Modeling atmospheric transport and its error for carbon studies
Steven
Pawson, GMAO, NASA GSFC, steven.pawson@nasa.gov
(Presenting)
Lesley
Ott, GMAO, NASA GSFC, lesley.e.ott@nasa.gov
Zhengxin
Zhu, GMAO, NASA GSFC, zhengxin.zhu-1@nasa.gov
Understanding the distribution of carbon species in the atmosphere requires knowledge of emissions and uptake at the underlying land and ocean surfaces. It also requires an accurate depiction of transport in the atmosphere. This work examines how limitations in our knowledge of how to represent 'sub-grid-scale' transport in atmospheric models leads to uncertainty in atmospheric carbon species. Two approaches are taken using the GEOS-5 GCM. First, we examine sensitivity to poorly known parameters in the convection code - this shows that local uplifting in source regions strongly impacts the lofting and subsequent long-range transport of carbon species: a range of model simulations reveals that CO concentrations can vary by as much as 50% depending on the choice of parameters. Second, using a fixed configuration of convective cloud parameters, different numerical approaches to transporting trace gases are compared: this again impacts the lofting and subsequent long-range transport of carbon species. Results are validated against observations. The work has implications for our understanding of atmospheric transport as well as for construction of model error covariance estimates for inversion studies.
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Session: Carbon Cycle Science
NASA TE Funded Awards Represented:
NONE: Related Activity or Previously Funded TE Award