Report on the proposed EQC tool

This report goes one step further in the performance assessment of the future CO2MVS by synthesising different strategies for an Evaluation and Quality Control (EQC) tool. It builds on existing approaches in the CAMS operational service, on the experience acquired in D6.5 for the 1st GST with real data, and on the experience gained in the atmospheric inversion community in general (e.g., Michalak et al. 2017). The proposed evaluation methodology is generic enough to accommodate the heterogeneous nature of the posterior emission products considered for the CO2MVS (global, regional, direct mass-balance or Bayesian transport model inversions, etc.). It can address observation-based statistical validation methods as well as data assimilation sensitivity methods using simulated observations. The objective metrics developed (Sections 2-6) can be complemented by additional evaluations by experts and users (see Sections 7 and 8, respectively). Each section is divided into a general presentation and a discussion of operational aspects. The assessment of the EQC process itself is not discussed but it is obvious that the EQC framework of the CO2MVS will evolve over time in order to increase robustness.