The seasonality of the Amazon Basin ecosystem production assessed by a fully coupled dynamic Ecosystem - Atmosphere Model (ED2-BRAMS)
Marcos
Longo, Harvard U., mlongo@seas.harvard.edu
Ryan
Knox, MIT, ryan.g.knox@mit.edu
Yeonjoo
Kim, NASA GISS, yeonjoo.kim@nasa.gov
David
M.
Medvigy, Princeton U, dmedvigy@princeton.edu
Victoria
Yee
Chow, Harvard U, vchow@seas.harvard.edu
Saulo
R.
Freitas, Harvard U, saulo.freitas@cptec.inpe.br
Karla
Longo, INPE, karla.longo@cptec.inpe.br
Rafael
L.
Bras, U California Irvine, rafael.bras@uci.edu
Paul
R.
Moorcroft, Harvard, paul_moorcroft@harvard.edu
Steven
C.
Wofsy, Harvard U, swofsy@seas.harvard.edu
(Presenting)
The Regional Atmospheric Carbon budget on the Amazon (BARCA) is a project that aims at providing a better understanding of the carbon budget on the Amazon in regional scale. Two intensive airborne campaigns were conducted on the Basin: BARCA-A, which happened in November 2008, when Eastern Amazon and Northeastern Brazil were still in dry season while the Western and Southwestern Amazon were already under rainy conditions; and BARCA-B, which took place in May 2009, when most of the Eastern Amazon were experiencing wet season, while the central and Northern Amazon were drier than average.
In this work used a fully coupled dynamic biosphere-atmosphere model (ED-BRAMS), to obtain detailed empirical and mechanistic insight on how the seasonal differences affected the ecosystem production, and which atmospheric characteristics had the most impact limiting the carbon uptake. ECMWF-Interim reanalysis were used as initial and boundary conditions, while the initial ecosystem state is the potential vegetation obtained by a previous long-term simulation of ED.
The coupled system simulations were able to capture the overall precipitation patterns and magnitude on most of the Amazon Basin during both campaigns. These preliminary simulations also suggest that the ecosystem had a strong variation between the two campaigns. Gross primary production was lower in the Eastern Amazon and Northeastern Brazil during the BARCA-A campaign, mostly due to excessively warm temperatures, which depleted the photosynthesis efficiency. On the other hand, carbon uptake was somewhat lower during the second mission in the Southwest Amazon, mostly due to an anomalously cloudy May.
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Session: Carbon Cycle Science
NASA TE Funded Awards Represented:
Wofsy, Stev
Spatial and Temporal Distributions of Sources for non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases (CH4, CO, N2O) over North America