Project Funding: 2017 - 2020

NRA: 2016 NASA: Carbon Monitoring System   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Dramatic increases in atmospheric CO2 from preindustrial to present day are 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. While well constrained at global scales, the tilt of anthropogenic emissions towards developing countries has increased regional uncertainty at levels that rival natural variability. Patterns of climate variability, including the 2010 and 2015 El Ninos, directly affect the airborne fraction through spatially complex land carbon processes such as fires, gross primary productivity (GPP), and respiration while modulating atmosphere-ocean pCO2 exchange across entire ocean basins. Changes in the frequency and intensity of climate anomalies may alter the trajectory of carbon storage and fluxes leading to carbon-climate feedbacks. The combination of regional emissions and natural fluxes complicates the attribution of expected changes in atmospheric CO2 to carbon mitigation strategies such as those proposed by Paris Climate Accord. In order to improve this attribution, we propose a decadal carbon reanalysis from 2010- 2019 that will build upon, extend, and improve products developed under the NASA CMS-Flux, which was initiated during the first phase of the CMS pilot studies. These products will include observationally-constrained and spatially-explicit bottom-up' estimates of anthropogenic, oceanic, and terrestrial carbon fluxes and uncertainties, which are a continuation of anthropogenic emissions from the Fossil Fuel Assimilation System (FFDAS) and assimilated oceanic pCO2 fluxes from ECCO-Darwin. The terrestrial ecosystem fluxes will be derived from the C data model framework (CARDAMOM) assimilation system, which will ingest satellite-constrained biomass and productivity measures including solar induced fluorescence from GOSAT and OCO-2. Atmospheric observations of CO2 from GOSAT and OCO-2 along with CO from MOPITT will be assimilated into the CMS-Flux framework to produce spatially-resolved 'top-down' estimates of total and fire fluxes, respectively. To achieve decadal scale fluxes, we will link two state-of-the-art data assimilation approaches: ensemble Kalman filtering and 4D-variational methodologies. In order to provide improvements in the characterization of CMS-Flux products and uncertainties, an innovative optimal reduced flux basis technique will be used to calculate critical diagnostics such as degrees of freedom and posterior uncertainty correlations. Inferred fluxes will be evaluated against atmospheric observations based upon a new method introduced in Liu et al 2016 that attributes model-data concentration differences to regional fluxes. Bottom-up estimates will be evaluated against independent data where available such as FLUXCOM. Taken together, the proposed extension of CMS-Flux will be one of the most advanced carbon cycle data assimilation systems available covering a decade that includes the 2nd largest El Nino on record, the 5 highest global temperatures since the 19th century, and a global agreement to curb carbon emissions. Products from CMS-Flux will fill an important need of the carbon community to relate changes in atmospheric CO2 growth rate to regional anthropogenic, land, and oceanic drivers. These in turn provide the broad carbon context to understand the efficacy of carbon mitigation strategies.

Publications:

Barkhordarian, A., Bowman, K. W., Cressie, N., Jewell, J., Liu, J. 2021. Emergent constraints on tropical atmospheric aridity--carbon feedbacks and the future of carbon sequestration. Environmental Research Letters. 16(11), 114008. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2ce8

Bloom, A. A., Bowman, K. W., Liu, J., Konings, A. G., Worden, J. R., Parazoo, N. C., Meyer, V., Reager, J. T., Worden, H. M., Jiang, Z., Quetin, G. R., Smallman, T. L., Exbrayat, J., Yin, Y., Saatchi, S. S., Williams, M., Schimel, D. S. 2020. Lagged effects regulate the inter-annual variability of the tropical carbon balance. Biogeosciences. 17(24), 6393-6422. DOI: 10.5194/bg-17-6393-2020

Butler, M. P., Lauvaux, T., Feng, S., Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Davis, K. J. 2020. Atmospheric Simulations of Total Column CO2 Mole Fractions from Global to Mesoscale within the Carbon Monitoring System Flux Inversion Framework. Atmosphere. 11(8), 787. DOI: 10.3390/atmos11080787

Byrne B, Liu J, Lee M, Baker I, Bowman K W, Deutscher N M, Feist D G, Griffith D W T, Iraci L T, Kiel M, Kimball J S, Miller C E, Morino I, Parazoo N C, Petri C, Roehl C M, Sha M K, Strong K, Velazco V A, Wennberg P O, Wunch D. 2020 Improved Constraints on Northern Extratropical CO2 Fluxes Obtained by Combining Surface-Based and Space-Based Atmospheric CO2 Measurements. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 125(15). DOI: 10.1029/2019JD032029

Carroll, D., Menemenlis, D., Adkins, J. F., Bowman, K. W., Brix, H., Dutkiewicz, S., Fenty, I., Gierach, M. M., Hill, C., Jahn, O., Landschutzer, P., Lauderdale, J. M., Liu, J., Manizza, M., Naviaux, J. D., Rodenbeck, C., Schimel, D. S., Van der Stocken, T., Zhang, H. 2020. The ECCO-Darwin Data-Assimilative Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Model: Estimates of Seasonal to Multidecadal Surface Ocean p CO 2 and Air-Sea CO 2 Flux. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 12(10). DOI: 10.1029/2019MS001888

