Observational and model evidence for a prominent stratospheric influence on variability in tropospheric nitrous oxide

The literature presents different views on how the stratosphere influences variability in surface nitrous oxide (N2O) and on whether that influence is outweighed by surface emission changes driven by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). These questions are investigated using a chemistry–climate model with a stratospheric N2O tracer; surface and aircraft-based N2O measurements; and indices for ENSO, polar lower stratospheric temperature (PLST), and the stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). The model simulates well-defined seasonal cycles in tropospheric N2O that are caused mainly by the seasonal descent of N2O-poor stratospheric air in polar regions with subsequent cross-tropopause transport and mixing. Similar seasonal cycles are identified in recently available N2O data from aircraft. A correlation analysis between the N2O atmospheric growth rate (AGR) anomaly in long-term surface monitoring data and the ENSO, PLST, and QBO indices reveals hemispheric differences. In the Northern Hemisphere, the surface N2O AGR is negatively correlated with winter (January–March) PLST. This correlation is consistent with an influence from the Brewer–Dobson circulation, which brings N2O-poor air from the middle and upper stratosphere into the lower stratosphere with associated warming due to diabatic descent. In the Southern Hemisphere, the N2O AGR is better correlated to QBO and ENSO indices. These different hemispheric influences on the N2O AGR are consistent with known atmospheric dynamics and the complex interaction of the QBO with the Brewer-Dobson circulation. More airborne surveys extending to the tropopause would help elucidate the stratospheric influence on tropospheric N2O, allowing for better understanding of surface sources.This research has been supported by the Earth Sciences Division (grant no. 80NSSC17K0350)

Scientific Communities Striving for a Common Cause: Innovations in Carbon Cycle Science

Where does the carbon released by burning fossil fuels go? Currently, ocean and land systems remove about half of the CO₂ emitted by human activities; the remainder stays in the atmosphere. These removal processes are sensitive to feedbacks in the energy, carbon, and water cycles that will change in the future. Observing how much carbon is taken up on land through photosynthesis is complicated because carbon is simultaneously respired by plants, animals, and microbes. Global observations from satellites and air samples suggest that natural ecosystems take up about as much CO₂ as they emit. To match the data, our land models generate imaginary Earths where carbon uptake and respiration are roughly balanced, but the absolute quantities of carbon being exchanged vary widely. Getting the magnitude of the flux is essential to make sure our models are capturing the right pattern for the right reasons. Combining two cutting-edge tools, carbonyl sulfide (OCS) and solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), will help develop an independent answer of how much carbon is being taken up by global ecosystems. Photosynthesis requires CO₂, light, and water. OCS provides a spatially and temporally integrated picture of the “front door” of photosynthesis, proportional to CO₂ uptake and water loss through plant stomata. SIF provides a high-resolution snapshot of the “side door,” scaling with the light captured by leaves. These two independent pieces of information help us understand plant water and carbon exchange. A coordinated effort to generate SIF and OCS data through satellite, airborne, and ground observations will improve our process-based models to predict how these cycles will change in the future

Carbon Dioxide Sources from Alaska Driven by Increasing Early Winter Respiration from Artic Tundra

High-latitude ecosystems have the capacity to release large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere in response to increasing temperatures, representing a potentially significant positive feedback within the climate system. Here, we combine aircraft and tower observations of atmospheric CO2 with remote sensing data and meteorological products to derive temporally and spatially resolved year-round CO2 fluxes across Alaska during 2012-2014. We find that tundra ecosystems were a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere annually, with especially high rates of respiration during early winter (October through December). Long-term records at Barrow, AK, suggest that CO2emission rates from North Slope tundra have increased during the October through December period by 73% ± 11% since 1975, and are correlated with rising summer temperatures. Together, these results imply increasing early winter respiration and net annual emission of CO2in Alaska, in response to climate warming. Our results provide evidence that the decadal-scale increase in the amplitude of the CO2 seasonal cycle may be linked with increasing biogenic emissions in the Arctic, following the growing season. Early winter respiration was not well simulated by the Earth System Models used to forecast future carbon fluxes in recent climate assessments. Therefore, these assessments may underestimate the carbon release from Arctic soils in response to a warming climate

Carbon Monitoring System Flux Net Biosphere Exchange 2020 (CMS-Flux NBE 2020)

