A Dual‐Transformer Network for Spatiotemporal Modeling of Carbon Dioxide Column Concentration (XCO2) on the Basis of Dynamic Heterogeneous Graphs
Published online on May 01, 2026
Abstract
["Transactions in GIS, Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nAmong various carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring approaches, satellite observation and ground‐based observations are two widely adopted and reliable methods. However, the former is constrained by relatively low accuracy, whereas the latter suffers from limited spatial coverage. Therefore, this study develops a hybrid spatiotemporal modeling method integrating two Transformer networks on the basis of heterogeneous graphs to enhance the Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service global greenhouse gas reanalysis version 4 (CAMS‐EGG4) dataset by fusing orbiting carbon observatory‐2 (OCO‐2) satellite observations. Dynamic heterogeneous spatiotemporal graphs are constructed by integrating spatial proximity with corresponding temporal nodes, enabling an explicit representation of the intrinsic spatiotemporal dependencies in atmospheric CO2 observations. This approach maintains the advantage of broad spatial coverage while achieving accuracy comparable to ground‐based observations. The proposed model demonstrates high predictive performance, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.97, a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.99, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.79. We further benchmarked the proposed model against four machine learning approaches, including random forest (RF), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), convolutional neural network (CNN), and graph convolutional network (GCN). Experimental results show that the Dual‐Transformer model consistently outperforms the four approaches in terms of R2, RMSE, and MAE. In addition, validation against ground‐based measurements from the total carbon column observing network (TCCON) confirms that the predicted XCO2 data exhibit substantial improvements over the original dataset. This methodological advance offers a scalable foundation for constructing refined CO2 reanalysis products, with broad applicability in atmospheric science, earth system modeling, and evidence‐based climate policy development.\n"]