B21I-04:
Solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence from terrestrial vegetation as a new tool in carbon cycle research

Tuesday, 16 December 2014: 8:45 AM
Christian Frankenberg, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, Joseph A Berry, Carnegie Inst Washington, Washington, DC, United States, Luis Guanter, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany and Joanna Joiner, NASA Goddard SFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
In the past few years, space-borne retrievals of solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) have been enabled by the GOSAT, SCIAMACHY and GOME-2 satellite. In addition, new measurements from OCO-2 (launched July 2014) and TROPOMI (to be launched 2016) can be expected. Empirical evidence suggests a strong correlation of SIF with gross primary production (GPP). SIF data promises to provide a more direct and independent proxy for photosynthetic activity, complementary to current observation of vegetation status (e.g. via the Enhanced Vegetation Index EVI).

Here, we will show an overview of recent studies using SIF in carbon cycle research and elaborate on how new measurements from OCO-2 and TROPOMI could eventually also provide a much finer spatial and temporal sampling as is currently possible, partially bridging the scale-gap between greenness indices and SIF observations. In addition, we will show how SIF could be implemented in global carbon cycle models and which open research questions hamper the exploitation of the full potential of SIF data.