Here we present a global and regionally resolved terrestrial net biosphere exchange (NBE) dataset with corresponding uncertainties between 2010-2018: Carbon Monitoring System Flux Net Biosphere Exchange 2020 (CMS-Flux NBE 2020). It is estimated using the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Flux (CMS-Flux) top-down flux inversion system that assimilates column CO2 observations from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and NASA\u27s Observing Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2). The regional monthly fluxes are readily accessible as tabular files, and the gridded fluxes are available in NetCDF format. The fluxes and their uncertainties are evaluated by extensively comparing the posterior CO2 mole fractions with CO2 observations from aircraft and the NOAA marine boundary layer reference sites. We describe the characteristics of the dataset as the global total, regional climatological mean, and regional annual fluxes and seasonal cycles. We find that the global total fluxes of the dataset agree with atmospheric CO2 growth observed by the surface-observation network within uncertainty. Averaged between 2010 and 2018, the tropical regions range from close to neutral in tropical South America to a net source in Africa; these contrast with the extra-tropics, which are a net sink of 2.5±0.3 Gt C/year. The regional satellite-constrained NBE estimates provide a unique perspective for understanding the terrestrial biosphere carbon dynamics and monitoring changes in regional contributions to the changes of atmospheric CO2 growth rate. The gridded and regional aggregated dataset can be accessed at http://doi.org/10.25966/4v02-c391 (Liu et al., 2020).

Gaps in network infrastructure limit our understanding of biogenic methane emissions for the United States

Understanding the sources and sinks of methane (CH4) is critical to both predicting and mitigating future climate change. There are large uncertainties in the global budget of atmospheric CH4, but natural emissions are esti- mated to be of a similar magnitude to anthropogenic emis- sions. To understand CH4 flux from biogenic sources in the United States (US) of America, a multi-scale CH4 obser- vation network focused on CH4 flux rates, processes, and scaling methods is required. This can be achieved with a network of ground-based observations that are distributed based on climatic regions and land cover. To determine the gaps in physical infrastructure for developing this network, we need to understand the landscape representativeness of the current infrastructure. We focus here on eddy covariance (EC) flux towers because they are essential for a bottom-up framework that bridges the gap between point-based cham- ber measurements and airborne or satellite platforms that in- form policy decisions and global climate agreements. Using dissimilarity, multidimensional scaling, and cluster analysis, the US was divided into 10 clusters distributed across tem- perature and precipitation gradients. We evaluated dissimi- larity within each cluster for research sites with active CH4 EC towers to identify gaps in existing infrastructure that limit our ability to constrain the contribution of US biogenic CH4 emissions to the global budget. Through our analysis using climate, land cover, and location variables, we identified pri- ority areas for research infrastructure to provide a more com- plete understanding of the CH4 flux potential of ecosystem types across the US. Clusters corresponding to Alaska and the Rocky Mountains, which are inherently difficult to cap- ture, are the most poorly represented, and all clusters require a greater representation of vegetation types.</p

Investigating Alaskan Methane and Carbon Dioxide Fluxes Using Measurements from the CARVE Tower

Northern high-latitude carbon sources and sinks, including those resulting from degrading permafrost, are thought to be sensitive to the rapidly warming climate. Because the near-surface atmosphere integrates surface fluxes over large ( ∼ 500–1000 km) scales, atmospheric monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) mole fractions in the daytime mixed layer is a promising method for detecting change in the carbon cycle throughout boreal Alaska. Here we use CO2 and CH4 measurements from a NOAA tower 17 km north of Fairbanks, AK, established as part of NASA\u27s Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE), to investigate regional fluxes of CO2 and CH4 for 2012–2014. CARVE was designed to use aircraft and surface observations to better understand and quantify the sensitivity of Alaskan carbon fluxes to climate variability. We use high-resolution meteorological fields from the Polar Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled with the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport model (hereafter, WRF-STILT), along with the Polar Vegetation Photosynthesis and Respiration Model (PolarVPRM), to investigate fluxes of CO2 in boreal Alaska using the tower observations, which are sensitive to large areas of central Alaska. We show that simulated PolarVPRM–WRF-STILT CO2 mole fractions show remarkably good agreement with tower observations, suggesting that the WRF-STILT model represents the meteorology of the region quite well, and that the PolarVPRM flux magnitudes and spatial distribution are generally consistent with CO2 mole fractions observed at the CARVE tower. One exception to this good agreement is that during the fall of all 3 years, PolarVPRM cannot reproduce the observed CO2 respiration. Using the WRF-STILT model, we find that average CH4 fluxes in boreal Alaska are somewhat lower than flux estimates by Chang et al. (2014) over all of Alaska for May–September 2012; we also find that enhancements appear to persist during some wintertime periods, augmenting those observed during the summer and fall. The possibility of significant fall and winter CO2 and CH4 fluxes underscores the need for year-round in situ observations to quantify changes in boreal Alaskan annual carbon balance