The covariation of Northern Hemisphere summertime CO₂ with surface temperature in boreal regions

Creators: Wunch, D.; Wennberg, P. O.; Messerschmidt, J.; Parazoo, N. C.; Toon, G. C.; Deutscher, N. M.; Keppel-Aleks, G.; Roehl, C. M.; Randerson, J. T.; Warneke, T.; Notholt, J.

Abstract

We observe significant interannual variability in the strength of the seasonal cycle drawdown in northern midlatitudes from measurements of CO₂ made by the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) and the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). This variability correlates with surface temperature in the boreal regions. Using TCCON measurements, we find that the slope of the relationship between the X_(CO₂) seasonal cycle minima and boreal surface temperature is 1.2 ± 0.7 ppm K⁻¹. Assimilations from CarbonTracker 2011 and CO₂ simulations using the Simple Biosphere exchange Model (SiB) transported by GEOS-Chem underestimate this covariation. Both atmospheric transport and biospheric activity contribute to the observed covariation.

Additional Information

© Author(s) 2013. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Received: 12 Mar 2013 – Discussion started: 19 Apr 2013 – Revised: 26 Jul 2013 – Accepted: 12 Aug 2013 – Published: 26 Sep 2013. The authors would like to thank Prof. Peter Rayner and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments that substantially improved this paper. CarbonTracker 2011 results were provided by NOAA ESRL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from the website at http://carbontracker.noaa.gov. US funding for TCCON comes from NASA's Carbon Cycle Program, grant number NNX11AG01G, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory Program, and the DOE/ARM Program. We acknowledge financial support of the Białystok TCCON site from the Senate of Bremen and EU projects IMECC and GEOmon as well as maintenance and logistical work provided by AeroMeteo Service. P. O. Wennberg and J. T. Randerson receive support from NASA's Carbon Cycle Science program (NNX10AT83G). The GOSAT X_(CO₂) data were obtained from the Atmospheric CO₂ Observations from Space (ACOS) project. We thank the three Japanese parties (NIES, JAXA, MOE) for making the GOSAT spectra available to the scientific community. N. C. Parazoo carried out the research at the University of California Los Angeles and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and acknowledges support from NASA ROSES NNH09ZDA001N-ACOS. Part of this work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Self-calibrated PDSI data with Penman–Monteith PE were downloaded from http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/pdsi.html. Edited by: I. Aben.

Attached Files

Published - acp-13-9447-2013.pdf

Files

acp-13-9447-2013.pdf

Files (4.5 MB)

Name	Size	Download all
acp-13-9447-2013.pdf md5:e91e56a6b6d8e0f3d932f976da4c9f3a	4.5 MB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes