Tropical Controls on the CO2 Atmospheric Growth Rate 2010-2011 from the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Flux (CMS-Flux) Project

Kevin W Bowman1,2, Junjie Liu3, Nick Parazoo4,5, Meemong Lee5, Dimitris Menemenlis6, Michelle M Gierach7, Holger Brix8, Kevin R Gurney9, George James Collatz10, Nicolas Bousserez11 and Daven K Henze12, (1)University of California Los Angeles, Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (2)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, United States, (3)JPL/NASA/Caltech, Pasadena, United States, (4)University of California Los Angeles, JIFRESSE, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (5)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (6)NASA JPL/Caltech, Pasadena, CA, United States, (7)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (8)Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany, (9)Northern Arizona University, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Flagstaff, United States, (10)NASA Goddard SFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (11)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (12)University of Colorado at Boulder, Mechanical Engineering, Boulder, United States
Abstract:
Interannual variations in the atmospheric growth rate of CO2 have been attributed to the tropical regions and the controls are correlated with temperature anomalies. We investigate the spatial drivers of the atmospheric growth rate and the processes controlling them over the exceptional period of 2010-2011. This period was marked by a marked shift from an El Nino to La Nina period resulting in historically high sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical Atlantic leading to serious droughts in the Amazon. However, in 2011, unusual precipitation in Australia was linked to gross primary productivity anomalies in semi-arid regions. We use satellite observations of CO2, CO, and solar induced fluorescence assimilated into the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Project (CMS-Flux) to attribute the atmospheric growth rate to global, spatially resolved fluxes. This system is based upon observationally-constrained “bottom-up” estimates from the Fossil Fuel Data Assimilation System (FFDAS), the ECCO2­-Darwin physical and biogeochemical adjoint ocean state estimation system, and CASA-GFED3 land-surface biogeochemical model. The system is used to compute regional tropical and extra-tropical fluxes and quantify the role of biomass burning and gross primary productivity in controlling those fluxes.
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