 |
| Titel |
The satellite-inferred European carbon sink |
| VerfasserIn |
Maximilian Reuter, Michael Buchwitz, Michael Hilker, Jens Heymann, Oliver Schneising, Dhanya Pillai, Heinrich Bovensmann, John Burrows |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2015
|
| Medientyp |
Artikel
|
| Sprache |
Englisch
|
| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 17 (2015) |
| Datensatznummer |
250112693
|
| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2015-12863.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
| Zusammenfassung |
| Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas
responsible for global warming. A significant fraction of the emitted CO2 is taken up by
northern hemispheric extra-tropical vegetation. Unfortunately, despite decades of research, it
is not clear where exactly this carbon sink is located, how it varies in space and time and how
plants will respond to a changing climate. We analysed satellite retrieved dry-air
column-average mole fractions of atmospheric CO2 with a regional inversion set-up based on
STILT short range (days) particle dispersion modelling, rendering it insensitive to large scale
retrieval biases and less sensitive to long-range transport errors. Our results suggest that the
European vegetation (from the Atlantic to the Urals) removes 1.02±0.30 GtC/a (in
2010) from the atmosphere. This is qualitatively consistent among an ensemble of
five different inversion set-ups and five independent satellite retrievals (BESD,
ACOS, UoL-FP, RemoTeC, and NIES) using data from two different instruments
(SCIAMACHY and GOSAT). The difference to in situ based inversions, whilst large with
respect to the mean reported European carbon sink (0.4 GtC/a for 2001–2004), is
similar in magnitude to the reported uncertainty (0.42 GtC/a). The highest gain
in information is obtained during the growing season when satellite observation
conditions are advantageous, a priori uncertainties are largest, and the surface sink
maximises; during the dormant season, the results are dominated by the a priori. |
|
|
|
|
|
|