Project Funding: 2014 - 2017

NRA: 2014 NASA: Carbon Monitoring System   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Dramatic increases in atmospheric CO2 from preindustrial to present day is the primary driver of climate change. The spatial origin of the CO2 growth rate and its variability is a complex function of anthropogenic, terrestrial, and oceanic processes. The tilt of industrial emissions towards developing countries has increased the uncertainty in fossil fuel emissions. Shifts in the patterns of climate variability, e.g., toward Central Pacific 'Modoki' El Ninos, can intensify the magnitude and extend of droughts, e.g., 2005 and 2010 Amazonian droughts, leading to increased fires and reduction of GPP while modulating atmosphere-ocean pCO2 exchange across entire ocean basins. In order to quantify the role of spatio-temporal patterns of anthropogenic and natural carbon fluxes in controlling atmospheric CO2, we will build upon the success of the Carbon Monitoring System Flux Pilot Project (CMS-Flux) initiated in Phase I and continued in Phase II. We propose to produce observationally-constrained and spatially-explicit 'bottom-up' estimates of anthropogenic, oceanic, and terrestrial carbon fluxes using the CMS-Flux system balanced against the observed atmospheric growth rate from 2010-2015. These estimates are a continuation of anthropogenic emissions from the Fossil Fuel Assimilation System (FFDAS), assimilated oceanic pCO2 fluxes from ECCO2-Darwin, and terrestrial ecosystem fluxes from CASA-GFED3 model and the MsTMIP ensemble models. While supported by separately funded NASA activities, these terrestrial ecosystem fluxes will be modified to be consistent with a fully balanced carbon cycle. These carbon fluxes will be subsequently updated by CMS-Flux constrained by GOSAT and OCO-2 xCO2 observations from 2010-2015. We propose to assimilate ancillary satellite observations of CO and NO2 from MOPITT and OMI into CMS-Flux in order to attribute posterior fluxes to combustion and industrial carbon fluxes, respectively. These estimates exploit the inherent capacity of CMS-Flux to assimilate both passive and chemically active atmospheric constituents within the same framework. Building upon the analysis in previous CMS-Flux estimates, we will further investigate the correlation of climate variability, especially drought, on regional carbon fluxes and how they modulate the atmospheric CO2 growth rate. Using these estimates of CO and NO2 emissions, we will attribute the variability of those carbon fluxes to combustion processes. Given the breadth of work, we expect the proposal to cost 500K/year.

Publications:

Bowman, K. W., Liu, J., Bloom, A. A., Parazoo, N. C., Lee, M., Jiang, Z., Menemenlis, D., Gierach, M. M., Collatz, G. J., Gurney, K. R., Wunch, D. 2017. Global and Brazilian Carbon Response to El Nino Modoki 2011-2010. Earth and Space Science. 4(10), 637-660. DOI: 10.1002/2016EA000204

Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Lee, M. 2016. Comparison between the Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF) and 4D-Var in atmospheric CO 2 flux inversion with the Goddard Earth Observing System-Chem model and the observation impact diagnostics from the LETKF. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 121(21), 13,066-13,087. DOI: 10.1002/2016JD025100

Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Schimel, D. S., Parazoo, N. C., Jiang, Z., Lee, M., Bloom, A. A., Wunch, D., Frankenberg, C., Sun, Y., O'Dell, C. W., Gurney, K. R., Menemenlis, D., Gierach, M., Crisp, D., Eldering, A. 2017. Contrasting carbon cycle responses of the tropical continents to the 2015-2016 El Nino. Science. 358(6360). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam5690

Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Schimel, D., Parazoo, N. C., Jiang, Z., Lee, M., Bloom, A. A., Wunch, D., Frankenberg, C., Sun, Y., O'Dell, C. W., Gurney, K. R., Menemenlis, D., Gierach, M., Crisp, D., Eldering, A. 2018. Response to Comment on "Contrasting carbon cycle responses of the tropical continents to the 2015-2016 El Nino". Science. 362(6418), eaat1211. DOI: 10.1126/science.aat1211

Liu, J., Bowman, K., Parazoo, N. C., Bloom, A. A., Wunch, D., Jiang, Z., Gurney, K. R., Schimel, D. 2018. Detecting drought impact on terrestrial biosphere carbon fluxes over contiguous US with satellite observations. Environmental Research Letters. 13(9), 095003. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aad5ef

Ott, L. E., Pawson, S., Collatz, G. J., Gregg, W. W., Menemenlis, D., Brix, H., Rousseaux, C. S., Bowman, K. W., Liu, J., Eldering, A., Gunson, M. R., Kawa, S. R. 2015. Assessing the magnitude of CO2flux uncertainty in atmospheric CO2records using products from NASA's Carbon Monitoring Flux Pilot Project. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 120(2), 734-765. DOI: 10.1002/2014JD022411

Schwalm, C. R., Huntzinger, D. N., Fisher, J. B., Michalak, A. M., Bowman, K., Ciais, P., Cook, R., El-Masri, B., Hayes, D., Huang, M., Ito, A., Jain, A., King, A. W., Lei, H., Liu, J., Lu, C., Mao, J., Peng, S., Poulter, B., Ricciuto, D., Schaefer, K., Shi, X., Tao, B., Tian, H., Wang, W., Wei, Y., Yang, J., Zeng, N. 2015. Toward "optimal" integration of terrestrial biosphere models. Geophysical Research Letters. 42(11), 4418-4428. DOI: 10.1002/2015GL064002

Liu, J., Bowman, K. 2016. A method for independent validation of surface fluxes from atmospheric inversion: Application to CO 2. Geophysical Research Letters. 43(7), 3502-3508. DOI: 10.1002/2016GL067828

Worden, J. R., Turner, A. J., Bloom, A., Kulawik, S. S., Liu, J., Lee, M., Weidner, R., Bowman, K., Frankenberg, C., Parker, R., Payne, V. H. 2015. Quantifying lower tropospheric methane concentrations using GOSAT near-IR and TES thermal IR measurements. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. 8(8), 3433-3445. DOI: 10.5194/amt-8-3433-2015

Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Henze, D. K. 2015. Source-receptor relationships of column-average CO2and implications for the impact of observations on flux inversions. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 120(10), 5214-5236. DOI: 10.1002/2014JD022914

Zhang, X., Gurney, K. R., Rayner, P., Liu, Y., Asefi-Najafabady, S. 2014. Sensitivity of simulated CO<sub>2</sub> concentration to regridding of global fossil fuel CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. Geoscientific Model Development. 7(6), 2867-2874. DOI: 10.5194/gmd-7-2867-2014

Asefi-Najafabady, S., Rayner, P. J., Gurney, K. R., McRobert, A., Song, Y., Coltin, K., Huang, J., Elvidge, C., Baugh, K. 2014. A multiyear, global gridded fossil fuel CO2emission data product: Evaluation and analysis of results. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 119(17), 10,213-10,231. DOI: 10.1002/2013JD021296

2015 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Surface CO2 flux estimation and validation for 2010 and 2011 from CMS-Flux   --   (Junjie Liu, Kevin W Bowman, Michelle Gierach, George James Collatz, Meemong Lee, Kevin Robert Gurney, John Miller, Dimitris Menemenlis, Nicolas Bousserez)   [abstract]

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

• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile
• NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Project Profile