Non parametric estimate of the CO2 mass balance from aircraft measurements

Quantifying trace gas emissions and the influence of surface exchange processes on the atmosphere is a necessary step towards the control of global greenhouse gas emissions. Also air quality models require highly resolved emission data. This paper propose a procedure based on the mass balance method and implemented on highly resolved aircraft data, which allows us to estimate surface exchanges on areas of several km 2 and heterogeneous surface features. We adopt a nonparametric approach and reconstruct the fluxes on the surface of a virtual box surrounding the area of interest using Shepard functions. Two different techniques are also proposed to face lack of data on the top surface of the box. The method is applied to the experimental data from a measurement campaign in Eboli to obtain an evaluation of the CO2 emission/absorption in the area.