We present preliminary results of a
modeling experiment that compares observed vertical profiles of CO2
with those generated by an atmospheric transport model (ATM). The ATM is driven
by CO2 flux fields generated from the inversion of monthly averaged
CO2 surface data (GLOBALVIEW). We note large differences between the
best fit to the observations produced in the inversion and the same quantity
simulated by the forward model. This difference arises from the nonlinearity of
the advection scheme used in the transport model. When comparing with vertical
profiles, we note that much of the difference between simulated and observed
concentration has the same structure as the impact of this nonlinearity.
Inversion schemes must therefore take nonlinearity into account. Despite these
differences, the profiles are able to distinguish among inversions that fit
subsets of the surface data, suggesting they are a useful validation dataset.
Author: C.A. Pickett–Heaps, P.J. Rayner, R.M. Law, P. Peylin, et al (christopher dot pickett-heaps at cea dot fr)
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