New paper on carbon dioxide surface fluxes estimated from a global 21 year reanalysis of atmospheric measurements

Frederic Chevallier (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, France) has led an international collaborative study between 20 institutions, being one of them Izaña Atmospheric Research Center (AEMET), that has concluded with the publication of the paper “CO2 surface fluxes at grid point scale estimated from a global 21 year reanalysis of atmospheric measurements”, by Chevallier et al., in the scientific review “Journal of Geophysical Research” (JGR).

This study uses the atmospheric CO2 measurements carried out in 35 continuous stations (with in-situ instruments), one of them the Observatory of Izaña, and in 93 flask-sampling stations. The paper does a “global Bayesian variational inversion” to estimate the carbon dioxide surface fluxes (emissions and absorptions) for the period 1988-2008. For that, an atmospheric transport model for trace gases (LMDZ with a resolution of 3.75ºx2.5º in longitude-latitude and 19 levels in the vertical), the wind fields provided by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the period 1988-2008, and a priori CO2 surface fluxes (with their associated uncertainties) have been used. The carbon fluxes obtained from the inversion are by 20% to 60% more accurate than the a priori fluxes. Summarizing, high accurate CO2 atmospheric measurements allow quantifying the increase of atmospheric CO2, but additionally they do provide independent information that allows improving/verifying the emissions inventories.

Full reference:
Chevallier, F., et al. (2010), CO2 surface fluxes at grid point scale estimated from a global 21 year reanalysis of atmospheric measurements, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D21307, doi:10.1029/2010JD013887.

Link to the paper in JGR website (click here)
[  http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010JD013887.shtml  ]