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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-5709</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Selective Impacts of Prior, Background-Concentration, and Observation-Error Assumptions on Urban CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; Inversion Estimates</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Park</surname>
<given-names>Munsu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9367-8773</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jeong</surname>
<given-names>Sujong</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4586-4534</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Sim</surname>
<given-names>Sojung</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4948-0941</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Environmental Management, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, Seoul,  08826, Republic of Korea</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Environmental Planning Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>03</day>
<month>11</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>36</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Munsu Park et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5709/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5709/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5709/egusphere-2026-5709.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5709/egusphere-2026-5709.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Urban-scale CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; inversions are increasingly used to constrain fossil fuel CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions; however, posterior estimates can depend on the methodological assumptions used to define key inversion parameters. How these assumptions selectively affect different aspects of posterior information remains unclear. Here we quantify the impacts of prior emissions, background concentrations, and observation-error covariance assumptions on urban CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; inversion results. Using wintertime Seoul, South Korea, as a case study to minimize biogenic flux uncertainties, we conducted 18 Bayesian inversions by combining two prior emission inventories, three background concentration definitions, and three observation-error estimation methods. We found that these assumptions affect distinct components of posterior emissions: the spatial distribution of posterior estimates was primarily controlled by the choice of prior, whereas total emissions and their temporal variability were more strongly influenced by observation-error and background-concentration assumptions. The spread in posterior estimates arising from these methodological assumptions ranged from 25.6 % to 51.5 % of total emissions, exceeding the posterior uncertainty estimated within individual inversion configurations. This result indicates that uncertainty estimates from a single inversion setup may not fully capture the methodological uncertainty associated with input assumptions. Using parameter sensitivity and an uncertainty reduction metric, we further identified a relatively robust configuration for the Seoul winter daytime case and evaluated whether the inversion reduced the spread among the estimates relative to the prior spread. Our results demonstrate that methodological assumptions can selectively shape urban CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; inversion estimates and highlight the need to assess their impacts when interpreting posterior emissions.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="36"/></counts>
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