Carroll, D., Menemenlis, D., Dutkiewicz, S., Lauderdale, J. M., Adkins, J. F., Bowman, K. W., Brix, H., Fenty, I., Gierach, M. M., Hill, C., Jahn, O., Landschutzer, P., Manizza, M., Mazloff, M. R., Miller, C. E., Schimel, D. S., Verdy, A., Whitt, D. B., Zhang, H. 2022. Attribution of Space-Time Variability in Global-Ocean Dissolved Inorganic Carbon. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 36(3). DOI: 10.1029/2021GB007162

Crowell, S., Baker, D., Schuh, A., Basu, S., Jacobson, A. R., Chevallier, F., Liu, J., Deng, F., Feng, L., McKain, K., Chatterjee, A., Miller, J. B., Stephens, B. B., Eldering, A., Crisp, D., Schimel, D., Nassar, R., O'Dell, C. W., Oda, T., Sweeney, C., Palmer, P. I., Jones, D. B. A. 2019. The 2015-2016 carbon cycle as seen from OCO-2 and the global in situ network. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 19(15), 9797-9831. DOI: 10.5194/acp-19-9797-2019

Konings, A. G., Bloom, A. A., Liu, J., Parazoo, N. C., Schimel, D. S., Bowman, K. W. 2019. Global satellite-driven estimates of heterotrophic respiration. Biogeosciences. 16(11), 2269-2284. DOI: 10.5194/bg-16-2269-2019

Liao, E., Resplandy, L., Liu, J., Bowman, K. W. 2020. Amplification of the Ocean Carbon Sink During El Ninos: Role of Poleward Ekman Transport and Influence on Atmospheric CO 2. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 34(9). DOI: 10.1029/2020GB006574

Liu, J., Baskaran, L., Bowman, K., Schimel, D., Bloom, A. A., Parazoo, N. C., Oda, T., Carroll, D., Menemenlis, D., Joiner, J., Commane, R., Daube, B., Gatti, L. V., McKain, K., Miller, J., Stephens, B. B., Sweeney, C., Wofsy, S. 2021. Carbon Monitoring System Flux Net Biosphere Exchange 2020 (CMS-Flux NBE 2020). Earth System Science Data. 13(2), 299-330. DOI: 10.5194/essd-13-299-2021

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., 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

Liu, J., Wennberg, P. O., Parazoo, N. C., Yin, Y., Frankenberg, C. 2020. Observational Constraints on the Response of High-Latitude Northern Forests to Warming. AGU Advances. 1(4). DOI: 10.1029/2020AV000228

Parazoo, N. C., Bowman, K. W., Baier, B. C., Liu, J., Lee, M., Kuai, L., Shiga, Y., Baker, I., Whelan, M. E., Feng, S., Krol, M., Sweeney, C., Runkle, B. R., Tajfar, E., Davis, K. J. 2021. Covariation of Airborne Biogenic Tracers (CO 2 , COS, and CO) Supports Stronger Than Expected Growing Season Photosynthetic Uptake in the Southeastern US. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 35(10). DOI: 10.1029/2021GB006956

Quetin, G. R., Bloom, A. A., Bowman, K. W., Konings, A. G. 2020. Carbon Flux Variability From a Relatively Simple Ecosystem Model With Assimilated Data Is Consistent With Terrestrial Biosphere Model Estimates. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 12(3). DOI: 10.1029/2019MS001889

Schuh, A. E., Jacobson, A. R., Basu, S., Weir, B., Baker, D., Bowman, K., Chevallier, F., Crowell, S., Davis, K. J., Deng, F., Denning, S., Feng, L., Jones, D., Liu, J., Palmer, P. I. 2019. Quantifying the Impact of Atmospheric Transport Uncertainty on CO 2 Surface Flux Estimates. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 33(4), 484-500. DOI: 10.1029/2018GB006086

Worden, J., Saatchi, S., Keller, M., Bloom, A. A., Liu, J., Parazoo, N., Fisher, J. B., Bowman, K., Reager, J. T., Fahy, K., Schimel, D., Fu, R., Worden, S., Yin, Y., Gentine, P., Konings, A. G., Quetin, G. R., Williams, M., Worden, H., Shi, M., Barkhordarian, A. 2021. Satellite Observations of the Tropical Terrestrial Carbon Balance and Interactions With the Water Cycle During the 21st Century. Reviews of Geophysics. 59(1). DOI: 10.1029/2020RG000711

Yin, Y., Bowman, K., Bloom, A. A., Worden, J. 2019. Detection of fossil fuel emission trends in the presence of natural carbon cycle variability. Environmental Research Letters. 14(8), 084050. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab2dd7

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

• NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Project Profile