SRON is the national institute for space research in the Netherlands. SRON pursues space research programs in Astrophysics and in Earth and Planetary Sciences. SRON advises the government on space research policy issues and has many years of experience in the development of advanced space research instrumentation for optical, infrared and sub-millimeter astronomy and atmospheric research. As part of the Earth and Planetary Science program, SRON participates in the GOME, SCIAMACHY and (Precursor) Sentinel-5 science teams. Various projects related to GOME(-2), SCIAMACHY and the Precursor Sentinel-5 mission (TROPOMI) have been performed or are on-going: building and testing the optical spectrometer detector module H/W, development of the Instrument Simulator Software, scientific support to calibration, vector radiative transfer modeling, sensitivity studies on retrievals (including O2 A band for clouds, aerosol, CO, CH4, CO2, water vapor), validation activities, GOME-2 polarization study, in-flight long-term performance monitoring, development and use of an ozone profile retrieval algorithm for nadir and limb measurements and the setup of the NL SCIAMACHY data centre. Also, at SRON-Earth algorithm development activities are ongoing for OCO-2, GOSAT, and PARASOL. SRON-Earth strongly collaborates with the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research (IMAU) at Utrecht University. The atmospheric research program within this collaboration is dedicated (among others) to the understanding and quantification of sources and sinks of well-mixed gases (CO2 and CH4).
SRON leads WP2.5: This task investigates systematic errors in satellite retrieved XCO2 due to aerosol scattering, and its impact on the quantification of urban emissions of CO2. SRON will quantify XCO2 errors on the basis of WRF-CHEM and Lotos-Euros calculated aerosol fields. Observing System Simulation Experiments will be performed to assess the impact of those errors on inverse modelling estimated emissions for the city of Berlin, and how this impact can be mitigated using various options to account for the adverse impact of aerosols in the XCO2 retrieval. WP2.5 will deliver a report summarizing the results, and discussing the implications for the monitoring of urban-scale anthropogenic CO2 emissions using satellites.