2 µm−1 sr−1, whereas the uncertainty of each sounding ranges from 0.1 to 0.6 W m−2 µm−1 sr−1. The relationship between annually averaged SIF products and FLUXCOM gross primary productivity (GPP) was also estimated for six vegetation types in a 1∘ × 1∘ grid over the globe, indicating that the SIF data from the two satellites have the same potential in quantitatively characterizing ecosystem productivity. The spatiotemporal consistency between TanSat and OCO-2 and their comparable data quality enable joint usage of the two mission products. Data supplemented by TanSat observations are expected to contribute to the development of global SIF maps with more spatiotemporal detail, which will advance global research on vegetation photosynthesis.