HR: 1340h
AN: A13A-0091    [Abstracts]
TI: Diagnosing Atmospheric Inverse Calculations: What Exactly Are We Learning About?
AU: * Bruhwiler, L M
EM: lori.bruhwiler@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, 325 Broadway R/CG1, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Peters, W
EM: wouter.peters@noaa.gov
AF: Cooperative Institute for Environmental Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 United States
AU: Michalak, A M
EM: anna.michalak@umich.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 United States
AU: Tans, P
EM: pieter.tans@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, 325 Broadway R/CG1, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AB: It is well-known that our current ability to quantify the fluxes of long-lived atmospheric tracers, such as $CO_{2}$ is limited by the sparse coverage of the global observation network used to estimate fluxes. The global growth rates of $CO_{2}$ and the distribution of fluxes between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres is well-constrained by observations, however, the longitudinal distribution of fluxes and especially the partitioning of fluxes between the continents and oceans is much more uncertain. In this study we use numerical diagnostics, such as the resolution kernal, in conjunction with covariance estimates to diagnose resolved features of flux estimates. This work suggests that the partitioning of fluxes between the global oceans and the terrestrial biosphere can indeed be constrained by the current observational network. Zonal average land and ocean fluxes may also be resolved in general. On the other hand, many of the 22 TransCom III source regions are not resolved by the current observation network. The resolution of some regions improves during the growing season for the terrestrial biosphere, suggesting that more certain flux estimates may be obtained for certain seasons. The size of the observational network has increased substantially over the past two decades. Using 29 observation sites to represent the network around 1985, and 120 sites to represent the network around 2000, we find that resolution of carbon fluxes increases for some regions, but has remained disappointing low for most of the TransCom III source regions.
DE: 0312 Air/sea constituent fluxes (3339, 4504)
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions
DE: 0322 Constituent sources and sinks
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting