Project Funding: 2008 - 2011

NRA: 2007 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Understanding changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, their global sources and sinks, and the carbon cycle dynamics and processes that control their variability has emerged as one of the principal challenges of 21st century Earth system science. Satellite observations atmospheric CO2 are poised to revolutionize our understanding of global carbon cycle science by providing unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution and coverage. Major advances are expected with the launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) in late 2008. We propose to implement a state of the art retrieval algorithm on the COLUMBIA supercomputer to generate atmospheric CO2 vertical profile data products from simultaneous retrievals of OCO and AIRS satellite observations. This unique data set will significantly improve the estimation of atmospheric carbon sources and sinks by providing observational constraints on vertical as well as horizontal and temporal distributions of atmospheric CO2 in data assimilation and data fusion approaches: accurate vertical transport is essential within the source/sink inversion to avoid systematic flux errors of up to 2 GtC/yr since convection over land is strongly correlated in time with photosynthesis, the dominant surface sink for CO2. We will also quantify the accuracy of simulated CO2 vertical profiles from the Caltech 2D chemical transport model (CTM) and selected 3D CTMs by comparison against aircraft and AIRS CO2 data. We will leverage these analyses to develop and implement improved atmospheric transport schemes. Our innovative approach is tailored specifically to the use of OCO data for the improved estimation of atmospheric carbon sources and sinks. It exploits the complementary CO2 vertical distribution information from AIRS spectra, merging the two independent space-based observations into a more valuable product. Our research will also provide a framework with which to evaluate the potential impact of higher resolution vertical profile data that will become available in the post-2010 timeframe from active CO2 remote sensing systems. Additionally, we will establish the ability to process XCO2 retrievals from OCO observations on NASA's largest supercomputer, offering the potential for community access to significantly larger volumes of XCO2 data than are planned for delivery by the OCO project. Our scientific activities target the main Carbon Cycle Science goals within NASA's Earth Science Research Program: * Improve understanding of the global carbon cycle * Quantify changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations Our studies complement work planned by the OCO Science Team and are independent investigations. The research described here is not planned or funded as part of the OCO project and is not needed for OCO to succeed in achieving its Level 1 Science Requirements.

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Ensemble Land Surface Modeling at JPL   --   (Joshua B. Fisher, Gary Block, Alexandre Guillaume, Graeme Stephens, Charles Miller, Jung-Eun Lee, Stephen Sitch, Philippe Ciais, Yingping Wang)   [abstract]   [poster]

2010 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• CO2 vertical profile data products from simultaneous retrievals of Near Infrared and Thermal Infrared Space-based Observations   --   (Charles E Miller, Vijay Natraj, Paul Springer, Le Kuai, Yuk L Yung)   [abstract]

2008 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Posters

• CO2 vertical profile data products from simultaneous retrievals of OCO and AIRS   --   (Charles Miller, Fabiano Oyafuso, Yuk Yung, Le Kuai)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile