Progress
in determining CO2 sources, sinks, and their response to
environmental forcing will rely on utilization of more extensive and intensive
CO2 and related observations including those from satellite remote
sensing. Full exploitation of new
observations will require new modeling and analysis techniques, especially
those that can use information at finer spatial and temporal scales than has
traditionally been employed in “top-down” carbon flux studies. We report on a modeling effort to reduce
uncertainty in carbon cycle processes that create the so-called missing
terrestrial sink of atmospheric CO2 using transport fields derived
from NASA’s GEOS-4 meteorological assimilation analyses. Our overall objective is to improve
characterization of CO2 source/sink processes globally with improved
formulations for atmospheric transport, terrestrial uptake and release, biomass
and fossil fuel burning, and observational data analysis. We show results from an advanced biosphere
model (SiB3) constrained by remote sensing data and coupled to the global
transport model to produce distributions of CO2 fluxes and
concentrations that are consistent with actual meteorological variability. Use of analyzed meteorological data allows
comparison to observations on a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Here we compare with local-to-global data for
hourly to annual CO2 simulation.
The results will help to prepare for the use of satellite CO2
and other data in a multi-disciplinary carbon data assimilation system for
analysis and prediction of carbon cycle changes and carbon/climate
interactions.
Author: S.R. Kawa, A.S. Denning, S.L. Conner-Gausepohl, et al (kawa at maia dot gsfc dot nasa dot gov)
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