Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2918
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2918
26 Sep 2024
 | 26 Sep 2024

High-resolution greenhouse gas flux inversions using a machine learning surrogate model for atmospheric transport

Nikhil Dadheech, Tai-Long He, and Alexander J. Turner

Abstract. Quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is critically important for projecting future climate and assessing the impact of environmental policy. Estimating GHG emissions using atmospheric observations is typically done using source-receptor relationships (i.e., "footprints'').  Constructing these footprints can be computationally expensive and is rapidly becoming a computational bottleneck for studying GHG fluxes at high spatio-temporal resolution using dense observations.  Here we demonstrate a computationally efficient GHG flux inversion framework using a machine learning emulator for atmospheric transport (FootNet) as a surrogate for the full-physics model. The footprints generated by FootNet are at approximately one-kilometer resolution. We update the architecture of the deep-learning model to improve the performance in a GHG flux inversion.  Paradoxically, the updated FootNet model out-performs the full-physics model when used in a flux inversion and compared against independent observations. This improved performance is likely because atmospheric transport simulated with a full-physics transport model is not necessarily more accurate. The more simplistic representation of transport in the machine learning model helps to mitigate transport errors. This flux inversion using a machine learning surrogate model only requires meteorological data, GHG measurements, and prior fluxes. Constructing footprints using FootNet is 650× faster than the full-physics atmospheric transport model on similar hardware. This speedup allows for computation of footprints "on-the-fly'' during the GHG flux inversion (i.e., computed as needed, rather than archiving for future use) and makes near-real-time emission monitoring computationally possible. This work alleviates a major computational bottleneck with inferring GHG fluxes with next generation dense observing systems.

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Nikhil Dadheech, Tai-Long He, and Alexander J. Turner

Status: final response (author comments only)

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-2918', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Oct 2024
    • CC1: 'Reply to borderline inappropriate comment from Reviewer #1', Alexander Turner, 09 Oct 2024
      • RC2: 'Reply on CC1', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Oct 2024
        • CC2: 'Reply on RC2', Alexander Turner, 09 Oct 2024
  • RC3: 'Review comment on egusphere-2024-2918', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Oct 2024
  • RC4: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-2918', Anonymous Referee #3, 18 Nov 2024
Nikhil Dadheech, Tai-Long He, and Alexander J. Turner

Data sets

High-resolution greenhouse gas flux inversions using a machine learning surrogate model Nikhil Dadheech https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13750963

Model code and software

High-resolution greenhouse gas flux inversions using a machine learning surrogate model Nikhil Dadheech https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13750963

Nikhil Dadheech, Tai-Long He, and Alexander J. Turner

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Short summary
We developed an efficient GHG flux inversion framework using a machine learning emulator (FootNet) as a surrogate for an atmospheric transport model, resulting in a 650× speedup. Paradoxically, the flux inversion using the ML-model outperforms the full-physics model in our case study. We attribute this to the ML model mitigating transport errors in the GHG flux inversion.