Evaluating atmospheric CO2 inversions at multiple scales over a highly-inventoried agricultural landscape.
An intensive regional research campaign was conducted by the North American Carbon Program (NACP) in 2005 to study the carbon cycle of the highly productive agricultural regions of the Midwestern United States. Forty-_ve di_erent associated projects were spawned across _ve U.S. agencies over the course of nearly a decade involving hundreds of researchers. The primary objective of the project was to investigate the ability of atmospheric inversion techniques to use highly calibrated CO2 mixing ratio data to estimate CO2 exchange over the major croplands of the U.S. Statistics from densely monitored crop production, consisting primarily corn and soybeans, provided the backbone of a well-studied\bottom up"flux estimate that was used to evaluate the atmospheric inversion results. Three different inversion systems, representing spatial scales varying from high resolution mesoscale, to continental, to global, coupled to different transport models and optimization techniques were compared to the bottom up" inventory estimates. The mean annual CO2-C sink for 2007 from the inversion systems ranged from 120 TgC to 170 TgC, when viewed across a wide variety of inversion setups, with the best" point estimates ranging from 145 TgC to 155 TgC. Inversion-based mean C sink estimates were generally slightly stronger, but statistically indistinguishable,from the inventory estimate whose mean C sink was 135 TgC. The inversion results showed temporal correlations at seasonal lengths while week to week correlations remained low. Comparisons were made between atmospheric transport yields of the two regional inversion systems, which despite having different influence footprints in space and time due to differences in underlying transport models and external forcings, showed similarity when aggregated in space and time.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1083398
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-91213; 400409900
- Journal Information:
- Global Change Biology, 19(5):1424–1439, Journal Name: Global Change Biology, 19(5):1424–1439
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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