Remote sensing of Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 fluxes
Peter
Strutton, Oregon State University, strutton@coas.oregonstate.edu
(Presenting)
Burke
Hales, Oregon State University, bhales@coas.oregonstate.edu
The Southern Ocean represents a vast gap in our understanding of global air-sea CO2 fluxes. We are currently in the first year of a data synthesis and algorithm development effort to provide satellite-based maps of pCO2 with superior spatial and temporal coverage compared to the current climatologies produced by interpolation of sparse in situ observations. Our new maps, combined with satellite measurements of wind speed and an improved understanding of the gas transfer velocity, will serve two important purposes: (1) They will significantly improve our estimates of regional and total CO2 fluxes, and (2) they will serve as a validation products for current and future models of Southern Ocean biogeochemistry. To date we have produced and validated a first generation map of surface pCO2 for the Southern Ocean GasEx cruise. Our participation in that cruise generated >30 days of new pCO2 data in an extremely data-poor region, and also contributed to the overall goal of gas transfer parameterizations at high wind speeds. This poster presents results to date and outlines plans for the near future, including spatial analyses of Southern Ocean satellite data for the development of regional models.
NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Active Awards Represented by this Poster: