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Cape Point, South Africa
Site Latitude 34° 21' 8.28" S (-34.35230 °N)
Site Longitude 18° 29' 20.76" E (18.48910 °E)
Site Elevation230.0 masl
Site codeCPT
Datasetco2_cpt_surface-flask_1_representative (GLOBALVIEW identifier CPT_01D0)
Assimilated Yes, but showing unassimilated subset Switch to assimilated subset
Selection schemerepresentative of site
Data providerEd Dlugokencky, NOAA GML, 325 Broadway R/GML-1, Boulder, CO 80305-3328, United States
Partner(s)Casper Labuschagne, Cape Point GAW Station, Climate and Environment Research & Monitoring (CERM), South Africa, and South African Weather Service, South Africa
Laboratory
NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, 325 Broadway, NOAA R/GML-1, Boulder, CO 80305-3328, United States
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(a) Time series of CO2 mole fractions, both simulated and observed, at this CarbonTracker observation site. In the top panel, measured mole fractions (open black circles) are plotted along with CarbonTracker simulated values (filled light blue circles).

(b) The time series of model residuals--the difference between the simulated and measured mole fractions--shown with dark green filled circles. These residuals should be uncorrelated in time, unbiased (i.e., have a mean of zero), and distributed normally.

(c) Summary statistics for model residuals from to . Residuals are defined as simluated values minus observed values. "Bias" is the mean of the residuals; "std. dev." is the standard deviation, and RMSE is root-mean-square error. All quantities are in ppm of CO2. The time period over which these quantities are computed is set by the graphs (a) and (b).


(d) Seasonal histograms of residuals


(d) Seasonal histograms of the residuals for this dataset. See caption for top figure for the definition of residuals. The left panel collects all residuals for each northern hemisphere summer (June through September); the right panel is the northern hemisphere winter (November through April). Residuals before 1 Jan 2001 are excluded from this analysis to avoid an effect of CarbonTracker burn-in from a poorly-known initial CO2 distribution. The tan color shows the histogram of the residuals themselves; the blue lines and statistics shown in blue text are a summary of the residuals interpreted as a normal distribution. The vertical scales are relative, determined by the number of observations and how tightly they are grouped, with the area under the histogram forced to unity.