Wilson, Emily: NASA GSFC (Project Lead)
Endalamaw, Abraham: University of Alaska (Participant)
Project Funding:
2014 - 2017
NRA: 2012 NASA: Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
The climate of the Arctic is rapidly changing, with possible important releases of carbon to the atmosphere, including from permafrosts as they continue to thaw. Satellite instruments offer hope for estimating and monitoring changes in carbon emissions in the Arctic, but i) this region presents significant challenges (e.g., persistent cloud cover, snow and ice) for space-based detection, ii) the current available data are sparse in this region and mostly for levels in the free troposphere, limiting the usefulness for emission estimation. Targeted surface observations are required to interpret the limited satellite data of carbon species for regions with thawing permafrost and to estimate the global magnitude of this source of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Our proposed work addresses several aspects of the key science questions of the NASA ROSES 2012 Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science announcement, specifically Subelement 5: The Role of Permafrost in a Changing Climate on the topic of “Effects of permafrost changes on emissions of methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”
We propose a multi-disciplinary, multi-scaled study to measure methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) above thawing permafrost at three sites, each representing a different ecosystem, near Fairbanks, AK in May of 2015. A broad array of ground experiments at these sites will record permafrost depth and subsurface structure, meteorological data, and concentrations of key GHGs during seasonal ground thaw of the active layer in the summer. These data will allow us to estimate emission fluxes of carbon from the thawing permafrosts. To estimate a global source of GHG emissions from thawing permafrosts, we will use MODIS and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor data to “scale up” the data collected at the three proposed sites on the basis of land surface type information. We refer to our proposed work as a pilot study as we will collect observations near Fairbanks, AK with the intent to expand our observational network in the future to other sites in North America, which will aid in the monitoring of changes in GHG emissions in the Arctic as well as complement and help interpret data collected by space-borne instruments, such as GOSAT, IASI, and AIRS.
Based on the data collected at the three sites, we propose to develop a computationally-efficient parameterization of emissions from thawing permafrosts for use in the NASA GEOS-5 Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM), thus benefiting ongoing efforts in the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) to build an Earth System Model which is used for both retrospective and predictive simulations of important GHGs. We will use the AGCM to interpret the data collected by tracking methane and CO2 plumes from various sources that impact the three sites. In addition, we will use data collected from aircraft missions and surface stations to understand the signature ratios of trace gases that give important clues as to the identification of sources (e.g. urban, biomass burning).
The proposed data will be useful for NASA mission planning, such as for ASCENDS. Once the magnitude of the change in atmospheric GHGs due to permafrost thaw is quantified, the GEOS-5 model will be used to simulate the radiance signal that ASCENDS and other types of satellites (e.g. AIRS, GOSAT) observe. This information will contribute to NASA’s goals by defining measurement requirements needed to observe GHG emissions in high latitude regions.
2015 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)
- An Open-Path Tunable Diode Laser Sensor for Simultaneous Measurement of Methane and Carbon Dioxide
-- (D. Michelle Bailey, Erin M. Adkins, Emily L Wilson, J. Houston Miller)
[abstract]
More details may be found in the following project profile(s):
