Project Funding: 2014 - 2017

NRA: 2013 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by DOE

Abstract:
Recent work suggests that gross primary productivity (GPP) is largely underestimated by global earth system models [Welp et al., Nature, 2011], reflecting the persistent challenge in extrapolating from local process observations to earth system models. This poor understanding of GPP at large spatial scales is of particular concern in tropical forests. In tropical forests, some earth systems models forecast a powerful feedback between a warming climate and a decline in GPP resulting in forest dieback. While this simulated feedback is intensely debated, we lack robust large-scale constraints on GPP that are needed to resolve this debate. Here we propose an integrated measurement and modeling study of regional-scale GPP in the Amazon rainforest using atmospheric carbonyl sulfide to provide a new constraint on GPP mechanisms in earth system models. Project activities include three primary components: (1) a field campaign in the Brazilian Amazon will provide the first tropical measurements of COS using eddy covariance, chamber, and airborne platforms in order to assess the relationship between CO2 GPP fluxes and ecosystem COS fluxes; (2) eddy covariance and chamber data will be used in the development and application of ecosystem models of COS and CO2 fluxes; (3) these ecosystem flux simulations and the airborne observations will be used in a mesoscale inverse model to provide top-down constrains on regional GPP and an assessment of the GPP representation in earth systems models. The project applies a unique analysis system field tested by the U.S. investigators on our team and the complementary major research instrumentation available from the Brazilian investigators on our team. This project will provide the fundamental ecosystem measurements needed to extend the COS-GPP tracer approach to the tropics and an application to a critical uncertainty for carbon-climate feedbacks. In addition to the carbon cycle, the new understanding of COS resulting from this project may have broad impacts in related scientific disciplines including its use as a conservative tracer of convection in the biophysical climate investigations of the GOAmazon campaign.

Publications:

Campbell, J. E., Berry, J. A., Seibt, U., Smith, S. J., Montzka, S. A., Launois, T., Belviso, S., Bopp, L., Laine, M. 2017. Large historical growth in global terrestrial gross primary production. Nature. 544(7648), 84-87. DOI: 10.1038/nature22030

Campbell, J. E., et al. (2017) Assessing a new clue to how much carbon plants take up, EOS, 98, 24-29

Campbell, J. E., Whelan, M. E., Seibt, U., Smith, S. J., Berry, J. A., Hilton, T. W. 2015. Atmospheric carbonyl sulfide sources from anthropogenic activity: Implications for carbon cycle constraints. Geophysical Research Letters. 42(8), 3004-3010. DOI: 10.1002/2015GL063445

Glatthor, N., Hopfner, M., Baker, I. T., Berry, J., Campbell, J. E., Kawa, S. R., Krysztofiak, G., Leyser, A., Sinnhuber, B., Stiller, G. P., Stinecipher, J., von Clarmann, T. 2015. Tropical sources and sinks of carbonyl sulfide observed from space. Geophysical Research Letters. 42(22), 10,082-10,090. DOI: 10.1002/2015GL066293

Hilton, T. W., Whelan, M. E., Zumkehr, A., Kulkarni, S., Berry, J. A., Baker, I. T., Montzka, S. A., Sweeney, C., Miller, B. R., Elliott Campbell, J. 2017. Peak growing season gross uptake of carbon in North America is largest in the Midwest USA. Nature Climate Change. 7(6), 450-454. DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3272

Wang, Y., Deutscher, N. M., Palm, M., Warneke, T., Notholt, J., Baker, I., Berry, J., Suntharalingam, P., Jones, N., Mahieu, E., Lejeune, B., Hannigan, J., Conway, S., Mendonca, J., Strong, K., Campbell, J. E., Wolf, A., Kremser, S. 2016. Towards understanding the variability in biospheric CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes: using FTIR spectrometry and a chemical transport model to investigate the sources and sinks of carbonyl sulfide and its link to CO<sub>2</sub>. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 16(4), 2123-2138. DOI: 10.5194/acp-16-2123-2016

Whelan, M. E., Hilton, T. W., Berry, J. A., Berkelhammer, M., Desai, A. R., Campbell, J. E. 2016. Carbonyl sulfide exchange in soils for better estimates of ecosystem carbon uptake. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 16(6), 3711-3726. DOI: 10.5194/acp-16-3711-2016

Zumkehr, A., Hilton, T. W., Whelan, M., Smith, S., Campbell, J. E. 2017. Gridded anthropogenic emissions inventory and atmospheric transport of carbonyl sulfide in the U.S. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 122(4), 2169-2178. DOI: 10.1002/2016jd025550

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

• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile