Scaling from Flux Towers to Ecosystem Models: Regional Constraints on Carbon Cycle Processes from Atmospheric Carbonyl Sulfide (Final Report)

Technical Report · Wed May 24 04:00:00 EDT 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1974339· OSTI ID:1974339

Campbell, Elliott ^[1]; Berry, Joe ^[2]; Seibt, Ulrike ^[3]

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1. Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States); UC Santa Cruz
2. Carnegie Inst. of Science, Stanford, CA (United States)
3. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)

DOE supported research suggests that gross primary productivity (GPP) is largely underestimated by global earth system models [Welp et al., 2011], reflecting the persistent challenge in extrapolating from local-scale GPP observations to global-scale earth system models. This poor understanding of GPP at large spatial scales is of particular concern in tropical forests. In tropical forests, some earth systems models forecast a powerful feedback between a warming climate and a decline in GPP resulting in forest dieback. While this simulated feedback is intensely debated, we lack robust large-scale constraints on GPP that are needed to resolve this debate. In particular, carbon dioxide measurements provide valuable information on net carbon flux, but not on the gross flux associated with GPP. Here we conducted a study of regional-to-global scale GPP using atmospheric carbonyl sulfide to provide a new constraint on GPP mechanisms in earth system models. Our project activities integrated modeling, in situ measurement, and remote sensing techniques to resolve GPP for the Amazon as well as global scale trends. The results of this work included initiating airborne carbonyl sulfide monitoring in the Amazon, training for postdocs and graduate students at a Hispanic Serving Institution, fundamental advances in carbonyl sulfide budgets [e.g. Hilton et al., Nature Climate Change, 2017], and high-profile publications that focused on GPP trends for the Amazon [Stinecipher et al., GRL, 2022] and global historical GPP trends [Campbell, et al., Nature, 2017]. Based on the suggestion of our DOE program manager, we published a state-of-the-science commentary to the scientific community on GPP monitoring with COS [Campbell et al., EOS, 2017] which was selected as the cover story. DOE support was acknowledged in all reports. The importance of this research to understanding climate change was communicated to the general public through community seminars (Rotary, Public Libraries, State Parks), an op-ed (SF Chronicle), and interviews in the mass media including two stories in the New York Times (4/5/17; 7/30/18), one of which was especially widely read after it was featured in the New York Time’s Quote of the Day.

• Research Organization: Univ. of California, Merced, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• DOE Contract Number: SC0011999
• OSTI ID: 1974339
• Report Number(s): DOE-UCMerced--11999
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Amazon
Carbonyl Sulfide
Cardon Dioxide
Climate Change
Photosynthesis
Tropical Forest