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Published July 2013 | Published
Journal Article Open

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Variability in the Community Earth System Model: Evaluation and Transient Dynamics during the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

Changes in atmospheric CO_2 variability during the twenty-first century may provide insight about ecosystem responses to climate change and have implications for the design of carbon monitoring programs. This paper describes changes in the three-dimensional structure of atmospheric CO_2 for several representative concentration pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5) using the Community Earth System Model–Biogeochemistry (CESM1-BGC). CO_2 simulated for the historical period was first compared to surface, aircraft, and column observations. In a second step, the evolution of spatial and temporal gradients during the twenty-first century was examined. The mean annual cycle in atmospheric CO_2 was underestimated for the historical period throughout the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting that the growing season net flux in the Community Land Model (the land component of CESM) was too weak. Consistent with weak summer drawdown in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, simulated CO_2 showed correspondingly weak north–south and vertical gradients during the summer. In the simulations of the twenty-first century, CESM predicted increases in the mean annual cycle of atmospheric CO_2 and larger horizontal gradients. Not only did the mean north–south gradient increase due to fossil fuel emissions, but east–west contrasts in CO_2 also strengthened because of changing patterns in fossil fuel emissions and terrestrial carbon exchange. In the RCP8.5 simulation, where CO_2 increased to 1150 ppm by 2100, the CESM predicted increases in interannual variability in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes of up to 60% relative to present variability for time series filtered with a 2–10-yr bandpass. Such an increase in variability may impact detection of changing surface fluxes from atmospheric observations.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Meteorological Society. Received: July 31, 2012; Final Form: December 19, 2012. The CESM project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Computing resources were provided by the Climate Simulation Laboratory at NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other agencies. G.K.A. acknowledges support of a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellowship. J.T.R., N.M.M., S.C.D., K.L., and J.K.M. acknowledge support of Collaborative Research: Improved Regional and Decadal Predictions of the Carbon Cycle (NSF AGS-1048827, AGS-1021776, AGS-1048890). The HIPPO Program was supported by NSF Grants ATM-0628575, ATM-0628519, and ATM-0628388 to Harvard University, University of California (San Diego), and by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, University of Colorado/ CIRES, by the NCAR and by the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. Sunyoung Park, Greg Santoni, Eric Kort, and Jasna Pittman collected data during HIPPO. The ACME project was supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02- 05CH11231 as part of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM), the ARM Aerial Facility, and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program. TCCON measurements at Eureka were made by the Canadian Network for Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (CANDAC) with additional support from the Canadian Space Agency. The Lauder TCCON program was funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology contracts CO1X0204, CO1X0703, and CO1X0406. Measurements at Darwin and Wollongong were supported by Australian Research Council Grants DP0879468 and DP110103118 and were undertaken by David Griffith, Nicholas Deutscher, and Ronald Macatangay. We thank Pauli Heikkinen, Petteri Ahonen, and Esko Kyrö of the Finnish Meteorological Institute for contributing the Sodankylä TCCON data. Measurements at Park Falls, Lamont, and Pasadena were supported by NASA Grant NNX11AG01G and the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory Program. Data at these sites were obtained by Geoff Toon, Jean- Francois Blavier, Coleen Roehl, and Debra Wunch. We are grateful to the DOE ARM program for technical support in Lamont and Jeff Ayers for technical support at Park Falls. Complete acknowledgments for all sites can be found on the TCCON website: https://tcconwiki. caltech.edu/Network_Policy/Data_Use_Policy.

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August 22, 2023
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