CO emission datasets and maps from Remote Sensing: spatial and statistical comparison at different levels

CO emissions due to biomass burning can be represented as raster maps computed from satellite observations obtained from sensors of different types, on board of different platforms, exploiting algorithms which combine input data in different ways. Hence, different CO emission “products” are available and it is important to define comparison tools among datasets, considering that no ground truth is available for these data. Comparisons between couples of CO emission datasets have been performed implementing statistical tools in GIS environments. Interpreting the results of the comparisons, it became apparent that the information carried by the different datasets available can be very dissimilar, thus reflecting the high level of variability connected with the determination of the approach used to estimate the product and of uncertainty of the parameters entering the computation of the CO emission datasets.