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Assessing the magnitude of CO 2 flux uncertainty in atmospheric CO 2 records using products from NASA's Carbon Monitoring Flux Pilot Project
Author(s) -
Ott Lesley E.,
Pawson Steven,
Collatz George J.,
Gregg Watson W.,
Menemenlis Dimitris,
Brix Holger,
Rousseaux Cecile S.,
Bowman Kevin W.,
Liu Junjie,
Eldering Annmarie,
Gunson Michael R.,
Kawa Stephan R.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1002/2014jd022411
Subject(s) - environmental science , flux (metallurgy) , biosphere , carbon cycle , northern hemisphere , climatology , atmospheric sciences , biosphere model , greenhouse gas , biogeochemical cycle , southern hemisphere , atmosphere (unit) , climate model , latitude , meteorology , climate change , geography , oceanography , ecosystem , geology , ecology , materials science , chemistry , environmental chemistry , metallurgy , biology , geodesy
NASA's Carbon Monitoring System Flux Pilot Project (FPP) was designed to better understand contemporary carbon fluxes by bringing together state‐of‐the art models with remote sensing data sets. Here we report on simulations using NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System Model, version 5 (GEOS‐5) which was used to evaluate the consistency of two different sets of observationally informed land and ocean fluxes with atmospheric CO 2 records. Despite the observation inputs, the average difference in annual terrestrial biosphere flux between the two land (NASA Ames Carnegie‐Ames‐Stanford‐Approach (CASA) and CASA‐Global Fire Emissions Database version 3 (GFED)) models is 1.7 Pg C for 2009–2010. Ocean models (NASA's Ocean Biogeochemical Model (NOBM) and Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Phase II (ECCO2)‐Darwin) differ by 35% in their global estimates of carbon flux with particularly strong disagreement in high latitudes. Based upon combinations of terrestrial and ocean fluxes, GEOS‐5 reasonably simulated the seasonal cycle observed at Northern Hemisphere surface sites and by the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) while the model struggled to simulate the seasonal cycle at Southern Hemisphere surface locations. Though GEOS‐5 was able to reasonably reproduce the patterns of XCO 2 observed by GOSAT, it struggled to reproduce these aspects of Atmospheric Infrared Sounder observations. Despite large differences between land and ocean flux estimates, resulting differences in atmospheric mixing ratio were small, typically less than 5 ppm at the surface and 3 ppm in the XCO 2 column. A statistical analysis based on the variability of observations shows that flux differences of these magnitudes are difficult to distinguish from inherent measurement variability, regardless of the measurement platform.