Exploring constraints on a wetland methane emission ensemble (WetCHARTs) using GOSAT observations

Wetland emissions contribute the largest uncertainties to the current global atmospheric CH.sub.4 budget, and how these emissions will change under future climate scenarios is also still poorly understood. Bloom et al. (2017b) developed WetCHARTs, a simple, data-driven, ensemble-based model that produces estimates of CH.sub.4 wetland emissions constrained by observations of precipitation and temperature. This study performs the first detailed global and regional evaluation of the WetCHARTs CH.sub.4 emission model ensemble against 9 years of high-quality, validated atmospheric CH.sub.4 observations from GOSAT (the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite). A 3-D chemical transport model is used to estimate atmospheric CH.sub.4 mixing ratios based on the WetCHARTs emissions and other sources.