The Tan Sat mission: preliminary global observations

The Chinese global carbon dioxide monitoring satellite (Tan Sat) was launched successfully in December2016 and has completed its on-orbit tests and calibration. Tan Sat aims to measure the atmospheric column-averaged dry air mole fractions of carbon dioxide (XCO2) with a precision of 4 ppm at the regional scale, and in addition, to derive global and regional CO2fluxes. Progress towards these objectives is reviewed and the first scientific results from Tan Sat measurements are presented. Tan Sat on-orbit tests indicate that the Atmospheric Carbon dioxide Grating Spectrometer is in normal working status and is beginning to produce L1B products. The preliminary Tan Sat XCO2products have been retrieved by an algorithm and compared to NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) measurements during an overlapping observation period. Furthermore, the XCO2retrievals have been validated against eight groundsite measurement datasets from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network, for which the preliminary conclusion is that Tan Sat has met the precision design requirement, with an average bias of 2.11 ppm.The first scientific observations are presented, namely, the seasonal distributions of XCO2over land on a global scale.