A241-06
Observing the Carbon Cycle with the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)
Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 11:50
Virtual
David Crisp1, Annmarie Eldering2, Michael R Gunson3, Akihiko Kuze4, Abhishek Chatterjee5, Junjie Liu6, Paul I Palmer7, Liang Feng8, Sean Crowell9, Janne Juhani Hakkarainen10, David Schimel1, Yi Yin11, Jacob Hedelius12 and John C Lin13, (1)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (2)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)JAXA Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, EORC, Tsukuba, Japan, (5)USRA, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (7)University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, (8)University of Edinburgh, NCEO, Edinburgh, EH9, United Kingdom, (9)University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, United States, (10)Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland, (11)California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Pasadena, CA, United States, (12)California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (13)University of Utah, Atmospheric Sciences, Salt Lake City, UT, United States
Abstract:
Space based estimates of the column-averaged carbon dioxide (CO
2) dry air mole fraction (XCO
2) and solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) are providing new tools for studying the global carbon cycle. GOSAT has been returning the data needed to estimate XCO
2 and SIF since April 2009. OCO-2 been returning these data since September 2014. These two datasets were combined to study the carbon cycle response to the record-setting 2015–2016 El Niño. They clearly resolved 0.5 ppm XCO
2 decreases associated with reductions in tropical Pacific outgassing as well as net increases in CO
2 emissions from tropical continents, which were traced to the impacts of drought, temperature stress, and fires. As the tropical climate transitioned from El Niño to weak La Niña conditions in 2017-2018, and then to a more neutral state, GOSAT and OCO-2 observations indicate that tropical forests, once thought to be net sinks for CO
2, never fully recovered to their expected state, and continued to be net CO
2 sources.
More recently, OCO-2 XCO2 and SIF estimates have been combined with SIF from Sentinel 5P TROPOMI to quantify the effects of large-scale flooding on cropland carbon sequestration during the U.S. Midwest floods in the spring and early summer of 2019. These floods produced an estimated 0.21 GtC reduction in GPP in June and July that was partially compensated in August and September with a +0.14 GtC increase. The OCO-2 and GOSAT are now being used to study the regional scale impacts of the economic slowdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the flooding and fires accompanying the intense 2019-2020 Indian Ocean Dipole. On smaller scales, GOSAT and OCO-2 data are being used to study emissions from large urban areas and even individual power plants. Here, we will review this progress and look forward to future opportunities for combing OCO-2 and GOSAT results with observations from the GOSAT-2 and OCO-3 missions, which are just now beginning to deliver data products.
